I Don't Know Much

Despite what many at Noah’s Ark may think—or possibly even many around the world who know me—I don’t know much about dance, ballet or otherwise. After nine years of ballet training as a girl, I know my toes and knees and hips are supposed to point out and I know my hands are supposed to stay loose and I know how to walk with perfectly pointed toes, but I have forgotten at least half of the positions and moves I have ever learned and more than that number of French names for those moves. A classical ballet dancer, and probably also my former ballet teacher, would shudder at my form as my hands cross the center line of my body and my knees occasionally point forward instead of sideways. Beyond ballet, my—can I even call it hip hop?—training has consisted of a one-week after school program in junior high, a few YouTube tutorials and lots of moves borrowed from my mom’s exercise videos. Oh yes, I am inspired. 

I certainly don’t know much about step, as evidenced by the fact that here at Noah’s Ark, due to my mistake six years ago, we call it stomp. I admired the step team at PLU. I even saw them perform once. 

And I one hundred percent don’t know much about leading a  choir. I have never even been in a choir. My high school didn’t have one. My church didn’t have one. When I was in college and visiting my grandparents for Christmas, their church allowed anyone to join the choir for Christmas Eve. Several of us in the family thought it would be fun to try, and before we left for practice my grandma asked me, “So, do you sing alto, tenor or soprano?” 

“What’s  the difference?” I asked innocently. 

Skepticism was written all over her face. “Hmm,” she said, “maybe you shouldn’t come with us after all.” 

I still went. I think I was a soprano, but I’m not sure. Perhaps she had a point.

So, with my boatloads of inexperience, what made me think it was a good idea to throw 43 teenagers together onstage and try to whip up a concoction of ballet, step/stomp, keyboard and five-part choir? To be honest, whether or not it was a good idea never crossed my mind. Probably for the best. 

I can’t remember the last time I had to actually look for a song to dance to. What normally happens is that I hear a song somewhere, and in the course of hearing it the first time—or the tenth or twentieth time, if I become obsessed right away—I see part of a dance. It might be one specific move, or the position of different groups of people onstage, or sometimes one specific person the song reminds me of who I hope can take the lead role. But that one thing takes hold, and then it grows. Before I have my first dancers, at least half of the dance is choreographed. And before we have performed, my mind is already planning the next one to begin. It is a huge lesson in patience, as I currently have a backlog of five different songs that have taken root in my mind and know that between upcoming Easter productions and school holidays I need to wait until May to get my next group together. Oh, the agony! 

For the past three weeks, I have been meeting with three separate groups—ballet, stomp, and choir—to prepare a song to present together in church. This is the first time we have sung a song live (and very likely the last). Our practices would have been more efficient if we had spent the full 60 minutes after taking attendance only practicing exactly what they were going to do onstage. Maybe that’s how the professionals do it—I would’t know. But before presenting a song to the rest of the church, I wanted to make sure all three groups had a handle on the essence of the song. What exactly were they communicating? What message were they trying to share, and were they also receiving that message for themselves? 

The first practice, I gave them a copy of the song lyrics and written homework about the perspective and content of the song itself. How can they present something to the congregation that they themselves do not understand? Through their answers we started getting to the heart of the issue. 

Assignment: Describe the struggle the writer of God Only Knows is going through. 

Answers (I will spare you some time and not give you all 43): 

“They are trying to heal from something which won’t just heal overnight and they are learning how to trust in God’s unconditional love.” 

“The writer has struggles and problems that never leave her mind even when sleeping… Nobody knows how much she’s struggling to pass through every challenge except God and she even wonders what kind of love God has for her to never give up on her.” 

“I think the writer of God Only Knows has a deep fear in their heart and they have troubles and hard feelings that they would want to share with others around them but the writer fears and has worry that nobody can understand, believe or even help. Through the story of hardship the writer is going through, he still has hope and encourages the people receiving the message that only God knows everything that is going on everywhere, anywhere, no matter what, He is there to help.” 

