July 18th, 2010. Published under Fun Stuff, Life in Uganda, Students. No Comments.
Check out this video from Pros for Africa. These guys came out in March of this year and we spent a good part of a week with them. This video features several shots of our students dancing, singing, playing football, drilling wells etc. There might be a quick shot of me in there too.. All the kids in blue uniforms are from Restore!!
Birthdays
July 13th, 2010. Published under Uncategorized. 1 Comment.
No matter how long I’m here, I’m still amazed at the joy people get out of the simple things in life, the things I have taken for granted most of my life.
Last night I went with my good friend Robinah to one of the youth homes for a birthday party. One of the girls was turning 17 and we wanted to go and make her feel special and celebrate with them. We had a simple meal of matooke (plantains), rice and beans and then birthday cake we had brought. The cake was a surprise, so when the girls saw us walk in with it they celebrated like you thought they had won the lottery. They were jumping, screaming and hugging everyone because they had a cake. Later in the night Robinah gave the birthday girl a few simple gifts (a plastic alarm clock and a coffee mug). When she opened her present and saw the clock and mug, she smiled brighter and wrapped Robinah in a huge hug with more joy than I’ve ever shown for the hundreds of presents I’ve had in my life.
I sat there observing the inexplicable joy these kids experienced through something I considered so small, a cake and a few small presents. I’ve received and given gifts amounting to probably 100 times the “worth” of her gifts, and yet never received or given with as much love as I experienced last night.
I write all this with the conviction of comparing mac books vs. mac book pros for several hours, preparing to make a purchase I won’t value half as much as she valued her coffee mug…
Oh! Set Me Free
April 20th, 2010. Published under Fun Stuff, Students. 1 Comment.
We have some talented musicians at the school. Last year Brandon Heath, the Dove Award Male Vocalist of the year, came out with Bob for a visit. We had several of our students learn a few of his songs beforehand, and then we did a recording with him. Maybe one day in the future we’ll be able to hear those songs on the radio!
Students learning Brandon's song "Give me your eyes" last year
More recently, I overheard our students singing a beautiful song I’d never heard before. I asked one where it came from and she told me she wrote it. She is one of four sisters who attend Restore. They live about 2 hours away in Lira, but the oldest was part of Cornerstone’s Youth Corps home here in Gulu and we took her to Restore. The other three soon followed. They are four of six daughters, all being raised by their mother. Their father ran out on their mother a few years ago, leaving her to look after all six. Back in the day for church their pastor wanted the children to present a song. So this one girl went home and wrote one out. Turned out to be a hit. She’s since written several songs, all of them equally beautiful.
Over Easter weekend they all came to the Youth Corps Home and I decided to record the sisters singing their song. So here it is in one Garage Band take,
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Hope you enjoy! And plan on hearing more from where this came from. We hope to do a legit recording of students in the future, many of them are incredibly gifted musicians!
- One of the four sisters on the left
Mark Cuban in Africa
April 4th, 2010. Published under Fun Stuff, Life in Uganda. 2 Comments.
But I’m finding myself in his shoes. Here in Gulu, I’m kinda like the Mark Cuban of secondary school football (soccer). We have some legit athletes in our school and have amazing boys and girls football teams. I go to as many games as I can, sit with all the players, teachers and students, complain to the refs, yell, cheer etc. I find my competitive athletic nature come out as I spectate. I’m hurt if we lose, excited if we win, concerned if a key player is hurt or if we played poorly etc. I take offense when the refs are biased (which happens a lot here, we’ve experienced both sides of the biasy and its never fun). But being the only white guy around, I stick out. Everyone at the games know I’m with Restore. No other head teacher, school director or teachers go to the games and sit with the students and cheer. They sit in the shade somewhere and watch from afar. But we do. We’d rather be with the players and students.
Recently we played in the annual district football tournament. The school that wins for each district get to represent the district at the national tournament. Amuru is so poorly developed that the norm here is to stack your team with as many outsiders as you think you can get away with. AKA mercenaries. Anyone who you think can pass as a high school student. Make them a school ID, forge their documents and have them play for your team. The team that won the district last year had half of their team disqualified at nationals for being mercenaries. That same team had guys as old as 27 playing against teenagers this year. We know because our teachers went to highschool with some of the other team’s players. But we took a hard stance on this and would not allow a single outsider play for us. Each player had to be a current student. We wanted to make a point that winning wasn’t everything, but being honest and playing by the rules was the best way. If we lost, as least we lost knowing we played fair. I prayed so hard that God would reward us for playing fairly!
