Wow,
I can’t believe that it has been two months since I last wrote about what is
happening here in Moroto District. I kid
you not; we have had more visitors in the last month and a half than in the
three previous years put together. While our daily lives continue to blur with
the pace of activity, we humbly live in gratitude to our loving Jehovah God Who
sees each moment clearly. Lyle and I
feel His Presence leading and guiding us through the complexities of culture
here that we so often cannot understand. As we continue to embrace
cross-cultural living, I am reminded by the curriculum we are going through
with our team, that living this way taxes us emotionally and physically every
day just to make it through. While some
aspects seem more normal since we have been here more than three years, they
have not become less challenging, just less shocking. We continue to work on withholding
conclusions about things we don’t understand and we do attempt to make
deliberate efforts to gain understanding, but some things remain elusive to
comprehend.
We
struggle with how to process women getting severely beaten and it is accepted
as no big deal and normal, children with injuries and wounds that should
require hospital care, but families acting like they are ok, or people with
severe wounds denied care because they are not clean enough. We ask questions
and get one answer and as we try to process that answer, and respond, get a
completely different answer than what was just said with both answers coming
from the same person. This is a regular
occurrence no matter who we are talking to. It feels as though people just
answer with what first comes to mind, whether it is accurate or not. Our ladies
have come to the conclusion in their three months in Moroto, “That they know
nothing,” to quote one of them. Another
challenge we are coming to understand is that the Karimojong people are not a
storying people. So contextually, speaking with them is not woven through a
thread that joins the preceding thoughts, which makes following their thinking
very challenging for us as well as for them trying following our way of
conversing, let alone understanding Bible stories.
The
spring rains have come a month and a half late, but we are so grateful to the
Lord that they seem to have come at last with some consistency. This is the first year, that we have seen
lots of preparation for large gardens throughout Moroto District. Men as well as women and children are
digging; my heart thrills each time I see a man, teenager on up, actually
working. Oh how I pray that the Lord
will honor their labor with good harvests, and that the people will honor God
with their harvest instead of thanking the gods at their shrines. We also have planted our gardens since our
chicken prison was finished about a month ago. They are sprouting once
again. Lyle and Simon and Paul worked
hard to get the coop finished, so that planting when the rains came would be
possible.
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| Mark's first planting |
Lyle
has continued to help the young man I spoke about in our last blog. Mark has been able to get a small garden
going inside his compound in one of the slums.
They visited GIZ, a German NGO that is here to help the Karimojong see
different ways to garden in arid climates.
Mark was shown a keyhole garden, which can produce all year round with
very little water. He was so excited
about this that before that day was out; he had gathered all the natural
materials needed to create the garden.
Over the next two days he had completed the structure needed with Lyle
supplying chicken wire to keep the goats out.
He has already had one harvest and has replanted for a second one. We helped him to get seeds and a watering
can, so he can water it. That might seem
logical to many of you reading this, but here the thinking is that the rains
provide water, and if there is no rain there is no garden.
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| Mark's second planting |
Helping these precious people understand that
God gave them dominion over nature requires us to move very slowly and
demonstrate with our own gardens, chickens etc. and lives that this is the case.
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| The woman Ingrid is treating for lymphatic TB |
Mark
introduced Lyle to his aunt who was very ill with huge open, infected abscesses
on her neck. He said that she had been
chased from the hospital for not being clean enough and was not treated. Lyle came home and told me about her, he said
she had dirty rags covering the wounds and that he promised Mark I would come
and look at her. So a few days later,
Lyle took me to her. She was sitting in
the dirt, frail and skinny, I think she is in her late 60’s. She speaks a
little bit of English, and said I could look at her wounds. They were round balls of open pus about the
size of grapes all over her neck. She
allowed me to clean them and dress them.
I did this for about two weeks every two to three days with good healing
results. She is so brave because my
loving care was very painful for her, but she endured it well. My concern was what had caused them, and a
local man had mentioned to Lyle that it could be lymphatic TB. I took a photo with the lady’s permission and
sent it to a friend who is a nurse at the hospital. She responded immediately and told me to
bring this lady in for tests, and so as we escorted her to the hospital to my
friend, she was seen immediately and admitted into the inpatient ward. Sure
enough, she has lymphatic TB. So she is
now on 6 months of treatment, which brings another challenge. Apparently the medication causes great hunger
in the patient and is very hard on the digestive system without a lot of
food. May I say, on the best days these
people get one meal a day, and that could just be sorghum beer. So we are providing her with some flour and
sugar to make posho and porridge to take her medicine with. Please pray for her to hunger to know the
Lord more than she hungers for food. Her
wounds are almost completely healed now.
She is very appreciative of our care for her. I keep letting her know how much Jesus loves
her.
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| Church at Lotirir |
Lyle
and I continue to minister in Lotirir on Sundays mostly with a young karimojong
couple, John and Esther. The Church of
Uganda here in Moroto has organized for them or others to interpret for us. This
couple has been very faithful to come, but when others are assigned most of
them do not show up. We have learned to
have a back up plan for interpretation. Lyle and John and Taryn have faithfully gone
out for Bible study on Thursdays and the feedback they have gotten is that this
time is more fruitful for them than Sundays to understand whom God is. They
told Lyle that they now see that the God of the Bible isn’t the same as their
traditional God. There continues to be 20-30 people coming on Thursdays and at least that many, but often
more on Sundays, even with their gardens needing work. Oh how our hearts rejoice in this. We are recognizing that the instructions the
Lord gave us three years ago to live incarnationally and to let the Karimojong
people ask us to teach has now happened. His ways are above our ways, and we
treasure His ways. The precious couple, John and Esther, and us are getting to
know each other better, and I have such a tender heart for Esther. She has joined Veronika, Hailey and me in
ministering to the women in prison. In
the last month, 7 women have asked us if they could give their lives to the
Lord. The Spirit had been very clear
with me that I was not to offer this opportunity but to wait till the women
asked for it. How amazing it has been
for me to see this actually happen. Oh
how I praise our Lord Jesus for Him drawing people to Himself and allowing me
the privilege of being a part of this holy and sacred time. Veronika’s husband Moses continues to join
Lyle and Reverend Raymond in ministering to the men in prison.
