September 13, 2015

Hello, Ingrid here, bringing greetings to all of you from Moroto, Uganda!! Wow where has the last two months gone?  As we asked for prayer in our last blog-that the Lord of the harvest would bring laborers, our Lord has been moving in Karamoja in ways beyond our dreams of how this could happen.  We were thinking of team members, but God has started to harvest in a different way.

"Karamoja Culture Day" prior to convocation

Prior to our vacation, our unit leaders ask us to pray about how and when our home assignment should happen, so as not to leave new team members up here alone for many months. So in discussion with them we have agreed with their wise council to not try to get team members here before we leave for our home assignment the last half of 2016. So this means on the third year anniversary of us arriving in Moroto, we hope to be welcoming team members to our Moroto Focus team, that is in mid-February, 2017!!!  While with our human eyes, that seems a long way off, our Father has been busy in our land.  We have gotten the privilege of witnessing a unity of those who identify with Christianity in Karamoja that I hadn’t ever expected.  The middle of August, the Catholic and Protestant churches united and came together to dedicate Karamoja to the one and only living God, Jehovah/Yahweh.  The Convocation, as it was called, was a 5-day event, topped off with the President of Uganda confirming and witnessing this dedication. 

Different Karimojong Clans gathering to repent
and then to forgive each other

While it was a serious miracle to have unity among all the different denominations representing Christ Jesus, it was also a huge miracle to have elders and youth from each clan of the Karimojong there willing to repent and ask for forgiveness on behalf of the clan for what had been done to the other clans. So the Karimojong tribe has 6 clans and up to about 3 years ago, these were violently slaughtering each other and stealing from each other, many times just for revenge of things that may have happened decades ago or months ago.  There were also neighboring tribes that were invited to the Convocation, as well as neighbors in the border countries of Kenya and South Sudan and all of these came and were well represented as the Karimojong had raided all these areas and left tragedy in their wake.  Forgiveness was asked for by all and was received by all.  One example of this reconciliation follows: A man from a tribe in Kenya, who hadn’t worn a shirt for 29 years, which was when the Karimojong stole his shirt and raped and killed his wife and his children, finally put on a shirt once again.  What happened here was, I believe, in the spiritual world a very powerful thing.  Nothing went completely smooth during the 5 days and I am sure that much grace had to be extended on all sides for each other, but the fact that it happened successfully, to me is very promising for this land to change who is the spiritual ruler over it.

View from our room while on vacation

The Convocation was sandwiched in between our vacation, which proved to be more of a glorified survivor camp for us; Lyle’s facilitation at the first Ugandan organized mission conference (which took place at the same time as the Convocation); and our immediate travel after the Convocation ended, to fly to Kigali, Rwanda for a conference.  So the month of August was mostly a blur with lots of prayer for each day.  We just returned to Moroto on Sept. 9^th and have been busy enrolling boys into school, which started this past Monday.  For the past 5 terms, as each term has started, we have felt led to help one or two more boys, and each time we look at each other and say this is all we can do, and so that was our mindset as we set out to pay school fees for our boys, all 13 of them, but in the process we deeply felt the Lord leading us to help another two.  Lyle and Simon (for discernment and interpretation purposes) went out to the village of the two new ones, to see if their stories were true.  (I was involved with a complicated situation at our neighbors.) One of the two boys is completing P7 this term, which would be like 8^th grade in the USA.  He had told Lyle and me that his grandmother had been gathering firewood and making charcoal to pay for his school fees, but has recently gone blind, and can no longer cater for him.  When Lyle got to this boy’s village, and met the grandmother, he said it looks like she has cataracts; he said there was a thick grey white over the colored part of her eyes.  And so he agreed to help this grandmother with the boy’s school fees, we will be investigating whether or not cataract surgery is available here, and hopefully we can at some point help this lady regain her eyesight.  The other boy, from the same area, walks with several other children, 45 minutes to an hour, each way every day, to go to school here in Moroto town.  He is in P5, like 7^th grade. The schools in the town have better educators than the ones out in the bush.  So Lyle agreed to pay his day fees as well, and made a plan with this boy, that if his grades improve this term, we will put him into boarding school next year, so he doesn’t have to walk every day.  It is so amazing to me that these children are so dedicated, I lived 3 miles from the town where my school was and would have gladly not gone, if I had to walk!!!  Oh how I ache for these precious people.  We are hoping to have a bit of a leveling off of the demands each day, but trust the Lord with each day.

On a personal level, while on our, not planned to be a challenge but was, vacation, we did come to the realization upon reflecting on our daily life here in Moroto, that just as all money is not ours but God’s, and we are to steward it well, all time is God’s as well.  So we were challenged to ask ourselves if we were being cheerful and good stewards of God’s time.  Of course, we had to answer, not so much! (esp. at times on the cheerful part).  So of course, on getting back to Moroto the first part of August, our recent convictions were greatly put to the test.  We had, it felt like, double the interruptions and requests as before; and yet the Lord gave us the grace and strength to joyfully respond to each one. Rejoice with us on the joyful part, cause that is truly Jesus and not us. We are continuing to consciously work at having this attitude become our own.  So prayers for us in this regard are greatly appreciated.  During that holiday trip, we also acquired a generator.  Some friends that the Lord has given us in Kampala, who are very familiar with Karamoja, bought a generator for us at a very good price, and when we got the funds to pay for it, we picked it up.  We are so grateful for this love and God’s provision for us, as we had to use it for the five days after arriving, because of the power being off so often.  As I write this, our trusty generator is keeping our battery charged as we have been without power now going on two days.  So again please, please rejoice with us as our Lord through His people more than provides for our needs.  We are very humbled by His love and grateful for it.