And he did. Both our girls and boys won the district tournament!!! In style too, the girls didn’t allow a single goal in three games and the boys allowed 2 goals in four games, both of them on penalty kicks! Combined the two teams outscored their opponents 19-2. The other schools had some more talented mercenaries than our players, but we came with a team. They had been playing together and collectively were much better because of it. One opposing coach who was very frustrated asked how we could represent the district, being only two years old. Representing the district was only for the big, established schools with 1000+ students, not us with just over 200. That same coach by the way is the one who had half his team DQ’d for being mercenaries last year 
So now our students are preparing for exams and then for the national tournament at the end of the month. The boys will travel to southern Uganda and the girls tournament is here in Gulu. For most of these boys it will be their first time out of the Gulu/Amuru area.
RLA girl footballers before the finals
Corner kick during girls championship game
RLA championship footballers after girls game
Beckham being carried off field after semis
Praying over the boys before the finals
Striker Beckham during championship game
Me and my gang
October 17th, 2009. Published under Fun Stuff, Life in Uganda. No Comments.
I’m in a gang. A bike gang to be exact. We’re not so much a gang though, really. Its more just a bunch of guys who are getting into dirt bikes and planning an epic adventure around East Africa.
So here’s the deal. In lieu of spending a bunch of money and climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, something everyone here wants to do, a few friends decided to buy dirt bikes and take a trip over Christmas. One of them, Eric, sent an email, trying to talk me into it. It read, “We will break down a lot. We won’t know what to do. We will get lost. We will screw things up. We will figure things out somehow… it will be awesome.” I was quickly convinced to join.
I was convinced, but it actually took me some time to agree. You see, I had already promised the parents that I’d be home for Christmas. I desire to be a man of my word so I hated the thought of telling them I wasn’t coming home. But this is a once in a lifetime experience. Well, now that I think about it, hopefully it won’t be a once in a lifetime thing. I’m hoping when all is said and done this is in my top 20 life experiences, but for now it definitely has the potential to be in the top 2 or 3 for my life so far. But secondly, I’m a pretty injury prone guy. A few friends who know me well, upon hearing our plans, basically told me this was the craziest idea for the most injury prone guy they knew. Haha. But to ease things over with my parents I came home for a quick trip right now and got a bunch of safety gear in case of an accident. Boom, problems solved.
But I’m doing it. And right after deciding to officially do it, a beautiful bike came into my life. My buddy Jared, after buying his bike, was riding through town and saw his bike’s twin parked on the side of the road. He stopped, found the owner and asked if he’d be willing to sell. He said yes. Two days later I owned it. I like to call her Veronica. A mechanic I know called her, “The best bike I’ve seen in Gulu” which might not mean a lot, but it does to me. So I bought it and am trying to learn to ride it.. and how to repair it.
What excites me most about this trip is that we’re doing it together. Its the group of guys I’m “doing life” with, walking, learning, struggling and sharing experiences with in Uganda. It won’t be easy, we will get hurt, lost, in trouble etc. But we’ll be doing it together, striving towards the same goal of a) surviving and b) creating a memory and a story worth telling.
So here’s the route: Leave Kampala around December 13th, head to eastern Uganda and go over Mount Elgon into Kenya. Beautiful. Then head to Mombasa, on the coast of Kenya, and stay in a beach house with Eric’s family who will be there the week before Christmas. Classy. Then down the coast of Kenya into Tanzania and put the bikes on boats and hang out in Zanzibar for a few days. Awesome. Then back to the mainland, and down across Tanzania to Lake Malawi. Legendary. Spend a few days on the lake, then start the journey north, stopping at Lake Tanganyikain Burundi, seeing friends in Rwanda, then back to Uganda, about a month after leaving.
Epic.
PS I tried and failed at posting pictures of all of us, the bikes etc. So here’s a link to all my pictures from this year
End of Religion Part 2
August 29th, 2009. Published under religion, thoughts and questions. No Comments.
Another great point Bruxy Cavey makes centers around the fact that Jesus is the Word become flesh. John 1:14, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
This is a defining characteristic of Christianity. Only in Christianity does God’s revelation come in a person. In Judaism and Islam, Moses and Muhammad received revelations from God, but they themselves weren’t the revelation, it was the words they wrote down in the Torah and Qur’an. Even Buddha as a person is not the revelation, it is his teachings that disclose the path to enlightenment and compassion. But for Christ-followers, the revelation is a person.
Jesus said I am the truth. Follow me. Trust me. Come to me. Cavey says, “The implication is important. Reading, studying, and understanding the Bible is not the goal of a Christ-follower. Bible knowledge is just a first step toward the goal of following Jesus. According to Thomas Adams, ‘The Bible is to us what the star was to the wise men; but if we spend all our time in gazing upon it, observing its motions, and admiring its splendor, without being led to Christ by it, the use of it will be lost on us.’”