That was just our beginning. 

The homework from our second practice was my favorite: Write about a time in your life when this song could have described you. You can tell about what you were going through, what was so difficult, how God was there for you, if you doubted God, how you still knew God was an awesome God who loved you, or what you learned about God. Tell your story. 

I asked them to tell their stories. And they did. 

Anyone who has had me as a leader in any capacity can tell you I am a stickler for timekeeping and discipline. In my dances, that means being ready in time, to the minute. For every minute you are late, you owe me one push-up. Of course this ends up meaning that the boys can afford to be more late than the girls because a boy can crank out 20 push-ups in the time a girl struggles through 3 (this is not me being sexist; this is me communicating direct observations from my practices), but the principle is the same: Don’t be late. In addition, I only count someone as present once they have handed me their completed homework. If they still need to finish it, they sit to the side and write, and the moment they had it to me I tell them how many push-ups to do before joining practice. (I’m sure some of these students wish they had an African dance teacher who operates on African time.)

A few minutes into one practice, one of my dancers approached me and apologized for being late. When I asked for her paper, she said she didn’t have it. I raised my eyebrows. She explained: “Auntie Katie, I have started it, and I am working on it. But every time I start writing, I start crying. It has been very difficult to finish. Please let me do it after practice and I will bring it to you tonight.” 

It was three days before I saw the paper. Upon reading it, I came to understand that those were an important three days of healing for her. After taking three times the amount of space I had given the students to write their stories, hers ended with this: “I really appreciate God for giving me this opportunity to share this pain because it was eating me up emotionally. I now feel that I am somehow okay. But I hope I will be fully fine. Thank you!!” 

There is a scene in the movie Freedom Writers where a teacher had given a similar journaling assignment to her high school class, and then sits to read their personal stories one by one. The students flash through the screen, narrating their own stories of struggle as the teacher begins to understand the burdens each of her students carries around with them every single day. 

I was brought to tears as I sat in the library reading through story after story of hardship, praying no one would come to borrow a book so I wouldn’t be interrupted and have to show them my tear-and-mascara-stained mask. An auntie who abused with a stick and with her words… a family preparing for the death of a beloved with cancer… a seven-year-old who was forced to mop a dormitory with poop as a punishment… someone locked in a room for three days fearing to go to jail… siblings who were in an accident together and only one survived… a stepmother insulting the biological mother in the children’s presence… a father beating his child for asking to go to church… the list goes on. 

I would never have guessed, based on the smiles and goofiness and normal teenage behavior that showed up for practice every day, that these kinds of stories lay underneath the surface.

Throughout the course of the three weeks, everyone shared their testimony with the group. The testimonies began with the painful stories they had written, but always concluded with how God had used that time to prove himself faithful to them or to show them his love for them. Through every single story, we heard how God used it for good. The pain, the struggle, the loneliness, the abuse. By the end of each one, every single student was keenly aware of his presence and power in their lives. 

Again, I won’t share all 43, but here is a sample of the goodness of God we heard from one another: 

“I don’t know much, but this much I do: At times I felt that God was not with me. Now I see that I was wrong. God has never left me behind. He saved my brother’s life. I thank God for what he did to us and my family.” 

“I don’t know much, but this much I do: In times of temptation, when the devil tries to control you to do evil, just know God is able to forgive you and take you back to be his son or daughter.” 

“I don’t know much, but this much I do: When I was young I was always sad and miserable, but now I thank God that I am always happy and I enjoy the presence of God since I joined his family.” 

“I don’t know much, but this much I do: He never forgets his people, even when they tend to forget all about him and his deeds… He will run to you like he ran to me.” 

I don’t know much about these teenagers—these teenagers who have gone through fire and have come out the other side resilient, faithful, and joyful. I don’t know much about their pasts or even their presents. I certainly don’t know much about their futures. I am often reminded that in the grand scheme of things I don’t even know much about God. But a few years ago, God spoke to me specifically about the teenagers in this organization: “Don’t underestimate the power of my Spirit in them.” 

