Time flies

As I wrote the date on the board in school today, I couldn't believe that it's the last day of July. It is so hard to believe that I've already been here in Uganda for almost two months. At the same time, so much has happened in the short time that I've been here that it seems like I've been here forever. Mbarara feels so comfortable to me, and I'm continuing to feel at home here. These first few months have been full of so many blessings, especially this last month. So this post will kind of serve as an update on the month of July by way of pictures.

We had a 4th of July party, Ugandan style. Most of the kids had never seen sparklers before so that was a fun thing to watch. Here is Tripp enjoying loving the USA.

The Harding interns got here on July 3rd and left yesterday. It was awesome to have our friends here for almost a month. Here we are eating at one of the most western restaurants in town, the Agip Motel and also in front of our hotel in Jinja right before we said goodbye.

D-rae and I spent a weekend in Kampala (the capital) by ourselves and I found an awesome coffee shop. I was in heaven!

I went on a safari to Queen Elizabeth National Park when my friend Wes came to visit. It was awesome to see so many cool animals.

Wes even helped me teach school for two days, and the kids loved it.

I try to get my fix with these girls when I'm missing my nieces. On the left is Ansley Glisson and Avery Fouts is on the right.

I think that about covers all the highlights. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of my adventure on the Nile yet, but don't worry, I'll post them as soon as I get them. Thank you so much to all of you who keep up with what's going on with me. I can't tell you what that means to me to get your emails and encouragement even as I'm so far away. Continue to pray for the work over here, especially as we are getting ready to undergo some major transitions. The Fouts will be moving back to America at the end of September, which will be a very tough time for us. Our role will then change a little as we'll take on some new ministries in addition to still working with the team kids. I'm excited and anxious about the future all at the same time, but I know that God is in control through it all. His ways are so much higher than mine, and I'm grateful that my life is in his hands.

Ask and Receive

I can remember a lot of things from my childhood. I remember certain holidays, birthdays, vacations...all the big things. But just as much as I remember the big, fun, exciting things, I also remember some of the small, tough things, such as the rules that my parents had. One of the rules that really stuck with me was the one about asking if a particular friend could come over and play, right in front of that friend. In my family, asking Mom and Dad if Suzie could come over and play, while Suzie was standing there and it was hard for Mom and Dad to say no....yeah, that was always a dumb decision because the answer was automatically no. But no matter how many times I fell into the trap of that rule, I kept on asking right in front of my friends. It was almost as if I was so excited to ask permission that I simply couldn't wait to ask until I was alone with just my parents. Stubborn kid + well-enforced rule=lots of tearful Sundays without a friend coming over to play

I grew up, and I would venture to say most of us did, in a home where ask was not always synonymous with receive. I knew that asking for a Milky Way while we were checking out at Wal-Mart most certainly meant that I would not get it. Those were only for when we were good, right Mom? :) I also knew that asking for a certain toy while shopping would also mean I wouldn't automatically just get it. My parents did an awesome job of teaching us that we don't always get everything that we ask for. Now before you feel sorry for me, know that my parents threw the best birthday parties and Christmas mornings of anyone I know. They just taught us the difference between getting everything we want and being thankful for the things we have. I'm so thankful for them and for the way that they stuck to the rules, even when it took stubborn little Betsy awhile to catch on.

I got away today and spent some alone time. You might think that living in Uganda, apart from most everyone I know, would create quite a bit of alone time. But the mission team has done such a great job of welcoming us here that D-rae and I actually have to intentionally take time to ourselves, which I think is a pretty awesome problem to have. I spent some time writing in my journal and processing a lot of thoughts and emotions that I've been going through. It felt so good to just spend time with God, talking to him, questioning him, but ultimately, meeting him.

God convicted me of several things today. The one that is sticking with me the most is that I simply don't pray expecting that he will answer me. I really like the way that Matthew 7:7 reads in my New Living Translation Bible. Keep on asking and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking and you will find. Keep on knocking and the door will be opened to you. How many times have I read this verse without really reading it? God promises here that asking=receiving, seeking=finding, and knocking=an opened door. Do we really believe that? Better yet, do I really believe that? Do I pray about things to God expecting that He is going to answer me?

The more I walk this journey with God, the more that I think I can answer yes to that question, but definitely not all the time, or even a majority of the time. But even when I do pray expecting God to show up and answer, I usually pray with an agenda. What I mean by that is that I pray for something and then secretly wait for God to answer it just exactly as I have planned for it to go. When he doesn't, I get upset, lose faith, and stop expecting big things. I realize as I'm typing this that none of this is new, earth-shattering conclusions. It's not even really that wise. It's just something that hit me in a new way today and I wanted to write about it.

