I knew I could have stayed at the orphanage and God would have still loved me, but I could hear His voice whispering in my heart. He had given me a new place to live and a new adventure to embrace. How could I say no?
I sensed that God was leading me to my own kind of “Canaan,” a land I had never been before, a place full of His promises and barren of all things comfortable and familiar. I had to let go of my life at the children’s home and let God fulfill His promise, His perfect will. I chose to believe that, like Sarah, my adventure would lead to laughter and joy.
Joy came quickly as I continued to ask God how I would use this big, new house to serve Him most effectively. When I moved into it, it felt enormous. What was I, a single woman, supposed to do with four bedrooms and three bathrooms? The answer was easy. I was supposed to share it, but with whom? Not long after I moved in, one of my new friends moved in, along with four sisters, as they had been evicted from their home and needed a place to live.
Also around this time, I made a new acquaintance who soon became a dear friend. Christine had fled from a displacement camp in Kitgum, in northern Uganda, where a brutal group of rebels called the “Lord’s Resistance Army” has been ravishing the country, raping women and children, destroying homes and villages, and murdering innocent people for over twenty years. Her family’s home had been burned by soldiers working for the Lord’s Resistance Army, forcing her to spend most of her childhood on the run, eventually ending up in a camp for internally displaced people.
Looking for a better life, Christine came to Jinja to join her sister, who introduced her to me through a friend. Christine and I became fast friends. Christine’s beautiful, in-love-with-Jesus heart, breathtaking smile, and willingness to serve made her an easy person to adore. I know that Christine has blessed and taught me far more in our friendship than I could ever hope to return, and for that I will be eternally grateful.
When I met her, Christine was looking for work and I asked her to help me with the children who would soon start coming to my house each day for lunch and help with their homework. In exchange for her work, I would provide her with a room, meals, and a small salary. When she moved in, my house had seven occupants and didn’t seem so big anymore! But after a few weeks, most of my friends moved out, leaving just Christine and me. The place seemed huge again.
My mother came to visit me for Christmas that year and it was a needed taste of home and comfort. I was thrilled to have her company and glad she had the opportunity to observe firsthand the needs I was trying to meet. She could sense the new life that was unfolding for me; she quickly perceived the ways I had grown since our last time together; and she could see that I was in my element. She went with me to meet the people and the families I had befriended. She also met children and guardians who were being impacted immensely by our new sponsorship program, and saw the results of all the work she had done behind-the-scenes to help get the program started and keep it running smoothly. She heard me speaking a new language and saw me living a lifestyle that was completely opposite from the life we lived in the United States. Before she left, she had held more babies, cared for more sick people, and fed more mouths than she ever thought she would. Mom was in awe of all the Lord had accomplished in such a short time and returned to the States with a new understanding of her daughter and the life I’d been called to live.
By the first of the year, my house was ready to be used; my door was open. My friend Oliver (Oliver is a common name for girls and women in Uganda) helped me identify the children who could benefit most from going to school, the ones she knew were most “badly off.” Oliver had been around the area where I lived all her life. She seemed to know absolutely everyone. She knew who was related to whom; she knew family stories and histories; and instinctively, she knew how to separate truth from village gossip. She comes across as quiet and serious, but underneath her reserved demeanor, she is perceptive, hardworking, dependable, God-loving, and determined to make a difference in her community.
Oliver was one of my first friends and before I’d known her very long, I noticed she was spending a good bit of her free time with me. She didn’t seem to want anything; she simply seemed interested in why I had come to live in her part of the world. She sensed that God wanted her to help me—and help me she did, in more ways than I can count.
Oliver’s friends noticed her helping me and teased her about it. “Why do you follow around that small white girl?” they asked.
“Because God is going to do something with her here,” she replied. So Oliver continued to give her time and share her wisdom with me as we worked together to identify the most needy children and give them an opportunity to go to school.
Oliver and I had planned to start by sponsoring ten children but then agreed on forty when we saw how overwhelming the need was. I asked Oliver to find the forty neediest and bring me a list of their names so my mom and I could work on finding more sponsors from the States. As I told my friends and family about it and word began to spread, people began sending money to help us. I never made a desperate fund-raising plea; people simply became aware of the need and seemed happy to help meet it. We quickly raised the funds for forty children, but then Oliver showed up with a list of around one hundred children, saying, “These are the ones who need help; you can pick your forty.” And I could not choose! I decided to enroll them all and pray that God would send the funds to meet the need.
I spent my days registering children for school, a process that involves a personal meeting with the student and the headmaster. To register all of our children, I was faced with the prospect of one hundred meetings—and most of them took place on “African time,” which typically runs a few hours behind “real time.”
As I grew to know and love these children, I realized their needs went far beyond school. Betty was a six-year-old girl who lost both of her parents to HIV and lived with her grandfather and four young siblings. Her big ears stuck out of her shiny, bald head, and her grin showed perfectly straight little white teeth. She was shy but lovable, giggling when I cupped my white hands under her chin and told her Jesus loved her.
Michael was a twelve-year-old boy who stopped going to school when his father left abruptly. When I met him, he stayed home to take care of his mother and younger sister. Michael was a born leader with big dreams for his future but not much hope of realizing these dreams because he was not able to attend school.
