People want happy stories. Stories about successes. Resolution. Hope.
The temptation in this field is to make things appear better than they are. To tell half-truths and hope that you throw money at them.

We want to know about the girls who get saved not the ones who are lost.
We want the happy ending.
Or maybe...a miracle.

I find I don't have the heart to tell only those things because it isn't the truth.
Someone told me once, love is seeing all of someone and still not thinking they're a freak. Are we really loving if we're afraid to see the total picture?

We want Uganda to be the built-up dream of our remembrances, to pin our hopes on its imagined future, to see only the good and close our eyes to the bad. We want to take the high of a two week trip and stretch it out over a life-time, as if we really knew the reality, as if we are now experts to offer relief.

There is beauty. But the longer you stay the harder it is to see it anymore. My prayer lately has been, "God help me not to become a cynic." Because you will give and people will take. Here a nice gesture like handing out a few hoe's in the camp to the widows or disabled groups turns into a near riot because of dependency and need. I realized then how deep the wound of dependency has driven down into the hearts of this people. I made a promise never to do that again. NGO's have fed the fury for more without wondering about the consequences of feeding physical need without responsibility. I saw what 20 years of that can do. And it's ugly. It makes me remember why I wanted to reach the heart in the first place. Why I wanted to see transformation on a deeper level.

Girls get raped by policemen who go free.

And Museveni buys jet planes with his pocket money.

I almost had to let one of my girls go.

Irene.
She's broken pretty much every house rule I have. Several times. And I found out she skipped work and used the bike I bought her for school to go visit her boyfriend in the camp who she was living with, and left, of her own accord to come to my house. She is barely 16. She is now pregnant with a baby she doesn't want who I had to counsel her not to abort. I've given her grace over and over and yet she still chooses the wrong thing. With an attitude. It is like she knows how to break my heart. But I let her stay. Largely because I believe it's what Jesus would do. Or what Heidi Baker would do. And largely because I'm a sucker.

These are not the stories you write about in your newsletter. But this is real life. And in real life people let you down. The real question is: What do you do with that?

What if staying if the face of all the things that make us fear change is possible...what if that is love?


There are days when I am tired and days when I feel this is the most thankless job in the world. Days when I wonder if it would be better to turn this thing over to a 19 year old with lots of pep and promise who is not yet jaded by this land that I endure.

By this land that I love in spite of everything.