All my life, I've heard people say, "Be careful what you wish for." But what I think is just as true is "Be careful what you pray for." God promises us that if we ask we will receive. He doesn't say we will receive just exactly as we have planned. But he does say that we will receive. I have prayed for God to stretch me and mold me into the person that he truly wants me to be a lot in the past month. I have prayed that I will truly be satisfied in only Him. I had a picture in my mind of what that would look like. You know, it was painfree and happened practically overnight. It was the easy way. Well, let me just say that God had something quite different in mind. He had joy, freedom, and grace. But he also had trials, struggles, pain, and hurt. God is God and He knows just what we need in life. He knows that I am stubborn and he knows that sometimes it takes big things to get my attention.

So often I pray about something big and something that I deeply desire, but I might not desire the way in which God chooses to answer. Is that truly praying with faith? I've been convicted today that to truly pray with faith is to accept any answer that God gives. It is to accept the obscure answers that we don't understand and the painful ones that break our hearts. It is to accept the good with the bad and the bad with the good. To truly trust God means that we will ask humbly and accept willingly. I pray that God will truly give me that kind of faith, whatever it might take.

Isaiah 26:8

I'm not even sure how to start this post because I have so many thoughts and feelings going through my head and heart right now. God is just working on my heart big time right now and it's taking me awhile to process through these thoughts and ideas. Let's just start with the above verse.

Lord, we show our trust in you by obeying your laws; Our heart's desire is to glorify your name.
Isaiah 26:8

Is it my heart's desire to glorify God? Or is my heart's desire to glorify Betsy? Do I desire earthly relationships more than I desire the one with my heavenly father? Do I desire controlling my life rather than trusting that God is taking care of me in everything? Do I desire the prosperity gospel, full only of blessings and joy, or do I truly desire to know Christ and share in his sufferings? Do I desire to be comfortable, never asking difficult questions, and constantly just staying in the same place, or do I truly desire to know God more everyday in a way that is constantly changing my life? These are some questions that I've really been asking myself lately. These are questions that I feel like God is putting on my heart.

One of my favorite times of the week is team worship. We all get together on Saturday afternoons to just spend a few hours in worship. We praise together and we have a time of feeding. The mission team here realized early on that it's very easy to give and give and give here, and as a result come up empty yourself. They call this time that we get together "feeding time" and I think it's extremely wise that they make it such a priority to feed themselves before they try to feed others around them. Anyways, we've been watching some videos from the Passion conference a few years ago. They have been very tough videos to watch only because the message is so real and so true, and I can't help but walk away being challenged to make changes in my life.

The message today was about being truly satisfied in God. I can't tell you how many times I have prayed that God will make the statement "God, you are all that I need." a true statement in my life. But it's hard. It's hard to give up the tangible things here on this earth that can bring us that sense of satisfaction. I recognize that it is hard, but then when I sit and think about it, I wonder why. Why is it so hard for us to give up the things of this earth? I'm not really sure actually. I've been thinking about it all day, and I can't figure it out.

God gives me such good gifts here on earth. He has blessed me with an amazing family and incredible friends that mold and shape me everyday. I truly believe that God reveals bits and pieces of himself to us through the people that He puts in our lives. He gives me all the things I need to physically survive. I have never known true hunger, and I have never been without anything that I absolutely needed to live. He gives me everything that I need, all the while waiting for me to realize that I need nothing but Him. I praise God for earthly gifts. But as good as they are, they are imperfect and they are ever-changing. We cannot depend on anything of this world. I have the greatest family in the world, but even that is not something I can always find my satisfaction in. I never in a million years thought that I would lose my dad when I was 15. But life doesn't go the way we plan, and things happen that we would never expect and never want. I know that. I know that life is full of twists and turns, yet I continue to search for satisfaction in these things that are unconstant. (I realize that is not a word, but it's 1:00 AM and I'm having a hard time here.) I just don't understand why, when I know that the things of this world are fleeting, I continually turn to them to fill my heart and my life. I desire things that, by design, cannot provide eternal satisfaction.

I'm ready to stop this pattern. I'm ready to truly be satisfied by God more than anything else in this world. I have definitely experienced seasons of intensely desiring God and truly finding satisfaction in him. I have tasted and seen that the Lord is good, and I am ready to taste again. I feel like I am learning more and more each day what it means to be truly satisfied in God. I think that the more we get a small glimpse of this life, a life of fullness and true satisfaction, the more we crave it. What a cool God we serve! He is always there waiting, even when we're searching for satisfaction elsewhere. He picks us up and dusts us off, when we're broken from another disappointment of something that we thought would give us that satisfaction. I'm so thankful for his faithfulness in me, even when I am so unfaithful to him.