I don’t know much, but this much I do: God’s Spirit is powerful in them.

How We Do Christmas

Whether it be going to church, opening presents with grandparents, going for a family run in Santa hats, eating potato soup or taking pictures with Santa, most people have Christmas traditions that define the way they celebrate the holidays. We at Noah’s Ark are no exception. With such a big family, of course our traditions need to be done on a large scale. In addition, our children are a unique hybrid of Ugandan and Dutch, embracing aspects of both cultures into what they know as their normal everyday life. Our family size and diversity pave the way for some tried and true—and some new—Christmas traditions. Here is a play-by-play of our Christmas preparations and celebrations to give you a taste of our holiday season. 

SEPTEMBER 27

Last-minute Christmas shopping is not an option when you have more than 100 children. At the end of September, Auntie Miranda, with the help of some teenagers, began compiling the list of all the children from the children’s home, family units, and staff who live on the compound and sorting through years of donated toys, books, dolls, coloring books, games, puzzles, and a million other things to see what would be suitable for each individual child. In the end, they sorted and wrapped 1,056 presents for the big day. No wonder they had to start in September. 

NOVEMBER 1

A group of about twelve people from various departments met together to begin planning the Christmas activities. Together we decided that the children, teenagers, and aunties would each prepare one or more presentations to do in church on Christmas day or Boxing Day (the day after Christmas) and who would organize each presentation.

NOVEMBER 3 

The youth began training for a musical production entitled “Dreams Come True”. Every night for two hours, they met in the church to learn new songs, dances, and a drama about the Christmas story told from the perspective of Mary, Joseph and their friends. 

NOVEMBER 8

Auntie Cathy and I met with our 46 young dancers for the first time. We were scheduled to have four one-hour practices per week from that day until Christmas. Good thing we had so many, because we spent the first 40 minutes of the first practice tracking down all the dancers, getting them to church, getting them to keep quiet and taking attendance. Things improved from there. By the second day we even had time to dance. 

DECEMBER 16

Every year, we put together Christmas baskets to give to various members of our community. In Uganda, just as in America, one of the main means of celebration is a big family meal, so the baskets include basic food supplies to help provide that meal for those who might have a hard time acquiring it themselves. The food is packed into a plastic basin, which can be used for years to wash laundry, dishes, shoes and children. 

This year, the first group who was served were members of the clinic’s nutrition program. Everyone who brought a malnourished child to the clinic for help in 2021 was invited back for some basic follow-up (height and weight of children and to see how the family is now doing) and to receive a basket. Most of these children were malnourished because their families didn’t have the means to provide enough quality food for them, so being given a nutritious meal for the whole family means a great deal to this population. In total, 135 families were able to walk away with rice, beans, sugar, bananas, and lollipops (candy is always part of a well-rounded meal, right?), among other gifts. 

DECEMBER 20-21

After seven weeks of training, Dreams Come True was ready to present. This was, hands down, the best Christmas production Noah’s Ark has ever done. Nearly every teenager age twelve and above was involved as either a choir member, dancer, actor, musician, sound technician or stagehand—even the ones who would normally stick up their noses at such an opportunity. The credit goes to the team of trainers who were hired to come and work with the teenagers. Our youth were excited to have people with knowledge and experience leading them, which, coupled with weeks of long sessions and hard work, translated into a lively and passionate musical no one is likely to forget. 

On these two days, we invited our sponsored students from the schools and their families to see the production and then get their Christmas baskets to take home. This way, they were blessed by the musical, heard the Christmas message loud and clear, and were given a gift to help them celebrate Christ’s birth. 

Similar to the families from the nutrition program, the students in our sponsorship program are among the more vulnerable population because we include them in sponsorship only when their families cannot cover the cost of school fees themselves. What touches my heart is hearing stories of how many of these families use the contents of the baskets to prepare a meal to share with their neighbors. We know 150 families received from us, but we don’t know how many more received from them. 

