How is the year 2013 treating all of you? I (Ingrid) pray that you are finding the Lord
Jesus more and more a part of every part of your life. We are definitely experiencing this wonderful
truth. We are so grateful that God has allowed
us a concentrated time of seeking Him, receiving new and renewed truths and
living in transformation in our individual lives.
Our time here at New Hope Institute of Child and Family Care
is such a mix of challenge to our flesh and our thinking and at the same time
so sweet and good. It is a continuum of struggle and joy all at the same time.
Our curriculum so far has addressed the “Christianese” mask
Christians live with, cultural views of life and how the Bible is read, how our
cultural view shapes what we value, both as non-believers and even as
Christians, what we think fatherhood and motherhood are and how that lines up
with what the Bible says it is, what we think blessings mean and what the Bible
says is blessing. We defined how culture is full of meism, genderism,
tribalism, and nationalism; how technology influences our spiritual lives and
the filter or lens we view life through.
The orphan heart—how all of us are spiritual orphans because we have had
sin separate us from our spiritual Father as well as those who have no natural
parents or have had parents who have not been present in the relationship—affects
how we view our world and life. We then
went on to explore what a Biblical Kingdom culture looks like verses our
natural culture. We studied Who God is,
Who Jesus is, Who the Holy Spirit is—Their attributes and Their relationship
with each other and how this relationship is to apply to our relationship with
Them and with other people.
We were asked the question “Why did Jesus come to earth?” and “Why did Jesus die?” The root answer to the first question was “to make God the Father known,” and the root answer to the second question was “to glorify the Father.” All other answers in scripture all point back to those two answers and then the question was asked, “Are you living to make the Father known?” “Does everything you do in life glorify the Father, as Jesus’ life did?”
Those were very challenging questions as most of our answers
had to do with our own lives and how God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit were about
helping us or how much we gain or are the focus of Their actions, which pointed
out how much MEISM—everything is about ME—is even in how we view Christianity,
when Jesus emphasized over and over that He was about the Father God. We are now looking at manhood and womanhood according
to culture and contrasting this with what the Bible describes as manhood and
womanhood.
All of this has been very personally challenging to both
Lyle and myself, as we view this time as a pivotal opportunity for diving
deeper into allowing God to change who we are from the inside out.
I personally found the truth of living for God with not
having me be a central part of why He want’s me to live for Him, to be very
enlightening and confronting on how I have read and viewed the Bible and lived
my Christian life.
You may ask what does all of this have to do with working
with children and families; we did as well.
The answer is that if our actions are not motivated rightly with
glorifying God and worshipping Him because of the joy we have in our
relationship with Him, we can never interact in a Godly manner with others,
especially children who are orphans and families of orphans.
While much of our time and energy have been in trying to
study and absorb the many things we are reading and hearing, we also have been
busy experiencing Ugandan life. We were
a part of harvesting maize (corn) by hand.
They husk the corn while on the stock and only carry the cob of grain
back to the storage units. We competed
with many, many ants that also wanted the corn and crawled all over us in the
process of the harvest. Lyle and I have
used a ponga, which is like a machete and also a slasher, which is curved on
the tip with crescent moon shaped blades on each side to cut. The slacher is the Ugandan lawn mower or weed
mower. We both have great blisters on the base of our right index finger to
show for our efforts. Lyle also has hoed cassava. I chose to pass on that
activity as the others were already challenging my physical body.
We were put into a family group here at New Hope. There are seven family groups made up of around 22 children each with an uncle and aunt to parent the children. Our group has a single man as the Uncle, he is 34 and has been a parent since his early 20's. He was an orphan and was raised at New Hope. The aunt is an older single woman and I do not know her story as she cannot speak English and my Luganda is very limited. But she tells me every time she sees me, "nkwagala nyo," which means, I love you! I can see her love for me shine out of her face, what a gift. She has a terminal illness and her love shines out of a body that has been in a deadly battle for some years. What a wonderful privilege I have for this woman to offer me relationship and love!
Maize harvest
We will be heading back to the USA the 31st of
May, as we had to make solid reservations in order to get our visa for New
Hope. We have applied with AIM—African
Inland Mission—as full time missionaries, and look toward actively working
toward settling down in Moroto, Uganda when we come back to Uganda, hopefully
in October. We hope to see as many of
you as possible in the 4 months we will be back in the states.
I thought I would give you lots of pictures to look at as well. We hope you enjoy them.
Lyle playing football (yes, he survived)!
Lyle, Ingrid and Uncle Dan slashing his garden
Uncle Dan's wife Lydia and baby David cheering us on as we slashed