Lilly’s two front teeth were missing, as is the case for many seven-year-old little girls, but unlike many little girls I know, Lilly was responsible for doing all the cooking and laundry for her eight brothers and sisters and her crippled grandfather, who was her only caregiver.
Betty, Michael, Lilly, and so many more: All these children were cherished by Jesus. They were created in His image. My whole being cried out in desire for them to know this.
Most of these children ate one big meal each day, at about six in the evening. Many of them had never had a parental figure to guide and love them. I wanted to teach them about the love of their heavenly Father, but this proved difficult with children who had never felt the love of an earthly parent. I knew that in order to teach them this love, I needed to first show them. So I opened the door of my home a bit wider.
Every day, around one in the afternoon, my dirt patch of a yard began to fill with the youngest children in our sponsorship program, those in third grade and younger because the older children stay at school until later. Christine and I would be ready to serve them beans and posho we had cooked on a big open fire in the backyard. The next few hours were spent helping with homework, studying for the next day’s classes, treating simple illnesses, bandaging wounds, and running any severe case to the clinic. On Fridays, all the children would come over. We would have lunch for the little ones, who spent the afternoon playing and doing homework until time for Bible study. Around 4:00 P.M., the older children would file in, not too tired to run and play even after a long day of school. After we had quite a bit of fun s
tudying God’s Word came dinner, when we served all one hundred children. After the evening meal, everyone was able to take a shower with running water, a luxury none of them had ever experienced. We would sing and praise Jesus at the top of our lungs and the beats of our drums would fill the quiet night. Eventually, we all collapsed from happiness and spent the night all over the floor of my home, which didn’t seem at all huge anymore. In the morning, all the children received a good breakfast before they began their journeys home.
With the help of my new friend and employee, Raoul, we also started a ministry to the children in the villages because I wanted to share the love of Christ and form relationships with children we weren’t able to sponsor yet. In Uganda, gathering a crowd of children isn’t hard to do. Just walk into a village and lots of them will come running and smiling and holding on to your hand or a loose spot of clothing. We went from village to village, visiting a total of six, sometimes on foot and sometimes on a piki. In the beginning we went into the villages three times a week, but later Raoul began going every day while I cared for the children who came to my house. When we ventured into the villages, we played with the children and taught them songs, so we could all sing together at the top of our lungs. Before we left each village, I shared with them a Bible story or lesson because I was so desperate for them to know that God is real and He loves them so.
Life was busy and full, chaotic at times, but it was so wonderful. This was the joy-filled result, the promise God had made as He took me into “Canaan.” Despite my frailties, self-reliance, and little faith, God was accomplishing His purpose and my days were filled with laughter.
ONE DAY . . .
January 12, 2008
“They are clapping because what you are doing cannot be possible here. Something so good cannot happen to us.” Oliver is explaining to me that everyone is cheering because we have just told them we will be providing all children in our sponsorship program with school supplies. Here in Uganda, school supplies consist of a pencil, a pen, and a notebook.
Let me back up. Saturday morning my veranda floods with children at eight thirty, though our meeting doesn’t start until ten. Africans aren’t known for ever being on time for anything, but these people are so excited about the program that they have come hours early, some of them from fifteen miles away.
No one can believe that this small white woman, the only one many of them have ever seen, is providing children with a free education, as if a poor child deserves to be educated just as much as anyone else. Widowed mothers and old grandparents cannot believe they will no longer have to struggle, some working twenty hours a day, to put their children through school. Before many of them come in the gate, they ask what they are expected to pay. When I respond that this program is free, no strings attached, they fall to their knees in the red dust and fight back tears as they thank me. They ask why. Why am I doing this? Why do they deserve this? Why do I care so much? The answer is simple: “Because the Lord who created you loves you. Because He created you for a purpose and He wants you to fulfill that purpose. Because the God who knows every hair on your head desires to lift you out of this dust and into His glory.”
Some come to me worried. “I do not have the money to buy supplies once the child is signed up for school.” We will provide them. “My child has no shoes; they will not let him in school.” Taken care of. “What about uniforms?” Already made, many sewn (a little poorly at first) by me. “So then, what do we owe you?” Nothing.
That is where the cheering, shouting, dancing, and laughing come in. That is when Oliver declares, “They are so happy because this is not possible for them. They did not think this could ever happen.” Well, neither did I. With God, all things are possible. In about three months, this organization has gone from a dream as I lay under my mosquito net one night to a full-blown and active nonprofit. Honestly, I’m not sure I thought it was possible either, but the Lord knew it was. One hundred and forty children are registered. On Monday morning, we will all go together to enroll them in school. They have been fitted for uniforms, which will be given to them next week with their new bag filled with supplies. As they walk home from school each day they will stop at my house for a hot, nutritious meal, a shower, study time (some days with a tutor), and prayer. All things are possible. My Lord and My Savior has been my encouragement and my strength, and here I stand on my front porch looking at over two hundred children and guardians that the Lord has blessed through this “impossible” undertaking.