I think this distinction is important. So many times we have “Bible studies” with the focus of learning and gaining a deeper understanding of the original meanings of what was written. But we are to be reading and studying the Bible for the specific purpose of growing closer to Christ, the living Word, the Holy Spirit. I once mentioned to a mentor of mine my desire to start a Bible study and his response shocked me. He said, Yuck, Bible study? Why would you want to study it? If you see a girl across the room and you analyze or study her, you see that she has brown hair, she’s five foot whatever… Why would you want to analyze her? Go over and talk to her and engage, but don’t study her from afar. The same way with the Bible, don’t study it, engage it and live it, the Word is Jesus and he’s active and waiting to do life with you. Now obviously he was just trying to make a point, he is a big advocate for reading the Scriptures. But at the heart of the issue, why are we reading? To learn and have more knowledge about God and Jesus? Or to participate in an active life with Jesus?
William Barclays writes:
There was one mistake into which the early Church was never in any danger of falling. In those early days men never thought of Jesus Christ as a figure in a book. They never thought of Him as someone who had lived and died, and whose story was told and passed down in history, as the story of someone who had lived and whose life had ended. They did not think of Him as someone who had been but as someone who is. They did not think of Jesus Christ as someone whose teaching must be discussed and debated and argued about; they thought of Him as someone whose presence could be enjoyed and whose constant fellowship could be experienced. Their faith was not founded on a book; their faith was founded on a person.
Now I’m not saying we shouldn’t read the Bible, because the Bible points the way to Jesus. I am saying we should follow Jesus and not the Bible. We still read the Bible, but Jesus is our goal. And if that is true, it will radically change the way we read, interpret and apply the Bible. Jesus always taught that the Hebrew Scriptures, the Bible of his day, always pointed to Him. Twice in Luke 24 it says Jesus explained to them what was said about him in the Scriptures and he opened their minds to understand.
Cavey says, “So God’s written Word is not a substitute for the Word made flesh, Immanuel, “God with us”. God’s precepts are not a substitute for God’s Spirit who continues to be God with us and within us.”
The Bible is like a treasure map with the treasure being Jesus. But we often treat the treasure map as though it’s the treasure itself and when we do this we miss the treasure completely. To the religious people who did this Jesus says, “You search the Scriptures because you think they give you eternal life. But the Scriptures point to me! Yet you refuse to come to me to receive this life” (John 5:39-40)
The End of Religion
August 23rd, 2009. Published under religion, thoughts and questions. 2 Comments.
I’m currently reading The End of Religion by Bruxy Cavey. This book is amazing. The premise of the book is that Jesus never intended to found a new religion; he hoped to break down the very idea of religion as a way to God. He says, “The primary mission of Jesus was to tear down religion as the foundation for people’s connection with God and to replace it with himself – the Divine coming to us in our own context and our own form. This is what Jesus called “the kingdom of God.” It is God and his people, living together the way he originally intended.”
Jesus completely broke down and turned upside down the religion that God set up, Judaism. He came as a “fulfillment” of the law. The Jewish religion told people that you had to do A, B, C and then D in order to be forgiven of sins, to pray, to be “clean” etc. But Jesus came and proclaimed something entirely different. He said anyone can pray, anywhere. He forgave sins in the middle of someone’s house or on the roadside. You didn’t have to go to the Temple and offer a sacrifice to be forgiven. He completely shattered the religion. He subverted virtually all of the traditions and widely held beliefs of his day, and completely dissed the religious scholars and leaders. These were people considered closest to God. In Mark 7:6-9 he says,
“Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written:
‘These people honor me with their lips,
But their hearts are far from me.
They worship me in vain;
Their teachings are but rules taught by men.’
You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men. You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions!”
I think Jesus’ rebukes of religion apply just as much to present-day Christianity as it did to ancient Judaism. We honor Him with our lips, but our hearts are far from him. We obey our tradition and rules over Jesus. We worship Christianity, not Jesus. To be a follower of Jesus you don’t have to go to a church building every Sunday morning, say the “sinner’s prayer”, be baptized by a pastor, speak in tongues, never speak in tongues, vote a certain way or obey any of the other rules we’ve set up. The early Church never built buildings for themselves or had a “sinner’s prayer” to pray in order to be a follower of Christ. They just simply did what Jesus said; they subverted the religion of their day and were outsiders to religion.
In the book he says:
“By saying something as audacious as “I am the way” (John 14:6) to his disciples, Jesus fundamentally challenged all of the how-to-systems of the spiritual world. The way is not the Ten Commandments, the Eightfold Path, the Four Noble Truths, the Five Pillars of Action, the Six Articles of Belief, the Seven Sacraments, or any other of the systems of salvation stewarded by the religions of our planet. God himself is the way. He has come to earth to share this message, to show us his love, and to shut down religion once and for all. We can embrace this and the freedom it brings, or we can cling to our religious systems for the comfort and security they bring. But we cannot do both.”
