thoughts

Oct 23, 2007

Overwhelmingly I say that God is good. I am honestly surprised as to how much God had prepared my heart to be back here. In all honesty, I have been at peace since I left the states and the moment that I stepped out of the airplane in Entebbe I had the feeling, “Ah, I am back at home.” Uganda, as with many places now has become a place I feel comfortable in and able to my myself freely.
On the plane ride from Amsterdam to Entebbe there was a lady across the isle from me who I noticed had her Bible. During my ease dropping, I heard the Ugandan next to her say, “when we all reach heaven we will be remaining with our same people. Each tribe or group will stay together and not be with the others.” This opened the door for her to spend about an hour sharing the gospel and answering some questions. You might wonder why I am recalling this, but there were a few things that I learned from getting to just observe and overhear this conversation.
1) She had great gentleness and kept a casual tone. She was free in asking him questions about what he thought. I realized that if I were in her shoes I would have become too defensively toned. She spoke the truth in love by sticking to the truth but not acting as an enforcer or pusher.
2) There are questions that non-believers have that I never would have thought of. For example, one of the questions the Ugandan asked was, “If God is the Father in heaven, and the Father of everyone, then why are there so many different colors of people?” His reasoning was therefore that there must be a different God to serve each color (race).
3) It was interesting and encouraging to just have the role of praying for her as she shared truth with this man. She had no idea and my heart was blessed by it.

As we were leaving the plane, I said something to her about the conversation that she had. She is in Uganda because her and her church just started and orphanage in Jinja. It sounds much like LCH, so I gave her an open invitation to come and visit if she ever makes it to Mbale. It is very encouraging to know that God has not abandoned the thousands of orphans that live here, but it continually impressing on people’s heart how they can help.

Praise the Lord that all of my luggage arrived and I was greeted with warm hugs and greetings. We spent the next morning shopping in Kampala and then headed for Mbale. As I walked into the compound gate I found the little kids, Shakira, Jonathan, and Nicholas what ran up and hugged me shouting, “Na-talie, Na-talie!”

Today I spent resting, making sure that my body is recuperated from any jet lag and I hear that the kids are very eager to be reunited, as am I. My new room in the house is still in the finishing processes, but it is AWESOME. The way things worked out with extending a room to add a bathroom, the bathroom has turned out HUGE (it is probably bigger than the room I will sleep in and was definitely unexpected). Really, I feel quite spoiled. I have already had a great time getting to be with the girls in my house (Phoebe, Millicent, Nuruh). They have been busy catching me up on the last 3 months of life.

So things are very good here. I will be “shifting” (meaning moving) to my new room in the next couple days. The girls are very excited about this because they plan to visit and hang out there all the time. This is what I hope.

Thank you for your prayers for travel. And thanks for enduring this long note.