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| Mark front left, Moru rear left, middle back Ariyan, second from right back row Lotuk |
As I
type this, I have three of our young students out on the porch with a tutor, as
the school term is over and they are getting help in the subjects they are weak
in. They have two to three sessions per day,
each about 2 hours, for 5-6 days for two weeks.
Then the next term will start, on May 29th, and they will not
be able to have any tutoring for three months.
Lyle and I went to the PTA meeting at the secondary school where we have
6 students and 4 of them were in the choir that sang to greet everyone that
came to the meeting. Ariyan (one of our boys) had been chosen to conduct the choir;
this is a very big honor as he is in S1, which is like a freshman. We are so very proud of all of them. When we left for the USA last July, there was
only two of the boys as tall as me, now out of 12 boys, only a few are my
height or less, most of them tower over me.
It is amazing what a half a year can bring in physical changes in
children. They are very pleased to be
taller than me. When I remind them that
we pray for them each week (we break up the week and pray for 2-3 each day)
most of them respond that they also pray for us and thank God for us. One of the boys, Louse Richard, is reading
the Ngakarimojong Bible so well that he has been asked to give the message on
Sundays when Pastor/Mayor Noah is out of town.
That is a big responsibility for a 15-year-old boy. I asked the man who takes care of them; how
they make sure what he says is correct.
This man and most others cannot read their mother tongue but know the
bible in English and make sure to teach him properly. I would like to make sure that this is true
as our experience would say otherwise, I wish I could be in many places at once
but am trusting the One Who can be in all places at once to insure that the
message is accurate. What a privilege
the Lord gives us to be a part of these wonderful children’s lives. Miriam is
heading out to Corsu in the Kampala area for her last checkup and I hope to
regain her artificial leg as well, which should be having the socket refitted.
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| Front to back, left to right - Hailey, Taryn, Ingrid, Nita, Lyle |
Our
team has a regular time to meet each week and we spend about 5-7 hours
together, going through a scheduled agenda, which includes curriculum. Ivan, the Ugandan man I mentioned, joins us
after he finishes work and we consider our times together very special. We are coming to understand so much better
what Paul was describing in Romans 12:4: that Christ’s body has many
members, that we are each parts of only one body, Christ’s body, and we all
belong to each other. We are finding
that when one of our team hurts we all hurt, that the choices one of our team
members makes affects our entire ministry, that there really is no independence
here from one another. Oh how I wish the
American church could have the perspective to understand this. It is an easy perspective to have here where
everything seems foreign and at odds with our contextual reality. I meet with
each of the ladies 1-1 each week, and Lyle and Ivan meet each week. When Ivan’s work allows he joins Lyle in the
bible study with Mark. We are so grateful for fellow workers, I just can’t say
it enough!
We
are grateful for each one of you who prays with us and for us. The Lord continues to faithfully place those
He desires for us to have relationship with in our path. My Saturday afternoon was spent with a young Karimojong
man, a medical officer, who has been accepted into Oxford. We worked on the essay
he needed to whittle down to 500 words, for applying for a scholarship. As he and I sat and read what he had written,
and he shared the parts he felt strongly needed to be left in, I felt such a
privilege to be a small part of his life and future. Lyle came home from the prison part way
through, we had it down to 520 words, and then Lyle read it with fresh
eyes. So he and Paul sat and talked and
worked and got it to within 8 words of 500.
That was about 3 and a half hours total of working on this. We are praying for him, for his future. He knows that God has brought him this far,
and his attitude is one of gratitude not entitlement, so unusual here. Please
join us in praying for Paul’s future, if he gets to go to the UK, this area
will lose one of it’s brightest medical stars.
I was very strong in pleading with him that he would return to Karamoja
afterwards. He assures me he will, but….he has never been to the west, and that
is a lure that can seem irresistible.
As I
close this, I want to share the challenge the Lord continues to place on my
heart as to what my life is about. 2
Corinthians 11:3 says in part that Paul, the writer of this letter, was
afraid that the Corinthians’ pure and undivided devotion to Christ would be
corrupted. The Holy Spirit speaks softly into my heart that I also must guard
against this corruption. Please pray for
me that my devotion to Christ would be pure and undivided. Jehovah God created me, gave me life, and saved
me from destruction both here on earth and eternally through Jesus Christ. My life is His! I pray that I will truly live
for Him, for His glory and renown to be made known, for He is good and His ways
are good. I remind myself of this daily as
I see the starvation here both physically and spiritually and the suffering of
a people struggling even for daily life.
God’s word never promised that life would be free of physical or
emotional pain, but that knowing Him would be enough in the midst of it all. The wonderful mystery of Christ is that when
people come to know Him, they change from the inside out. I have been privileged to see this with the
women in prison who accepted Him. A joy
glows out of their eyes, although their surroundings haven’t changed. Jesus
truly is what each human needs for fullness of life no matter where that life
is lived. This is a reminder to me of
what David wrote in Psalm 16:11….granting me the joy of Your Presence and
the pleasures of living with You forever.
I have the pleasure of life with the Living God right here and now in
Moroto, Uganda as well as the hope of eternally living with Him. What wondrous love is this? Praying that this joy is your reality as well,
wherever you live.
Love
Ingrid (and Lyle)