One quote from the video today that I think will stick with me for awhile is that, "The things that satisfy us are ultimately the things that we glorify." If we are satisfied with a particular relationship, then we will glorify that person. If we find satisfaction in our possessions, then we will praise those that made them. I want to find satisfaction only is God and then let my maker be glorified.

Pure Joy

Today was, by far, my favorite day that I've had in Uganda so far. My friend Alexanderson took Desarae and I home to the village that he from, which is about 1 1/2 hours from Mbarara in the Isingiro district. It was an incredible day full of different adventures. I'm just going to write about a few on here (I know I tend to get long-winded so I'll try to avoid that), but be sure to check out the other pictures on my picasa site so that you can see all that I experienced today.

We started out from Mbarara at 9:30 this morning and finally arrived at his village, Kashojuoa, around 12:30. It was definitely a surreal experience to be driving through southern Uganda listening to Cyndi Lauper's "Time after Time," over and over again. Our hired driver had a few tapes of old 80's and 90's music and that just made the trip a little more humorous for D-rae and I. The trip was longer this morning because we made a few stops for food and for visiting some of Alex's friends. My favorite part of the day came when we stopped at the primary school that Alex went to. This is a school of over 2,300 children, many of whom are refugees from Rwanda and other neighboring countries. Some classes have 200 students in one class and because of a lack of classrooms, some classes meet outside everyday. When the headmaster found out we were school teachers, he got so excited and immediately granted my request of visiting some of the classrooms and seeing the children.

After today, I think I can truly say that I know what it feels like to be a Hollywood celebrity, because that is what we were treated like today. It was incredible the reaction that we got every time we stepped into a classroom. The kids would scream, shout, clap as loudly as possible, and try their best to get into every picture that I took. Kids from every class would follow us when we left their class, so the group of kids following us grew more with every class we visited. They would reach out to hold our hands, play with our arm fat (no seriously the back of the arm fat that everyone has....apparently it's really appealing to Ugandan children), and try their best to touch us or be near us in any way possible. We completely disrupted school for the half hour that were there, but it was great.

The kids couldn't get enough of us, but what they didn't know was that I could not get enough of them. I can't stop looking at the pictures that I took today. When I look at these kids, I see poverty at it's most extreme. They have no desks to sit in, no pencils to write with...only books to share with one another. They are crammed into rooms or made to sit under a tree all day because there is simply no space for them. They probably don't have much more than the clothes on their back and if they're lucky, the shoes on their feet. But when I look at these kids, I also see pure joy. Happiness doesn't describe what these kids have. To me, happiness is something that is based on the circumstances around us. By that definition, these kids have very little to be happy about. But if ever I have seen joy...I saw it today. I saw a joy that isn't based on earthly treasures. I saw a joy that comes simply from life, and nothing else.

Experiencing this today at the school really touched me. For thirty minutes today, Desarae and I were the center of attention at this school. We were celebrities and those kids would've done anything to be near us, or even better, touch us. It was overwhelming but also, extremely humbling. The whole time, I just kept thinking to myself, "Who am I that these kids would get this excited about me being here?" Those kids knew nothing more about me than the fact that I was white and to them that was enough. It's something that is really hard for me to wrap my American, judgmental mind around. I am no one special. I am not extraordinary. I am not a celebrity, but to those kids, I was all of those things. I don't think I've ever simply accepted anyone in the way that these kids accepted me today. They asked no questions and demanded no answers. They just loved me. If only we could look at people and see them as God's children, and that just be enough.

The whole time we were at the school I couldn't help but think of Matthew 18 and 19 when Jesus talks about little children. He calls them the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven, and he welcomes them when no one else will. Jesus was constantly the center of attention. People were constantly pushing and pressing to touch him and feel just a fraction of his glory. They gave him no privacy to the point of his disciples trying to protect him by keeping the children away from him. Seeing these kids today painted a very clear picture of why Jesus welcomed the little children the way that he did. How can you not? In children, Jesus saw what life was about, and today I feel like I was given a glimpse of that same realization. These children have joy when the world tells them they have nothing to be joyful about. They welcome and accept those that they know nothing about, and the world tells us that is foolish. They were unashamed of their excitement and held back nothing. I'm so thankful for the opportunity to see the hearts of these children today. They taught me more in the thirty minutes I was there than I could have ever imagined. I saw Jesus so clearly in their small faces today. They truly are the greatest in the kingdom of Heaven.