where to begin...

Time flies! I've been down here in Sussex for over a month already, and so much has happened I don't really know where to start. There have been countless fun times, and countless things I've learnt - and I keep putting off writing an entry because I can't see how any of it would be interesting to anyone else, except for the new insight I have into God's grace, and that's something to write about another day.

Firstly, some pictures!

Left: Our staff team - me, Debora (Utrecht, Holland), Anurag (India), Hanna (Sweden), Gina (California), Peter (Holland)

Right: me with my roomies, Christy (Wisconsin) and Deb (Utrecht, Holland)....spot the cow connection - the others may not yet be cow-freaks, but they're both from dairying areas!

One very exciting thing about this week so far is that we've been learning more about the Holy Spirit - who He is and what He does. Despite having teaching on this twice before, I somehow still wasn't sure that I have been given any of the spiritual gifts as listed in 1.Corinthians - we tend to focus so much on speaking in tongues, healing and prophesy and teaching, that we forget that the other gifts are equally important in making up the Body of Christ. Our speaker, Gary Killingsworth (who I met in Uganda twice last year and will meet out there again in April...small world!) believes that each of us have one of the seven gifts of prophesy, serving, mercy, ruling, teaching, giving gifts, and exhorting/encouraging, and that although we have at least a couple of the other gifts in a smaller amount, there is one that predominates in us. We went through a checklist of character traits that go along with each dominant gift, and a checklist of ways in which we might be misusing the gift (kind of like a personality test) and I found it such a relief to know for sure that I DO have some gifts, I don't have to guess and hope that I have been given one - that used to cause me to doubt I was even a "real" Christian, because some people believe you're not filled with the Holy Spirit unless you speak in tongues or have some other obvious gifts, and I know that I'm nothing without the Holy Spirit...so you can see the spiral of panic this lie causes!

I think I'll end there - this is enough for one day!

lessons from the cows....and Oswald Chambers

In the 3 months I've been back, I have returned to my relief milking work with mixed feelings. Part of me loves being back out on the farms, doing a simple (yet secretly complex) job that is finished when I leave, and makes me feel I've achieved something with my day. But part of me feels I'm wasting time out there by myself, as I'm not really helping anyone. 

However, I can't really justify this feeling - God uses all situations to teach us something new, and I want to share a simple observation that anyone who's milked cows takes for granted (and is often irritated by!)...I just love how the Lord of all creation speaks through tiny everyday occurrences and brings vibrant colour and joy to something that is otherwise a source of annoyance and gloom!

For those of you who haven't ever been in a modern milking parlour, let me give you a visual of the most common type, called a herringbone parlour: there are 2 floor-level platforms where the cows file in, usually 8, 10, or 20 a side, and a sunken pit in the middle where the milker stands. The milker has control of the front and back gates, and there is also often a feed computer which will dispense the correct amount of cow nuts (or "cake" as the dairy industry calls it) into each cow's feed trough. So, the first part of the milking routine is the milker opening the back gate, the first cow coming onto the platform, and the milker punching the cow's number into the feed computer so her feed will pour down into the first feed trough. As the second and third cows come in, the milker can see their numbers and also enter them into the computer, and so the line of cows are fed as they enter the parlour, before their teats can be cleaned and the milking units put on.

Some cows are either keen to be milked or very trusting - they know the feed is coming, so they march straight in and wait at their trough til the feed appears. But some hang back until they can hear feed falling down into the troughs, which is highly annoying as it slows down milking when you have to wait for cows to make up their minds to come in, and even more so if you have to constantly scramble up and down the steps at the back of the parlour to push the cows in yourself! One day I was struck by how close a resemblance this bears to us humans - isn't it often the case that we don't want to trust God's provision until He's proven Himself? I need to be more like those cows with faith - the ones who subconsciously know the routine, that cake comes every time they're in the parlour, so it's ok to go on in. After all, God has never failed me yet - so why do I have such a hard time trusting Him?

