There are so many things that I love about my sister Gloria. Her laugh, the truth that she has brought into my life and relationships with her insight, the way she tells stories, the fact that she fails to comb her hair, how she remembers details about people and asks after them. One of them is that she is a woman of prayer. We’re very different; as our brothers tell us almost daily, but I think we both feel burdened to serve others through prayer, and specifically our friends who are poor through prayer. She is the kind of person that will say “I think we should just walk around and pray for these people,” when we’re at an IDP camp in Northern Ug and then we’ll do it. Or I’ll say “I’m really thinking so much about this friend from home” and she’ll respond with “let’s pray for them.” If I want to stop the car so we can pray for some prisoners we passed on our way, Gloria will always joyfully interrupt her plans to do those things.
On our roadtrip to the West I think we both saw Jesus very clearly through prayer. I saw Him during times of rest in Nshenyi at Graceful Savannah. That deserves an entire blog post; it was a powerful few days of redefinition for me.
On our way home from Nshenyi, Gloria and I stopped in Masaka for the night. Gloria, in her former life as a glamorous Ugandan tv journalist, had made a documentary about child-headed households in Uganda. She and her crew traveled to Masaka and with an NGO called Kitovu Mobile had filmed four households where both parents had died of HIV/aids and the kids were taking care of themselves. In 2005, in Nepal, Gloria told me about those kids, and a bit of their stories. Four years later she still had them on her heart, so we went to Kitovu Mobile, searching for those families. We had decided beforehand to stay the night with one of these families. We hated the idea of just going and bringing some money and going home to our hotel, we wanted to participate in life with these kids, even if it was only for 24 hours.
So, we drove up to this small house, back in a typical Ugandan village ‘road.’ (Road= dusty, pothole path through matoke plantations.) They were there, waiting to greet us… Five boys aged 16, 14, 12, 10, and probably 6 or so. They had no furniture in their main room, they borrowed some stools from a neighbor for us to sit on. We sat and talked. They were shy and didn’t say much. After the ice was broken we took their ‘cook’- the 12 year old- and got some groceries; rice, tomatoes, curry powder. He made rice pilau and as it cooked I played cards with the kids. No mercy, I won. :)
I’m struggling to write this post, because I want to fully express who these boys are. They are sons of Jesus, they are not ‘orphans’, they have been set in families. They are kids- they fight and skip school to go to the cinema, they laugh and make jokes. I would never pity these guys. But their lives are difficult- they have very little- often even going without meals during holidays and weekends. What little they may get, even their clothes or lamp kerosene, is sometimes stolen from them by their neighbors, since they didn’t have a good lock for their door.
As we sat around after our simple meal (which tasted really good, by the way) the youngest boy was sitting just to my left. He has the kind of face that is endearing, he still seems like a baby except for his eyes which are so sad. He’s very quiet and reserved, but super intelligent, I think his English was better than all the others. I wanted to just hold him in my lap and love him. I thought about Nick- who is 8 and I’ve babysat for several years- and imagined him without his mom and dad, taking care of himself. We sang around the bongo drum I had brought. The guys wanted to sing “Lord, Lord of Mercy, Jesus, Jesus of Mercy” that they learned at their school. After we sang, we went to bed. “Goodnight Auntie” they said. The boys gave us the ‘master bedroom’ and Gloria and I shared our smallest bed yet- a twin mattress and dirty blanket- the best they had. I was laying awake in the dark, thinking the same thoughts I find myself thinking so frequently… I know Jesus that you are a Lord of Mercy, but I can’t always see it.
The next morning we woke up and started to clean and do some wash. Gloria washed all their clothes and dishes, while I swept out the place and cleaned the wasps nests off the wall. They didn’t have a broom, so we bought one to use, and took all the bedding out of the room to be aired out. It only took us about three hours to do all of this- handwashing all their clothes and cleaning their entire home. I told Gloria what I had been thinking the night before, and in that moment I was so thankful for my sister’s eyes.
She said “I can see so clearly God’s provision for those boys.” Through Gloria’s documentary, the heart of a Ugandan in Kampala was touched and he came and built this family a house. Kitovu Mobile pays their school fees and makes sure that they get one good meal at lunch time from school. A few neighbors make sure that they go to school (because seriously, what 14 year old boy without parents wants to get up and go to school?), and I think sometimes bring over some food and a bit of money. When she met them four years ago, they had only the torn clothes on their backs. Now they have at least a few changes of clothes and some flip-flop type of shoes.
And so I remembered that He is not a God far off… He is a God close at hand. I’m thankful for continual reminders like Masaka; I’m Thomas- I need to see the scars, I need to know that these, my brothers, are not alone, that He will not forsake them.
We faced a view challenges - 1) Gloria hates driving long distances and 2) Gloria’s driving permit was expired, and I obviously didn’t have one. We were not phased, we borrowed a car in spite of those challenges and off we went.
