(maybe National Geographic will hire me ;)


Heading up to Gulu tomorrow and then Kitgum after that. This is where the real stuff starts so keep us in your prayers. I'm taking my Ugandan pastor friend Edgar up with me as well as a photographer who is willing to take pictures for Zion Project. We're expecting big things. We're staying at the Favor of God house like I stayed at last year where every morn you get roused to the wonderful sound of drums and Ugandans dancing in worship. And yes, I do get up for it :) They're a great organization. Check them out at www.favorofgod.org


I'm excited. I reserved Zion Project's name in the registrar here in Uganda so I' m pumped no one can steal it now. :) I've got a letter we're going to be taking to local leaders to let them know about the project and have them sign on, so we really need favor with them big time.

Oh and send me some love on the comment line folks.

(mary holding some of the gifts my school sent over with me. Thanks Barcroft Elementary!)


They have a saying here,

"TIA." "This is Africa," usually when describing the frustrating aspects like trying to walk through the taxi park with an oversized bag (which is pretty much like a New York City street on steroids) getting haggled by boda drivers when you refuse to get ripped off, getting eaten by mosquitos, or showering with a roach who isn't willing to share. (Thought I was finished with roaches when I left Rwanda ;) It's amazing in the few months I've been gone how spoiled I've gotten. Here, everything takes patience. We don't know how lucky we are to be able to even drive our own cars or go where we want to go when we want, or take a hot shower.
We don't know how blessed we are to be able to walk down a street and not see a baby with sores on her feet holding out her palm as her mother's tiny beggar.

Or what about freedom of speech? They actually hosed people down in the streets for voicing their support of democracy. Here in a place that supposedly has a democracy. But I guess we understand that in the US too. Only not to the same extent.

So there is that meaning. But I think there is another meaning also. One more pleasant. That Africa is a place where anything can happen. Where you never know what the next day will bring or where it will take you.

In America we are blessed and we are cursed. Cursed because every minute is planned and we are such control-freaks that we don’t know how to deal with the kinks in our plans. Not me of course :)

Here my friends give America’s most precious commodity as if the world was actually revolving to help other people. They give their time. My pastor friend Edgar has been moving with me the past week helping me start the application process as an NGO here. It helps to have someone to navigate the streets of Kampala or the daunting taxi park. With names like Bukoto, Wandageya, Ndjee, Ntinda and others which are easily confused with similarly named places which take you nowhere you want to go, Edgar is pretty much indispensable. Even though he barely has enough money to live, and he is believing in faith for the funds he needs for bible school, he spends hours dealing with me and my large luggage. Poor guy. Lord only knows why he pays that price.

So this is what I mean about the beauty of Africa’s lack of structure and schedule. This and the fact that because we had no real plan he was able to take me to Jinja to visit a woman who is the closest thing he has to a mother. And she is a mother. She already calls me "daughter." That and the fact that I'm on my way to getting a tan, I’m hoping to stop being called mzungu really soon.

He wanted to introduce me to her because the woman knows everyone. She is one of the real Ugandan women entrepreneurs. She owns her own restaurant at the Source of the Nile and takes care of twenty-some orphans. The woman never rests. She must have cooked for five hours and ironed my sheets about twelve times. When I tried to help her she said, "No today you are a visitor, tomorrow you will be family and then you can help." Tomorrow came and I still wasn’t allowed to help. Such hospitality.

This is Africa, where one day you are in Kampala and the next in Jinja being loved by a big black mama. Where when you get peeed on by a big bat, it means that you are going to have good luck (yes, it happened to me today.) Where you can actually hear an advertisement for "Moon Beads" magic beads that help you calculate when you're going to get pregnant or not. Brown=go for it, White=hold your horses. The new natural family planning system. Seriously? (Ck, I'm going to bring you some;)

Where the fact that there wasn't a schedule turns into being led by the Holy Spirit and meeting a woman who will put in a good word for you on the NGO board and introduce you to the President’s wife, and get you a work permit in one day. These things that normally take weeks and months, have not happened yet, but they will happen simply through a relationship. Uganda reminds me why relationships are important, why we need each other, and why giving each other our time could bring about change in the world.

We all prayed together before I left and I prayed like I can't remember praying in a very long time…with power and conviction and with faith for the hope of Uganda's future that will come through the children we touch. God is doing something here. The least will become the greatest, the smallest one, a mighty nation. It has already begun.