As for what this all has to do with Oswald Chambers...I've been dipping his daily devotionals, "My utmost for His highest", and every time I've read one day's comment, the message has been the same: to find God in every mundane part of life and share the experience with Him, rather than keeping Him separate in the "spiritual box" of quiet times and church, and to daily let Him take control of everything. It's something I find so hard - I like to think that once I've learnt to surrender something to God, that's it, job done - and I don't notice that I've gradually taken control of it and made it into "my" thing again. I think I'm slowly learning the bigger lesson, that the more I learn about Him, the more there is to learn...the bigger in size He appears to me, the more He keeps growing. I thought that all I had to surrender were my plans for my future - the location I'll be in, the work I'll be doing, the people I'll be near, the family I hope to have...and yet I now realise that even though I might have surrendered those things yesterday, I need to also consciously do the same today. I need to tell Him that I had my own ideas about what I wanted but that He has ultimate control and I would rather do His will than have any of those things, and I need to tell Him that every day - just like the proverb says, "we can make our plans, but the Lord determines our steps". (Proverbs 16:9, NLT)

When the door closed for me to join YWAM in Austria, I knew I needed to seek God and figure out where I'd gone wrong in my pursuit of what I'd thought was His vision...and He explained to me exactly how I'd set my own agendas above His original plan for me, and limited the vision. Even now, as I'm working on a new route to the vision for Austria, I need to keep placing it in His hands and not seize control of it myself.

As for finding God in the mundane everday events of life, I think my little cow anecdote describes it perfectly...and yet I'm sure, if I really kept my eyes and ears open, I'd have many more stories to tell of how He met with me in the ordinary.

Uganda debrief begins...

I've been back home in Sutton for just over 2 weeks now, and am slowly beginning to process what happened over the last year. I feel like I was never fully able to put into words exactly what I was feeling and going through for much of my time out there - sometimes because I couldn't figure it out myself - sometimes this was because I didn't want to, I didn't want to face whatever it was that I was struggling with.
Last night I was mulling over something our Assistant Pastor said in church the other week, about identity - it really struck me as something I thought I'd learnt during my time in Uganda...I thought I'd successfully found my identity in God out there due to all other aspects of my normal earthly identity being stripped away. Out there, all things familiar were missing - family, friends, church, job, surroundings, language (most Ugandans do speak English, but a very different version than we do! and i felt a pressure to learn the local languages, which seemed impossible)...the way they did simple everyday things like cleaning and cooking were so alien and difficult to master. Even the hot, muggy climate and the skirts we had to wear were a real challenge. And I felt useless, spoilt, a horrible overprivileged westerner. And yet, despite feeling like a lone person stranded on a weird island with nothing to do, no clue of how to act or be remotely useful, God was still with me. He still desired my company and He still loved me. I think, in those moments, that I had a true glimpse of what it means to be a child of God, what it means to cling to Him because there's nothing else. But I didn't like what it took to get me there!!
Although initially I began to find my feet and learn this new way of life, and to see the culture and the people through God's eyes, appreciating all the differences and accepting them, valuing them, was a constant effort. After DTS was over, I was so exhausted and just wanted to give up for a while, to turn inwards and create my own little world where nothing was required of me and I could just rest and be alone. Ultimately, I became selfish. I rejected the culture, believing my own western way of life was superior and looking forward to coming home because that's where church was done "properly", where people behaved "acceptably", spoke English the "right" way...I didn't want to make the effort in appreciating the variety of God's creation, I just wanted to go home. I thought I was doing the right thing in staying, knowing that God had called me to spend a full year there - but I didn't face up to the fact that He hadn't called me to just be there and do the bare minimum - He wanted me to experience Ugandan life in all its fullness, to see their way of life through His eyes and love it with His heart. I missed out on so many things that He wanted to offer me, just because I thought I knew best and wanted an easy life. Instead of enjoying more time getting to know the people around me, and investing in them fully, I craved the hours I could spend with my nose in a book, or watching a movie...and I craved junk food more than ever, especially peanut butter - of all the ridiculous things to become addicted to, why that, i'll never know!
I even learnt about escapism and addictions as I had the privilege of attending some of the Addictive Behaviour Counselling School's classes as training for the prostitute ministry I was part of. And yet, I chose to love my sin and reject God - instead of coming to Him with my burdens, and accepting His rest as He asks us to in Matthew 11:28, I chose to go to my fictional worlds and my comfort food, which are in no way adequate gods!
Ultimately, I failed in so many aspects of my year's mission - I'd gone out there with the goal of learning instant obedience, and of allowing the Holy Spirit more of my heart so He could heal the pain I still feel from the loss of my sister. Instead, I hid behind my pain and used it as an excuse - when most of my struggles were never really to do with Eli anyway, they were to do with my own selfishness and lack of willingness to put God first and do His will when He asked more difficult things of me. I might have learnt to surrender more of myself during the first 5 months, but when I became tired I gave up and never fully repented - never completely turned my heart around and genuinely wanted to come back to Him.
But I wanted to share all this because I believe God wants us to be real, and open ourselves up to expose all the cracks that we cover up so well. Everyone thinks I did amazing things out there in Uganda, and maybe I did let God use me a bit, maybe I did touch some people's lives, but I know that ultimately it was a real struggle and that I failed - that I am a weak human being and not a hero by any stretch of the imagination. And I wanted to use this experience to testify that our God is still a God of second chance, who loves us so much that even when we fail catastrophically, He provides a way out. I have failed miserably, yet I now have another chance to learn from these failures and try again - to assess what went wrong and try to avoid it next time. As much as I love my pride and hate admitting my weaknesses, I have a chance to open myself up and expose them, to tell those who know me that yes, I had a peanut-butter addiction and yes, I am ridiculous but at least I have killed off some of my pride by admitting to that, and God still loves me and I won't feel like a fraud anymore by hiding my flaws.
And although I thought I'd figured it all out, that I'd finally learnt how to ground my identity in my Maker, it turns out that I'm still only a step along the journey. When I first came home I felt so weird, like a non-person who had no character of their own, because I felt defined by the person I was and the things I'd been doing in Uganda. It wasn't until I got my car back, went back to work and had some freedom and somthing useful to do again that I felt I could connect with God and be grateful. So I've now come to realise that too much of my identity is still in what I do, where I belong on Earth and who likes me. And I can never be truly useful to God if I cling to that too tightly - I will never fully surrender myself to Him and allow Him full rein to work through me if I look to the things around me instead of into His face.
So here I am, starting again. And I will continue to fail, to start again, to grow in this painful process until my time on Earth is done. But that's ok. I think I'm ready again!

