We started out our week in the usual place, the babies home. The past few times we've walked into a room of screaming, wet, nakey babies, just out of the bath time ready to be clothed and sent to class. I usually don't go to class with the children and choose to do the needed chores around; however, the teacher asked me to stay this week because she had no help. I was holding a baby and she told me we aren't allowed to in class because there aren't enough teachers to hold the babies and they get very jealous... simply because they are deprived of parental love. After our visit to Sanyu Orphanage we went home for our planning meeting and then patiently awaited the arrival of 2 new MSTs; Jo from Texas and Hayley from Australia!
Tuesday is always a fun day! We start the day with a feeding program at Victory Primary School. EAC has a lot of children in the sponsorship program, so each week it's fun getting to know the children. I think the best part of being here longer term is that the children really get to know my name... with the exception of a few. A more detailed story to come... This time when we got to Victory half of the children were done with exams and the other half were still testing. The kids greeted us as we parked our van at the top of the hill and helped carry all of our supplies for the program down to their school. They also helped fill jerry cans with water, washed things, laid out all of our cups, but mostly they wanted to play. Hours and hours of playing! Usually we have time before the children come out to get the porridge ready, but not this week. With a smaller team we really had to balance getting porridge ready, watching the kids and keeping them out of the "kitchen" and getting ready for the program. I've started leading praise and worship more at the schools, mostly primary schools, but it's fun! We did some of our normal songs and we also taught them the song "Father Abraham". It's great to change up the program just a little. Most of my pictures in the post before are pictures from our day at Victory. To end our day we went to Wankalukuku to look at what the school needed for new posters and cleaning supplies for our Friday project, again, more to come!
Wednesday we always go to Katalemwa. This day was a fun day. The group was smaller than usual, but we had such a fun time with them. I lead praise and worship, again. I love challenging the kids to sing as loud as they possibly can almost like they're making sure God can hear their voices above all of the noises in the world! There's a sweet boy, Aimos, who broke my heart (and a few other MST's hearts) last week when we visited. It's so hard to look at these children sometimes... just uncomfortable. He was new last week. He is obviously badly, badly burned. The worst burns I've ever seen on a child. Last week his bandages were covers in blood and all you could really see were his eyes and his mouth. Every inch of his face seemed covered with bandages and gauze. He participated, but I think because it was his first time seeing us he was a little hesitant to do much. This visit as soon as he came into the room we could tell a huge improvement in his burns! His bandages were cleaner and he just seemed in better spirits! As soon as the drums started playing he was dancing and jumping around, he broke right out of his shell! It was so exciting to see how quickly he improved, but also how joyful he was regardless of his bandages. His burns were not holding him back. He was full of joy and it was contagious! We spoke to these cousins from Holland who were interning there and they told us that the kids really enjoy when we come. It's the only fun activity they get to do all week. They rest of the week is filled with reading, arts, therapy, therapy, therapy, and more painful therapy! Right before we left Bryan asked one of the children to pray and the girl that did prayed for our group. It was like God was just reminding us of his calling for us. Her prayer simply thanked him for our coming because we make them so happy! It was so precious!
Thursday was my challenging day. I didn't sleep the whole night before because I knew I was speaking at the Remand home. Before we went to the Remand Home, though, we went to Nsambya, the orphanage my friend Melissa's baby is at! Amy and I did some chores before we went to hang out with her since our group was so small. Our task, you ask? Scrubbing the floors. It's such a tedious job. I took some pictures to document all of it. It's just really hard to think that women clean the floors every single day... scrubbing, and the using a squeegee to get the water out of the building, and then mopping the floors. It just seems to tedious and time consuming, and although I didn't love doing the job, I couldn't help but be happy that our helping was letting the ladies rest! They really deserve it! After this we went up to Lola's room and watched Beauty and Beast on my moms iPad. Lola LOVED it!
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| The daunting hallway and our supplies! |
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| The squeegee down the squatty! |
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| Bubbles! |
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| Down the hall and out of the door! |
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| Into the mote. |
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| Supplies. |
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| Lola and I watching Beauty and the Beast. |
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| Mick Paul holding Lola's hand. |
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| The kids snacking. |
After lunch we hopped into the car to go to the Remand Home. It's intimidating to speak at the Remand Home... nobody really knows why. It just is. It's a group of middle school to high school ages boys and girls who are in prison for different things. Some of them are simple charges and some of them for more serious charges that I won't mention publicly. We started our program dancing. We danced for an hour... an hour! It was fun and by the end I was drenched in sweat! Then Ivan came up to me and said "Are you ok to go in a few minutes?" My response, sure? I spoke on James 1:19-27 and shared with the kids the damage your tongue can do when you don't listen to the instructions in verse 19. It says:
" My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.
Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.
Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."
It really challenged me this week and I really felt like it was something I struggled with when I was a young adult. I think my family and friends at the time can all account for the fact that I had a bad mouth. I've since tried to apologize to the people I hurt with my mean words, especially my mom! It broke my heart to remember the things I did and the words I said, but mostly that those things didn't glorify God at all... in all honesty, it probably did more harm towards Christianity than good. It's been a hard week reflecting on that, but I am so grateful for God's grace, mercy, and forgiveness! I will be honest in telling you that I don't enjoy speaking in front of people, but I will do it... I'm trying hard to challenge myself to do it more and to sing in front of people more. We'll see how God answer those prayers!
The funniest part of my week was right after I finished speaking. Ivan and Jonah asked the kids if they could say our names. We try and do things every week to try and get the children , at every program, to remember our names! Well, this 1 boy was super anxious to come up and show everyone how he knows our names. He started with Kyle, then moved on to me: Harry, yes, Harry. We all started dying laughing. If anyone remembers my trip from last year I really struggled with the fact that my name was so hard for the people here to pronounce. Well, Ivan continued to ask him what my name was and he continued to try and pronounce it, but clearly saying HARRY. Ivan then proceeded to ask him why he would say my name is Harry because Harry is a boys name and I'm a girl. The boy replied, "Well, I don't know why her parents would give her a boys name, because Harry is a boys name." How can you not laugh at that?! Before the end of the day he knew my name perfectly- Hi-la-ry. I also apologized on my parents behalf for giving me such a hard name, not even thinking about my future in Africa.
Today was such a fun day! We did our usual program at Wankalukuku, even though they were done with exams. They basically came to school to see us and be a part of our feeding program. Somehow there seemed to be more kids there than usual. It was alright. We recycled a few cups to make sure all of the students and as many street kids as possible got porridge. We brought Lillian, who is one of the amazing ladies who cooks for us, and she made our lunch while we did the program. As soon as we finished our program with the kids, we sent them home, ate our lunch and began working on the school. We tore down all of the old posters, swept and mopped the floor, made some Ugandan concoction for the black boards out of charcoal and potato leaves, and homemade glue to hang the posters! It was such a great change of pace. Right before we left the teachers came in, looked around and thanked us for the hard work. It was delightful!
That was my week in a nutshell. A lot has happened emotionally, but that's another blog completely. I'm sure I'll write more this weekend! Love you all! Less than 50 days until I'm home! Can't wait! :)
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