Yom Cwiny (A Full Heart)

I’m home!!! I feel so blessed to have made it home safely to my family after a month of missing them a lot, but saying goodbye was hard…

The Acholi people don’t really have one specific word for “goodbye” and I am very thankful for this because saying bye to the girls was hard enough without using a lot of words. I thought I was going to be fine until I looked up and saw silent tears streaming down sweet Charlotte’s face, which started a very quick chain reaction until there wasn’t a dry eye in the Zion Project compound. The hardest part was when they all asked me if I was going to come back and all I could say was, “I hope so…” I was so sad to leave them and I miss them already, but I got in the car to start my long journey home with a heart full of undeserved joy.

The people here have stolen my heart and I have learned so much from all of them this summer. I’m almost glad that I will miss them because that means that I will always remember to be praying for them. Leaving people that you love is so much easier when you can rest assured that the God of the universe will never leave them in any way. His love is so strong.

I miss it there so much already. I love the place and the African red dirt roads and the weird fruits and the smell of beans and posho when I walk past a hut in the afternoon. I miss all of those things but who I long for are the people. My sixteen sweet Zion girls, the loud and enthusiastic Congolese Zion women, my Ugandan friends who took me into their lives and loved me so well, and even the toothless old Acholi man yelling “MUNU!” at me every time I walked past the market. Uganda is called the “pearl of Africa”, because of it’s beauty, natural resources, Lake Victoria, and the Nile River. All of those things are beautiful creations of God, but there is no doubt in me that the real pearls of Africa are the people.

Why have so many of us, myself included, almost subconsciously allowed ourselves to become so numb to the need around us? To the vision of the Kingdom that this earth could be? The majority of the people in northern Uganda live day to day with virtually no earthly possessions to their name, yet they live with such passion and energy. It is so common in the America that I’ve lived in to become numb; to become slaves to the daily routine of our schedule, surrounded by our stuff. This past month affirmed in me that there is life and life to the full when we go from being slaves to the people and things around us and begin trying to live as servant of Christ.

I used to sit and ask myself the question, “What is God’s calling for my life?” Throughout the past year my outlook on that question has changed a lot. I used to view things like mission work abroad by asking, “Where is God sending me?” and now I think of it more as where God is blessing me with the opportunity to go to meet Him there and fully allow Him to work through my one little life. I am so sure that God calls each one of us to different countries, different neighborhoods, different churches, different schools, to speak different languages, etc. at different times in each of our very short time on this earth. Sometimes though, it’s easy to get caught up in our specific and personal callings and neglect the COMMAND that Jesus gave us all: to make Him, His ways, His love, His salvation, His glory, His greatness, everything about Him known among all nations, all peoples, all tribes, and all languages. No matter where we are, what we are doing from day to day, and who we are surrounded by, I think that this is what should be the greatest calling in each of our lives.

I want to say thank you so much to you all for any prayers for me and for the girls that I was with in Uganda. I also want to ask you to please keep praying for them. I wish I could be with them every day, but for now all I can do is to pray and have confidence that if I never see them again on this earth, I will see them when we go to meet our glorious Savior!

“When we risk our lives to run after Christ, we discover the safety that is found only in His sovereignty, the security that is found only in His love, and the satisfaction that is found only in His presence. He Himself is the eternally great reward, and we would be foolish to settle for anything less.”- David Platt

“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold: service was joy.”- Rabindranath Tagore

“Support me by the strength of Heaven…Let me be known as a man with no aim besides that of a burning desire for Thee…”- Valley of Vision