final final news...

i'm sitting in the internet cafe in kampala's "garden city" - we've just had pizza and seen a movie and lauren is printing off her flight ticket. and the internet is really fast, so i can finally post up last week's email just in case anyone ever reads this still...can't believe i'll be home in 2 nights and a day!!!

email from last Thursday:
So, I have changed my final nappy, cleaned up the last of the vomit (although my skirt still smells) and am almost packed up and ready to head back to Jinja tomorrow. I can't believe it's only a week and a night til I get home!!! All that's left to do now is say my goodbyes, do some shopping and eat nice food...and attempt to fit everything back into my suitcases. So much has happened here at Amecet over the past 7 weeks - babies have come and gone, we've had Penny, Kerryn and the Tongans come up from Jinja, we've had countless sicknesses including 3 of us getting malaria...and amongst the children, health has also become more of an issue. In my last email I said I often forgot that the kids are here because they're sick, but it's become evident now! Not only have we had fevers run through most of them, but there are one or two who needed more urgent attention. We have a 2-year old boy named Dennis who is something of a concern anyway, as he hasn't eaten in the whole 5 months he's been here (he's being tube-fed, but Els says she's never had a child remain on a tube for half so long before) but he was one of the worst-affected by fever, and then suddenly had his glands swell up almost overnight, so was taken to the doctor's for surgery. He seems to be doing fine, but it was scary to have something so serious happen in our otherwise pretty healthy "family"! Mattias is the other worrisome boy - he's a 2 or 3-month old baby who was doing really well until his skin started getting dry...and then it started peeling around his face and upper body, while his arms and legs began to look like elephant's legs. Despite our covering him in lotion several times a day, it got so bad that his face was so tight he couldn't suck his bottle properly, and he really looked like a mummified baby. Thankfully, he's been prescribed some steroids and antibiotics which seem to be helping, and we've been smearing him with vaseline every 2 or 3 hours, so he looks alive and well again - his face seems to have proper new skin now, and looks good! When I came here I expected the kids to be sick most of them time, but now I realise I'm glad they're not - i just couldn't cope with it! Last week, when they all had fevers, was one of the most heartbreaking - there was no way to stop them from crying, and I wished I could take it away for them. I can;t even imagine what it's like to have my own kids fall sick - it's bad enough with these that I've only known for a few weeks! I've thoroughly enjoyed my time here, hard as it's been - the occasional days that I felt well gave me a glimpse of how much fun it can be taking care of kids, and the other times just reassured me that it really isn't what I want to do...if for no other reason, then because they give you every virus known to man : )And I've learnt a lot more about God from these kids. The thing that sticks most in my mind is the lesson about patience - one time I was feeding a baby who was yelling and yelling for his milk, but it was too hot - and although he didn't know it was coming, I knew it would burn his mouth if I gave it to him too soon. It struck me that I'm often like that - demanding answers and things in life in my own timing, when God knows that it'll be so much better for me if I just wait til the time's right - which is not for me to know. I just hope my hands don't have to smell of baby vomit for me to remember that... And now, dear friends, I bid you goodbye - or "welaba" in luganda...until i see you all a week or so from now!!! Thank you again for all your support and encouragement this year - I still can;t believe I've been away for so long,that i actually survived it and that i really am coming home so soon...hurrah!

bye bye babies!