DECEMBER 23

Christmas basket giving continues! The team traveled to Kalagala (an hour away from our compound, where the founders now live and have started new projects) to serve another 220 baskets to coffee farmers and neighbors in the area. It was quite the celebration as the band led the way around the community while Papa hand-delivered baskets to jjajjas (grandmothers) in their homes. 

DECEMBER 24

Hard to believe that after all of that, the actual Christmas days were just beginning. Normally for us, Christmas Eve meant a half day of work but no actual programs or activities. This year, we toyed with the idea of a Christmas Eve service, which evolved into a campfire celebration with the band playing Christmas carols. The pastors invited the missionaries and volunteers from different countries to share stories of how Christmas is celebrated in our cultures, and then aunties from different regions in Uganda also explained how their families and tribes gathered for the day. 

“On that day,” one auntie explained, “one special thing was that we knew our parents could not punish us for anything we did wrong… so we would mess!” she said laughing. Then, realizing her mistake, she quickly grabbed the microphone back and added, “But children, don’t you try to do that tomorrow because your consequences will come the day after Christmas, I promise you!” 

DECEMBER 25

11:00 am We always begin Christmas day with a church service. On Sundays, children start coming to church when they are six years old, but on Christmas even the toddlers and their aunties join us. This year instead of a normal service, the teenagers repeated Dreams Come True. After practicing so much, it was nice for them to have the chance to perform multiple times that week. 

4:00 pm Everyone eagerly gathered in the church to get their presents. 

4:15 pm The one who was supposed to drive the huge boxes of presents to the church was nowhere to be found. 

4:30 pm The driver was found, but unavailable, and the presents were locked somewhere inaccessible due to a very important meeting. 

4:45 pm We announced that presents would be given the following day at 4:00 and that we would now be having a dance party instead. 

6:00 pm Normally on Christmas we all eat together, but due to planning and transportation challenges, this year we picked up our food from the main kitchen and ate in our own homes. On this special day we enjoy chicken, french fries, chapatis, salad, and soda. The children don’t get chicken very often so this is always a real treat. 

8:00 pm The children divided into two groups for movie night: primary school children up to fifth grade watched in the hut and sixth grade and older watched in the church. Between staying up late (for the children from the home), getting chips, more soda, and sweeties, and watching a new movie, they were all pretty pleased with the evening. 

Christian and I are the ones who set up the movies, so Patricia and I hung out with the younger children and Elliot and Christian spent their evening with the teenagers. 

DECEMBER 26

11:00 am Growing up, I always saw “Boxing Day (Canada)” marked on my calendar, but assumed there was a big Canadian boxing match always held the day after Christmas. Here, the children joke that it is a day to punch your friend in the head (box them), but in reality we usually celebrate by bringing in bouncing castles for the children to play on all day. This year, since boxing day landed on a Sunday, we knew the children would not be able to focus in church if bouncing castles were waiting at the school. So we pushed the bouncing castles to Monday and made our church service early (usually it is at 2:00) so the young children could join again.  

The majority of our church service consisted of the presentations the children had been preparing since early November. The drama group performed a skit called “A Christmas To Believe In,” in which one narrator tried to convince the other that the Christmas story is true, with small pauses for the children’s dance group and one cultural dance by the aunties. The cultural dances are always a crowd pleaser, which was encouraging since we had been practicing it four or five evenings a week for more than a month! In the end of the drama, the children’s choir sang a song called “I Believe In Christmas,” an original song written (not by us) specifically for this skit. I have never been in a choir, not to mention led one, so it was interesting trying to teach the children harmonies and background parts. It was a learning experience for us all, and I think a few of us even enjoyed it. 

2:00 pm There was talk of a teenagers-versus-aunties soccer match, but then there was rain. 

4:00 pm Presents, take two! This time we succeeded. For all the hours sorting and wrapping, the presents were all given out and opened in the span of 45 minutes. On the one hand, it can be discouraging to see hundreds of toys that we know will be lost or broken before the end of the week. That is the nature of personal possessions in a children’s home. On the other hand, you can’t help but smile at a two-year-old walking around in sunglasses strumming her miniature guitar with a lollipop in her mouth. 