As each person leaves, one by one they thank me and most of them promise that God will bless me. I wonder how I could ever be more blessed. I glance around my office, the walls plastered with pictures of children I have had the opportunity to love. I close my eyes and listen to the laughter of children, parents, friends, and relatives who have been helped by this program. The joy that wells up inside of me is too immense to describe. God has blessed me. More than I ever could have asked or imagined. I wonder like they do. “Why? Why do I deserve this? Why do you care so much about me, Lord?” But the answer is simple: Because the God who created us loves us. Because He created each one of us for a purpose and He wants us to fulfill that purpose. Because the God who knows every hair on my head desires to lift me out of this dust and into His Glory. And He is.
5
“CAN I CALL YOU ‘MOMMY’?”
Mommy.” She said it and I knew. She was mine. I was captivated. Because Mommy is forever.
It’s such a powerful name. Mommy means “I trust you.” Mommy means “You will protect me.” Mommy is for shouting when you need someone dependable and for laughing with when you are excited; Mommy is for crying on and cuddling with when you are sad or giggling and hiding behind when you are embarrassed. Mommy is the fixer of boo-boos and the mender of broken hearts. Mommy is a comfort place, a safe place. Mommy means you are mine and I am yours and we are family.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Today someone calls me mommy several hundred times a day, but I remember vividly the first time I heard the word uttered in relation to me. The person who called me “Mommy” for the first time is now my daughter, Scovia, and though I didn’t expect that I would be her mother when we met, I can’t imagine life without her. I met her through a tragedy that happened at her house, when the entire structure fell on her sister Agnes.
At nine years old, Agnes had become the primary caregiver of her sisters, seven-year-old Mary and five-year-old Scovia. Their father had died of AIDS and their mother had long since disappeared. Their grandmother, who lived nearby, helped with what little she had, but often her own food was barely enough for herself. Days consisted of digging in the fields for a little something to eat and walking miles to and from the nearest well with a large plastic jug to collect the day’s water. Mary kept a neighbor’s baby and, in return, was provided with some food for herself. Even little Scovia went to dig for hours in the field to find food, helped fetch water, washed clothes, and cooked supper when Agnes had to stay late in the garden. Like all little girls, their hearts held hopes and dreams of the future, but the hardships of everyday life kept them focused on one day, one experience, one moment at a time.
One night as lightning cracked throughout the sky and hard rain danced on the tin roof, the girls’ small house, made of sun-baked mud bricks, collapsed, crushing Agnes under a wall of sharp pieces of brick. A neighbor rushed her to the hospital, where they put her in a bed—and forgot about her. Talk of the girl who had been under the wall circulated through the community the next morning and Oliver insisted that we go see her. I couldn’t see a reason not to visit her; she could certainly use some prayer.
We arrived at the hospital and found Agnes, in and out of consciousness but still smiling bright enough to light up even the gloomiest hospital in all of Uganda. No one had attempted to help her yet, not even to give her a painkiller. When I asked the head nurse why, she explained that she could not treat a patient unless she knew who would pay for the treatment. Since Agnes had no real car
etaker, the nurse assumed her treatment would not be paid for. So the hospital simply didn’t treat her.
This is not unusual in Uganda, where the hospital admission process is as easy as walking into a hospital and climbing into an empty bed. Those who can pay for medical attention receive it; those who can’t, simply lie in a bed. In addition, many hospitals don’t provide food for patients. This was the case in the hospital where Agnes was, so someone also needed to make sure she had something to eat.
I knew I could provide healthy meals for Agnes, and I also knew I could find the money to pay for whatever treatment she needed. I quickly told the nurse I would cover the costs of treating her, if only this child could get some relief. I had no idea that this commitment of $20 would turn into the commitment of a lifetime full of love and growth and joy and tears and homework and good-night kisses and more laughter than anyone can imagine.
As we headed home that day, I asked Oliver about Agnes’s two sisters. She agreed we should go check on them, and upon finding them at home alone, I offered to take them to my place for lunch.
Which turned into dinner.
Which turned into bath time.
Which turned into a sleepover.
I asked Oliver to tell their neighbors and grandmother that the girls would be staying at my place until their sister was released from the hospital and we had come up with a better place for them to go. The physical resemblance between Mary and Scovia is strong; most people could quickly identify them as biological sisters. They were both shy at first. Scovia is joyful and obedient. She has a look of happy mischief in her eyes, even when she isn’t being mischievous. When she laughs, which is often, she laughs from the inmost part of her being, from deep in her soul, and the laugh overtakes her whole body, making it impossible for anyone in the vicinity not to laugh along with her. She likes to jump and play, and she has energy to spare. Even though she’s still a child, something about her causes observers to realize she’s had experience in life. Mary is more reserved, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t always thinking or observing people and situations through her big, gorgeous brown eyes. In her delightful way, she’s perceptive and wise beyond her years. She’s focused and quite serious for her age, but still loves to dance, joke, and play with her sisters. She is understanding and quick to forgive. Mary has a generous, gentle spirit with a grateful heart and a deep love for God and the people around her. Both Scovia and Mary have hearts full of compassion, always desiring to help those around them.
Kisses From Katie: A Story of Relentless Love and Redemption Page 6