I had hoped to leave for Gulu tomorrow but my friend Isaiah is coming from Kigali and I am meeting "Mama" as she likes me to call her at the market tomorrow to buy crafts that we can sell in the US for the projects we are beginning for our children. So plans, they change. But that's the best part. Who knows what tomorrow will bring, but every day there are people—people to learn from and to love, people who God gives us favor with and who we know will be a part of our lives. Tomorrow is seen with new eyes. Tomorrow a set-back may not be a set-back, a change may not be a bad thing and a detour may bring a blessing we could never have expected. The heavens are open and our hands are open to receive and to let go again.


Sorry few pics so far, internet time has been few and far between. But soon. Appreciate your prayers. I have felt them :)

This week so far in Kampala has been really good. I was able to take the Ugandan family I just love and support the items that Barcroft school and others sent. It was so cute because kids from Barcroft school wrote letters to my kids and the kids thought that was just the best so they read them and responded and I cried just reading the notes. I need guidance about what to do because their American mother is nearing 70 and needs help taking care of the kids. She works 5 jobs in the US to try and support them but school fees are high. We figured she sends about $600 a month to support them which is a huge amount and she is struggling. We want to set her up under Zion Project as a special thing b/c she is worried if something happens to her there will be no one to take care of the kids. But it is hard to have my heart torn between the North and between them in Kampala. But we are dreaming of a way to bring it all together, perhaps two homes, one in the North and one in Kampala to promote reconciliation between NOrthern and Southern regions since there is so much hatred between tribes. I believe that revival and restoration will come from the children. God has really been impressing that on my heart lately.

The other great thing that has happened is my friend Edgar has been helping me get set up as an NGO. Today I just reserved the name Zion Project at the Registrar's office. I'm still praying through whether I will start off as my own NGO or partner with another one in Gulu, but either way I think it is good to begin the process so when that time comes I will know how. There have been so many just God-given appointments with people. Edgar knows a woman on the NGO board who makes the decisions about who becomes one and who doesn't.

I go out to the Ndjee community tomorrow to visit Linds and see the projects they are working on with the refugee community there. And on Friday I head up to Gulu again on a rickety bus :) I've been enjoying the hot water in Kampala but am ready to get up to Gulu, even for the freezing showers and bad food :) I'm taking a photographer up with me who just volunteered to come with. He might want me to write captions for some of his photos. Talk about crazy opportunities :) I'm so excited. Since I brought cameras with me he is going to teach some of the girls how to work them. It should be a great time.

I need prayer for discerning which IDP camp to begin working with. Awer has been heavy on my heart and I have connections there but its really up to God. I appreciate all you who have been praying. I have felt them in the last few days.

The sun sets a stream of red over a long horizon above the deserts of Sudan. As I fly over I feel my heart sense that I am coming closer to home. I have always said God was in sunsets. He is probably in sunrises too if I could ever wake up for them. From the air there is no landscape just the black shape like a backbone rising out of the African dust. This is Africa. A strong back lit up by the sun. Always breathing, always rising.
She rises still.

I do not know what will become of me here, only that I am drawn here as the wild geese to a warmer spring, the trout who swim upstream, and the wolf to the studded moonlit darkness. There will be many failures but maybe there will be one life utterly transformed, catapulted into redemption. I used to think that I could bring something, that I could save the many, but I think more now that this is about God doing something in me.

Some say God left Africa a long time ago. The tribal wars clash on, the governments steal and crack the backs of children in mines for money they will never see, Aids spreads, malaria consumes, and girl child soldiers seem beyond repair. But I find God in Africa---in the midst of the most destitute of places, in the least ones whose lives have been given up on, in tiny acts of grace and raw human need. He is close to the poor. His world order is very different from our own. Here is where revolution will not come through the wise or powerful, but through the children who stretch their arms to the sky. And I realized that all I can give is Him through love that never says enough is enough but cracks on through the middle of the most painful places. Its not that they need Him more than we do, but its because He is at home here, He flourishes here, He is making a way because he is wanted. Here we live close to our desire. Close to want for more in life and close to disappointment. We befriend the lack of things meeting up to our expectations. We sleep with dreams of possibility in our heads.

It is never as we think it should be. It is harder than we thought it would be. But here we are being born and baptized over again with light and with fire.