7:00 pm Another movie night! This time, the teenagers had their first movie marathon. We showed a three-part series back-to-back-to-back, finishing around midnight. We started with 60 teenagers and ended with 30, and Patricia mercifully fell asleep on my lap for the last hour. Even with our tried and true traditions, it is fun to add something new once in a while. I will admit, I did not stay awake as well as I used to when I did Lord of the Rings marathons in high school. 

DECEMBER 27 

Well, this day turned into a bit of a disappointment. We were scheduled to have bouncing castles the whole day, but because of a few new COVID cases popping up over the weekend, the castles were cancelled and the children were told to keep some distance from each other again to avoid going back into lockdown. Surprisingly, the children handled it good-naturedly and spent the day playing with their not-yet-broken-lost-or-stolen presents. 

DECEMBER 28

We began preparing for New Year’s Eve, which will be the topic of my next post!

Merry Christmas, everybody!

Little Josephine

Her little body curled up into something smaller than a basketball that settled on my stomach, the top of her head barely reaching my chest. She did not move. I didn’t either, not wanting to break the magic of this sleepy moment. It was rare to have a moment with only one baby from the children’s home. During the day, the dozen babies, ranging from a few months to almost two years, crawled and babbled and cried over one another like a box of kittens seeking attention. But now, after supper, the other babies had been cleaned, changed and laid in bed, and Josephine dozed on my chest. She was six months old. 

By then, Josephine had been living at Noah’s Ark for three months. She and her sister were taken away from their family by the police after their mother, who was very sick,  tried to drown the girls in a pit latrine. Without any other known family able to care for them, both girls were put under the care of Noah’s Ark. This place, and this family, became their home. 

Josephine with one of her best adult friends, Auntie Joanita.

Josephine was the first Noah’s Ark baby to fall asleep in my arms. I remember softly singing to her. I remember exactly where I was sitting on the couch. Eight years ago, and that image is printed in my memory. 

Most of our relationship is fuzzier than that first memory, but there are snapshots here and there that play like a viewmaster to get us where we are today. 

I don’t remember exactly when or exactly how—probably there was nothing exact about it—but Josephine became a regular at my house when she was three years old. She and other toddlers would escape the watchful eye of their aunties and come to my house even before they had eaten breakfast. And after breakfast, and before and after lunch, and after school. At the time, I was living in the closest house to the children’s home, making it an easy escape for children who wanted to play outside of their own playground. I didn’t mind. It kept the house lively, and then I could blame the mess on people other than myself. 

Three-year-old Josephine was one of the official flower girls in our Ugandan wedding. On the day of wedding number three, she and Daisy donned matching pink-and-white dresses and silver sandals we had bought in the Netherlands, and some aunties combed their unruly hair into something uncharacteristically smooth for the occasion. They were, for lack of a more descriptive word, adorable. 

For three years after that day, Josephine asked me when Christian and I were going to get married and if she could be in the wedding. Apparently our wedding day had less of an impression on her than it did on me. 

Josephine, more than almost any child I know, yearns to be helpful. If she comes to my house and finds me washing the dishes, she asks to help. If she finds me hanging laundry, she asks to help. If she finds me cooking, she asks to help. If she finds me sitting on the couch, she asks to help, to which I ask with what I need help and she shrugs her shoulders, a smile playing at the corners of her mouth. 

One day she raided the dress-up box before offering to wash my shoes. It was a precious sight, a four-year-old in a tiara scrubbing my red-soiled sandals. 

Another time, Josephine disappeared in my bathroom longer than her normal business should have required. When I checked on her, she was brushing her teeth. With my toothbrush. 

Later, in a similar situation, she scrubbed my entire bathroom floor. With the toilet brush. 