There are good things about tradition and the rules we create, and he talks about it in the book. But the point is Christians generally worship Christianity and the comforts it brings. If we box ourselves in and obey certain rules and interpret the words of Jesus in a way that fits inside of that box, we’re safe, we’re Christian and we’re going to heaven. I don’t think Jesus intended us to do that, and I don’t think we’re safe. If anything we should interpret them with a historical context, looking at what he said and did in terms of the norms of his day. Then he becomes even more scandalous and subversive than we’d ever like to believe. I don’t think many people like it when Jesus said many people would call him Lord, Lord but he would reject them, saying he never knew them. I think he was serious when he said “Narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.”
Sorry if this has a critical tone to it, I usually try not to be critical. But this is a critique from the inside. I was raised a Christian. As I have examined my faith, I’ve seen how my whole life, while proclaiming to believe and put my trust in Jesus, I’ve really put my faith in the religion that bares his name. Jesus was not safe, he was not a conformist. He was subversive and created scandals.
Now I’m only giving a cursory glance at something he dedicates 200+ pages to, so I highly recommend you read the book.
Trials and tribulations
August 20th, 2009. Published under Life in Uganda, thoughts and questions. No Comments.
Joy
May 7th, 2009. Published under thoughts and questions. 1 Comment.
The other day I experienced two raw and opposite emotions back to back.
As I was going around downtown trying to set up meetings for Bob’s upcoming trip, I realized I was near a salon where one of my “daughters” (I can’t really call her a daughter though considering she’s 3 years younger than me) has been doing vocational training. I always try to stop and say hi to friends or people I know whenever I can, because it really means a lot to them. One of the aunties told me once that when you don’t have visitors, you don’t feel loved, but when people come to see you, you know you are loved! So I always try my best to make time to see people when I’m in their area.
Anyways, I walked into the small salon and Sarah (not her real name) saw me and ran over to greet me and we sat and talked for a while. The home she stays at is a home myself and others have befriended and supported in any way we can. The ladies in the home decided it was time to resettle some of the girls, the ones best capable of making it either on their own or with their families. The resettlement day when they are leaving is today. As we talked I knew Sarah was depressed and not excited about leaving. At one point she leaned in and just started crying into my shoulder. I did my best to hug and comfort her, but I didn’t know what to say. Here was a girl who came from the streets, was brought into the home and had her life completely turned around. Now she has to go back out on her own. Her life will be difficult, she’ll no longer have the support of her sisters or “mommy” in the home, and she’s realizing it. She has to support herself now. Obviously the organization is going to help her get started, but her life will never be the same as it has been for the last 3 years.
I say all this in full support of the resettlement, without it people like Sarah will be dependent on an organization for the rest of their lives. Sarah is at a point where she is mature enough to not be in the home anymore… its just sad for her to leave and sad to see her go. After doing my best to cheer her up, I talked about what she had to look forward to and how happy she should be to have been blessed with living in the home. I left sad to know I wouldn’t be seeing her much anymore, sad for her, knowing life would be much more difficult in the weeks to come, but trusting that God was watching over her and knowing things would work out.
After leaving there I went to the remand home to meet with the wardens. They had been telling me they had more kids who needed help so I wanted to find out more information. The main problem was the only girl they had waiting for the High Court. She had been in the home for 5 months and never brought before the court because her district was really far away and they lacked money to buy fuel to take her. I asked them to draw up a budget and said I’d get back to them. Before I left the girl came into the room and I was able to meet her. She knelt next to us (as is custom) and looked at the ground solemnly. The warden introduced me and told her we were going to see if we could help get her before a judge and she immediately looked up, bright-eyed and smiling. She covered her face with her hands to hide her smile as the warden laughed at her reaction and assured her we would do what we could.
I wiped the corner of my eyes as she left the room with a bit of hop in her step. I silently prayed that the injustice that had kept her in remand would soon end, and vowed to do my best to help. I too left with a hop in my step, knowing that that girl was going to sleep tonight a bit more hopeful than the night before.
That night as I thought about my day, I saw how connected the pain and joy I experienced was. I realized that the deeper the level of sadness or pain, the greater the joy will be. If I had been sad over a papercut or stubbed toe, then happy over its healing, my joy would not have been as great, I don’t know if I would have praised God about it. But seeing and feeling their deep sadness and pain makes the optimistic outcome all the more joyful and reason to rejoice. For Sarah its come full circle, her past circumstances were painful and sad for any human being. Then she entered the home and has been full of joy, having been transformed… and now sad and painful to leave the new life she has known. For the young girl in the home, she’s spent the last 5 months with no hope, no real reason to believe she’d ever get out and before a judge… but now she has reason to believe that day is approaching and she has a new hope and joy for her life. I don’t know why I write all this, I guess it really struck me the other day how connected the valleys and mountains in our life are.
Global Village
May 4th, 2009. Published under religion, thoughts and questions. No Comments.