Helping thresh sorghum in manyatta

As we were sharing with people here in Moroto and in Kampala that we were going to Rwanda and the local people in Uganda would speak of the place, we realized that we have been saying the name of this country wrong.  We have added an o, so it sounds like we are saying Rowanda, but the correct way combines the Rw, which makes it sound very different and is a challenge for English speakers not used to combining two consonants like Rw.   I have been practicing this seriously, and am now a good African in how I pronounce it, even Lyle has applauded me for my pronunciation.   Our time in the capital of Rwanda, Kigali, was made delightful by the hospitality of several AIM missionaries who are serving there.  We were picked up from the airport by a precious friend from France, and we stayed with a delightful couple, who are Australian/Kenyan or vice versa, and their wonderful children.  We got to meet the whole team, as they had a unit get-together while we were there.  One of the wives even made Lyle a birthday cake and brought it to our conference, to celebrate his birth on Sept. 4^th.  We were warmly treated by everyone there, nationals as well as ex-pats, and I don’t think I would have understood the tension that is really underneath the surface of this beautiful country, if two Rwandese had not had the courage to individually share with me, about their past, and what happened to them and their families during the genocide about 20 years ago.  My heart just broke for their suffering that continues inside even today.  They both have forgiven and are allowing Jesus to heal, but the ache for what happened to their loved ones is still there.  It is soooooo tough to hear what humanity does to each other in the name of superiority.  This sickness is so much deeper than the color of the skin, as all these had the same color but different tribes.  Oh how we need the humility and love that only Jesus Christ, God Himself, can give us through the Holy Spirit.

One of many new friends we met in Kigali, Rwanda (no "o")

As I continue to ponder on all these things, and seek the Lord, He is so good to remind me of His promises to me. One of ones that continues to touch me as my body lets me know that I have been walking this earth for more than 6 decades is Isaiah 46:4 which says: I will be your God through out your lifetime—until your hair is white with age.  I made you and I will care for you. I will carry you along and save you.  This brings such comfort to me especially on the days my legs are very weak or my back and neck rebels. 

I have downloaded an eBook on early missionary journeys and after reading of one person’s experience on the South Pacific islands in the 1800’s, with cannibals and the lives lost without having been able to share one word about their Creator God, I found myself questioning whether these people were really led by God to go there or if they just thought it was a good idea and that was why they lost their lives.  This morning in my quiet time, I was reading a devotional sent to me by a very precious friend, called Streams in the Desert, an apt description of Karamoja.  It was speaking of the wonder of suffering, and the divine mystery connected with suffering.  It stated: “No one has ever developed a deep level of spirituality or holiness without experiencing a great deal of suffering.”  It suddenly hit me regarding the men in the South Pacific; they were living out Romans 12:1 “And so dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all He has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice, the kind He will find acceptable.  This is truly the way to worship Him.”  Perhaps these men, were only after pleasing God, and not about productivity in ministry, they were simply giving their bodies to Him and desiring to please the One Who made them and gave them salvation.  Perhaps their choices were only about their relationship with God and not outcomes.

So much food for thought for me, I desire to completely give my body, soul and spirit to God as a holy and living sacrifice, the kind He will accept, and to have that be my only reason for anything I do.  I would ask for you to pray for me in this as well.  That here in Karamoja, I would allow my body, my time, my emotions, everything about me to come from a place of true love for and love received from my Creator, my Savior, my Lord. 

We have 5 weeks before we fly to the USA and make our way from Florida to Washington State, to Montana visiting each of our daughters and their families and welcoming into this world our eighth grandchild. I AM SOOOO excited.  We will be away from our place here in Moroto for 8 weeks, a long time.  We would ask you to keep Simon, Esther, and Losike Paul, who help us here, in prayer as they hold down the fort.  We are hoping to have someone staying here if they get approval from their organization, a young woman from Germany who was here, went back to Germany, and is coming back for 6 months more.  Prayer for our travel is always appreciated, on the roads here in Uganda as well as in the air.  We definitely feel like pilgrims that do not have “a” home.  Our hearts are with our families in the USA and with our people here in Karamoja, and so we feel a dual but conflicting tug of where we would desire to be.  Maybe one day we will get used to this, but for now leaving is hard, no matter which side of the Atlantic Ocean we are on.

Our chicken additions

On a lighter note, our Teso hen, featherless neck and all, laid 12 eggs, sat on them for weeks and hatched 9 chicks. Two of them were snatched by a bird of prey called a Kite, kind of looks like a chicken hawk, and for obvious reasons.  So with 7 chicks left, Namoni has taken it on herself to be the chick watchdog.  Between her announcing the alarm of Kites and the mother hen being very watchful, the chicks are doing well.  Three of them look just like mama, a black cap on top of the head with a featherless neck and a black-feathered body.  They are very cute!!

Lyle's gratuitous bird photo. Blue Turaco seen on vacation

We are grateful to have each of you here with us on this journey, thank you for serving in Karamoja with us!!!!  I hope you are rejoicing with me in the answered prayers I shared, amazing answers that I didn’t have the vision to even pray for.  Please pray that as the Karimojong have renounced shrines where demons are lord, that the churches would not make shrines out of sanctuaries or denominations, or teaching that is unbiblical and so create more spiritual havoc in the area.  We have seen hints of this and are trying to address them as led by the Holy Spirit.

As always, we treasure your communication with us, and we desire to pray for you as well; in fact We do pray for you and if you have specifics, please, please let us know.

We give thanks to God for each and everyone of you!!!