Years later, she decided she was old enough that it was important to lock the door when she used the bathroom. That in itself was not a problem… and I think you can see where this is going. She may have been old enough to need bathroom privacy, but she was not yet old enough to shimmy a finicky key into unlocking. Nor was she old enough to understand our directions to remove the key and slide it under the door so we could open it from the outside. There was no other option—if we wanted to open the door, we had to remove the lock. 

We did not have a flathead screwdriver. Our neighbors did not have a flathead screwdriver. We used a butterknife. 

My first fear was that Josephine would panic and there was absolutely nothing we could do from the living room to comfort her. Now and then I shouted through the door, “Josephine, are you okay?” She shouted back a cheerful “Yes!” which led me to my second fear: that she was trapped in her preferred place of mischief and might repeat any of her past offenses or, as suited her character, come up with an entirely new way to “help” me. 

When we finally set her free from the bathroom, we hung the key so high even I can barely reach it, and it hasn’t moved since. 

Our first morning in Uganda after we returned from our American and Dutch weddings, we intended to sleep in. The flight arrived in Entebbe at 10:30 at night, followed by an hour to get out of the airport and at least two hours to drive home. We deserved a morning of rest. Or so we thought. 

Knock-knock-knock-knock-knock-knock-knock. 

A cultural difference between Ugandans and Americans: Americans knock three times and wait for an answer. If we don’t hear one, we might knock three more times, but after no reaction we leave and try again later. 

Ugandans, on the other hand, knock. And knock. And knock. Being home and not answering the door is not an option, because if the person at the door knows you are there, they will not go away. This applies to adults and children alike. 

We tried to wait it out. 

Knock-knock-knock-knock-knock-knock-knock. 

Lying face-to-face on our mattress on the floor, we opened our eyes just enough to glare at each other (the glare of course being meant for the person at the door) and then squeeze our eyes shut again. No one ever needed us for an emergency, and anything else could wait. We had hardly been back in the country for twelve hours. Whatever had waited the six weeks we were away could wait another hour or two.

Knock-knock-knock-knock-knock-knock-knock. 

Then silence. But not for long. 

The footsteps that disappeared off our verandah appeared a few seconds later outside our bedroom window. 

“Auntie Katie, I am here!” It was a sweet voice, even early in the morning. 

“Good morning, Josephine,” we greeted groggily from bed. 

“I am here! I am coming to the door!” Footsteps. Then again, knock-knock-knock-knock-knock-knock-knock. 

It’s a good thing she is so cute. 

After that, we talked to her about waiting to visit until the curtains are open in the morning and not knocking incessantly. She is still often the first person at our house after breakfast, but at least now she waits until we are awake. 

Josephines seem to easily work their ways into my heart, because this Josephine is not the only special girl in my life by that name. “My” other Josephine is 23 years old, so we got into the habit of referring to them as Little Josephine and Big Josephine. Which one is Little and which one is Big is an ongoing and ever-changing debate, for what the younger Josephine lacks in years and height, she more than makes up for in personality and stubbornness. Drawn to each other several years ago by their common name, these two girls have formed a sister-like bond that has come to include playing, teasing, tutoring, and many gifts from and for both parties. 

For two years, Big Josephine (the actual big one) attended a school a mile up the road from Noah’s Ark. It was a boarding school and families were allowed to visit only once every few months on Visitation Day. After the first one or two visits, once Christian and I felt more comfortable with the system and what happens on such occasions, we began to bring Little Josephine along for the adventure. She would walk with us from Noah’s Ark a half mile up a dirt road to the main road, which had far too much traffic (and traffic that doesn’t stay between the lines) for a six-year-old to walk by herself. So I would hoist her onto my back and walk the next half mile with her arms around my neck and her commentary in my ears. 

When we reached the school, almost without fail, she played the typical child’s game of feigning shyness and not speaking a single word to Big Josephine for at least an hour. Big would try to play with Little, and Little would keep her mouth closed and look away. Big would offer Little food, and Little would either pretend she had not heard or take it silently. Also without fail, by the end of the visit they were best friends and Little Josephine told us she was going to stay there while we walked back home without her. When all was said and done, I can’t tell you which Josephine appreciated the reunion more. 