Today I got to join Els (the leader of Amecet) and two other staff, Simon and Esther, as we delivered the twins, Ben and Calvin, back home. It was "deep, deep in the village" - more than an hour away from the home, along ever-narrowing tracks - I'm used to walking along windy footpaths in villages, but taking an SUV along them was interesting to say the least! I was a bit concerned when the road narrowed to half the width of our vehicle, but Els assured me that wasn't narrow yet...and we literally did drive "along" 4-inch wide footways!
we had an amazing reception there - we'd found the twins' dad at his church, and most of the rest of the congregation hopped in the back of the truck so there were about 30 people sitting around under the trees by the little round mud-huts (finally, some REAL african houses : )
passing the boys round and watching Els talk to the dad. Then they gave us the classic Ugandan gift of a live animal - a turkey this time - who is happily gobble-gobbling his way around the compound now. I just loved the excitement that the whole village shared at the twins' return - they don't even live that close together - the huts we went to are only for the dad, his other children, his parents and a few students who stay with them, and there were no other huts to be seen - they were probably a field or two away. I felt a bit bad that I'd been able to spend all day every day with these babies for the past few weeks and hadn't appreciated a minute of it - they were kind of hard to feed at times, and when they vomited or pooed, they really meant it...but now these random villagers were beside themselves at just being able to see them.

Not only did I get to be part of all this, but I also missed the usual feeding, changing, playing, blah blah blah....all in all it was a good day!

No pictures of Ben and Calvin I'm afraid, but let's see if this picture of one of my favourites, Godfried, will make it onto the page...

RIP Margaret

just a follow-up to Margaret's story - she passed away in the early hours of the morning. it's so sad that she never got to experience much of life, but then again, maybe it's a blessing in disguise - she won't have to endure years of suffering on this earth, and is having a great time up in heaven already! thanks to everyone who prayed, your support is greatly valued.

yesterday's email...

nothing's changed, i'm still a lazy so-and-so and am just posting yesterday's group email here for those who aren't on the email list...

I'm coming to the end of my third week at Amecet now, and feel like i've been doing this job forever! the kids are all so used to having new faces come and go that they take no time at all in adjusting to a new "auntie" and it's kinda fun having the toddlers zoom along on their hands and knees in the bid to climb on my lap...most of the time everything goes so well that i forget the kids are here because they're all sick. the biggest reminder is the skin complaints that a few of them have, but this week there's been a worse than usual cold going through everyone - all the staff have had it, and a lot of the babies have been coughing and crying more than usual. the tiniest baby, margaret, who isn't from an hiv family but has down's syndrome, has been the worst-affected. right now, she's in the hospital room on an oxygen machine as she's been gasping for breath all afternoon. her heart is pumping like crazy and the doctor wasn't very optimistic...please pray if you can. i hate to admit that i''m still not much of a baby fan - these weeks of bottle-feeding and nappy-changing have only proved what i've always said, babies aren't cute, they're hard work - but little margaret is just so tiny, i hate to see her struggling for life. in general, i'm just tired! i have a day off tomorrow, which should help - we work in shifts with an average of one day off per week, although it's only been 5 days since my last day off and then i have another 4 before katy and i go back to jinja for our friends' graduation and a break! The shifts run 7am-3pm, 1pm-9pm and 6pm-8am, so we always have some time off in the day. It's only 8 hours at a time but it feels like forever!! the work is incredibly monotonous, which i think is what makes time pass so slowly - i miss the variety of the work i used to do! however, it is a slight improvement on making necklaces and visiting people i can't make conversation with...2 of the toddlers here, Emma and David, have a fun debate of "da?" "da." "da!" which i can at least join in with : ) not long til i'm back to pester you all!! 4 1/2 weeks and counting...trying not to, but it can't be helped...