As I sit in the office writing the last of this post, the culprit herself has entered and silently taken up a place behind me, patiently waiting until I am finished and can give her something to do. So let me turn my attention to this girl in the flesh and see where she can best help me today. 

You Are the Mountain

Walking around these walls

I thought by now they'd fall

But you have never failed me yet

Waiting for change to come

Knowing the battle’s won

For you have never failed me yet

Eleven plastic chairs formed a disorganized circle around a metal pole in the front of the church from which a speaker hung, quietly playing an Elevation Worship album. Eleven of us sat, some with heads bowed, some with raised faces. Some sang quietly along, some listened, some prayed. Some sat with closed eyes, and some looked around at the rest of the church where people were taking communion, reading scripture, writing on the floor with chalk and sitting at tables making art for God. 

Holy chaos, it was called. Six different stations, six different avenues for meeting with God during the youth service that night. 

The fire outside had already faded to sleepy embers, but every time someone threw a folded or crumpled written prayer in the place where the fire had been, orange flames would engulf it for a few seconds, just long enough to make the paper, and the prayer, vanish up in smoke. 

Christian and I had taken communion together early in the evening. Having grown up in a Lutheran church, my first 250 communions were administered by a pastor, and only a pastor. I find something deeply intimate in now being able to give and receive communion from my husband, who I must admit is also a pastor of sorts. Kneeling together before the imposing cross in the back of the church, we laced our fingers and thanked Jesus for his sacrifice, for giving us such a horrible and beautiful gift that we get to remember in this way. I asked for forgiveness for my pride, and that Jesus would humble me before him and others. We broke the matzah, drank the juice, and vacated the mat to make space for the next worshippers to kneel before the cross. 

After visiting a few of the six stations, I pulled up a chair by the speaker as quietly as I could, so as not to interrupt the teenagers deep in their own meditation or worship. 

Your promise still stands

Great is your faithfulness, faithfulness

I’m still in your hands

This is my confidence

You’ve never failed me yet

My closed eyes welled with tears as the truth of the lyrics washed over me. I smiled as a few teenagers began to sing along, quietly but not timidly, in harmonies they had learned from leading this song in their own worship team. 

I’ve seen you move, you move the mountains

And I believe I’ll see you do it again

You made a way, where there was no way

And I believe I’ll see you do it again

Yes. Yes, yes, yes. I began to pray fervently for the youth around me. “Dear God, you know things have been dry and dormant here for a long time. You know we need you, your Spirit,  your life. Revive us! Revive them—give them your life! I have seen you move them before and I see you doing it again tonight, just like you can move mountains, you can move the hearts of these teenagers, you can—“

“You are the mountain.” 

That shut me up real quick. 

God has a way with words. It’s not often that I hear something so distinct and direct from God, but when I do, he is to the point, and he is usually telling me that I am wrong. 

No, it wasn’t wrong for me to pray for the teenagers or to ask God to fill them with his Spirit. What was wrong was assuming that because they were rebellious, immature, prone-to-peer-pressure young adults, they were the ones who needed God to move them. They housed the problem that needed to be fixed. 

That’s what I get for asking God to humble me, right? 

I am the mountain. 

Good to know.

(un)comfortable

The outlets in Uganda are different. It is not enough to plug something in and expect it to work, or charge, or do whatever it is you want it to do. You need to plug it in, and you need to switch on the outlet. It is not far away or a complicated switch. Every outlet basically has a light switch attached to it that turns the outlet on and off. Simple. 

You would not believe the number of times, in my first months in Uganda, I forgot to turn on the outlet. 

I could come back ten minutes later or the next morning, only to find that my phone or laptop was dead because it never charged. It was a small thing, but on top of all the new and challenging and uncertain obstacles before me at the time, sometimes the outlets were just too much. An outlet I forgot to switch on could easily make me cry. I forgot so often because it was unfamiliar to me. It was different. 

It was uncomfortable. 

(I couldn’t decide if I should call this blog Comfortable or Uncomfortable, so the title is both.)

In time, I got used to the outlets. I almost never forget to switch it on, and when I do it doesn’t bring me to my knees feeling like a failure like it did in the beginning. In fact, now that we are in America it feels strange to be able to plug something in without flipping a switch. Funny how things like that change. 

I have come to learn that “comfortable” is a word of the affluent. I don’t mean people whose salaries are in the six digits and who send their children to private boarding schools in Europe. I mean affluent people like the average western civilization citizen, or even below average. I mean the people who make enough money to plan what to do with it, or who have the luxury of asking once in a while, “What do we want to do with this?” instead of “What do we need to do with this?” I mean the people who are affluent enough to make, in one day, more than enough money for food and shelter for their family that day. 

As I read through 2 Corinthians, one passage in particular clings to me and won’t let go: 

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort. (2 Corinthians 1:3-7)

Many of us have trouble relating to this passage. As Francis Chan so plainly puts it: Most of us are living comfortably already; therefore, we don’t need a comforter. 

When the Bible talks about comfort, it also talks about suffering. Being comforted is a response to something; being comfortable is a stagnant position. If there is no suffering, there is no need to be comforted, and no need for a comforter. 

The New Testament expects suffering of Christ-followers. It makes sense—just look at the experiences of the first followers of Christ: stoned, imprisoned, crucified, exiled. It wasn’t something people chose by default or out of peer pressure. The response today, when someone is asked why they follow Jesus, is sometimes, “Why not?”. Early Christians had a hundred different answers to that question: 

Because you might never see your family again. 

Because your friends might call you stupid or foolish. 

Because you will need to give away a lot of your possessions. 

Because you won’t be popular. 

Because it might physically hurt. 

Because you won’t be the one in control of your own life. 

Modern-day western Christianity has eliminated all risk. Faith has become a form of insurance, when it should be an adventure. 

Moving to Uganda was uncomfortable. Painful, in some respects. And not just because of the outlets. It meant being halfway around the world from family. It meant breaking off relationships that didn’t make sense long-distance. It meant packing up my sweet little apartment, not knowing when I would see or need some of those memory-filled keepsakes again. It meant new vaccinations. It meant learning how to hang things on my new walls (tape didn’t stick, nails didn’t go through the walls, and putty-sticky-stuff could only be found in Kampala). It meant not knowing how to hook up my gas bottle to make a cup of tea. It meant days without electricity, needing to lug my toaster to my neighbor’s verandah because that outlet worked, sitting awkwardly outside waiting for my breakfast while he slept on the other side of the wall. (That all worked out in the end. I married him and now we share electricity.) It meant being scolded for hanging my underwear outside to dry or not ironing my skirts. Very little came naturally, and very little was comfortable. 

But oh, how I needed God in that time. 

I prayed about what to do in even the most minor of situations. I prayed before every English lesson I taught, because I was terrified of teaching. I prayed before going for a run because I didn’t know the dangers that lay out of sight. I prayed after being humbly reminded not to wear my shoes inside or eat while walking, feeling a little embarrassed for my cultural mishaps. 

Over time, Uganda became more comfortable. Culture shock gave way to culture. Experience yielded confidence. I still commit regular faux pas, but less than seven years ago. 

While the difference seems good, I find myself praying less. When my own knowledge and instincts prove dependable, I find myself depending on God less. When other people tell me what to do, I find myself asking God less often what I should do. Familiarity has begun to take the place of faith. 

The thing about being a missionary by title is that on the surface, everything you do is for God. I listened to God when I picked up and moved to Africa, so now by default I am sitting in the middle of God’s will for my life, right? Because I listened that one time? 

It is dangerously easy to stop listening when you think you have already heard. 

The more comfortable I become, the less I feel my need for the Comforter. 

It almost makes me miss those confounded outlets.