Testimony

About a month ago, Brad (my pastor) asked me to share with the church how I saw God work in my life since coming Philadelphia.
At first I thought he was kidding, I almost said "huh?? you talkin ta me?", (with the Robert Deniro face and accent), he was dead serious.
I wondered what gave him such a weird idea, but truthfully I will tell you I saw it coming.
I knew at some point I would have to share about the way I experienced God but I was hoping that day wouldn't come.
It's complicated.
Addressing a group of people isn't easy, I mean even two people is tough and we were talking about 100 some. I have trouble with this, my mind tends to go blank and then I end up saying silly things that are incomprehensible.
I tried to wiggle out of it, I said "you know, I could write it down and then have Sam read it to the congregation" (lame excuse right?!) . Nah, he wasn't about to barge, then I said "let me pray about it", what I really meant was let me adjust to the idea. I couldn't kid anyone, I knew I had to do it, not because Brad had mentioned it but it was something God had placed on my heart a while back.

I went home and starting thinking through my experiences and how I would put it all together. Believe or not I ended up writing 16 pages, when I told Sam he said I had to be kidding. It was way too long, he said I needed to get it down to at most 6 pages, then he would read it. "What?! 6 pages? how am I supposed to do that, there is too much to say".
Well, I got it down to 6 pages then Sam and Brad helped me to make it sensible. By the end of the whole process of writing and rewriting, I was down to 3 pages. I had only 30 minutes to talk, so I needed to be brief ish.
Unfortunately for you (my dear readers), it will go up to about 60 pages, because this is what I'll be writing about for the next days, weeks or months, so brace yourselves.

Anyway, so the day finally arrived. I got to church, Brad handed me the small mike to attach to my blouse and I sat and waited till he called me up.
He said something like "I would like to introduce our speaker for the day ..." (I don't remember the exact words). At this point I was asking myself, "how did I get in to this position again?", I wanted to run out the door but it was too late.
I stood up and smiled, looked at the congregation and a confidence I have never known came over me.

To be continued.

Visitors

This past weekend has been so much fun. We spent it with Lilian and Rose coming from Baltimore and Temple respectively.
Lilian is an old friend who I met through Olga and from spending time with the navigators. She is studying for her masters degree at Johns Hopkins. I met Rose here through a mutual friend, Jackie, she is also studying for her masters degree at Temple University. Both Lilian and Rose are part of the Navigators.














I invited Lilian for the weekend and found out that she knew Rose, it was fun having both of them over.
Because it's really cold we were not able to do much outdoors. That wasn't much of an issue, being Ugandans, sitting at home and talking is just as good or even better.

It was a coincidence that they came the very weekend I was scheduled to share my testimony in church. It was so heartwarming to look into the congregation and see their faces, it made me feel more at home.

Earlier in the month, we had lunch with Mark and Eva. Mark is a first year student at Wharton, he is Kenyan and is married to Eva. Eva and I went to the same college, so it was nice seeing her after such a longtime. This is a small big world.


We had a swell time.

Children

Mich resumed preschool this week and this time round he was clinging on to me. He didn't seem too thrilled to be back. I thought this would wear off after the first day but he continued to insist that I stay with him. Strange.

I decided to pursue this behaviour further by asking him what he didn't like about school. He said "my friends at school don't want to play with me", I thought, how can that be? all the kids play together.
On my quest I spent a few extra minutes at the school after dropping him off just to see how he settled in and I saw what he meant. He is three and the kids who he would like to play with are a little older and much more aggressive than he is, so he doesn't quite fit there. The other kids are a little younger and so he doesn't seem to fit with them either. You would think, "kids are kids right? they can get on with other little people without any problem". Well, that doesn't seem to be the case here,I hope my eyes are not being clouded by the whole mother instinct thing.
He plays by himself, that gripped my heart and I begun to pray.

This evening when I was putting him to bed I suggested that we ask God for friends and then he said something I least expected. He said, "ask God to give me friends who have hands like mine".
My my!! I kept quiet because I didn't know how to respond to that. He is three years old and already having issues with colour?! That came as a surprise, I said the exact same words when we prayed because I don't quite know how to undo this idea in his little brain.

In the middle

My life and relationships at this point are going through a metamorphosis. Kinda like the butterfly. I pray I get to be a butterfly, with it's beautiful colours, the freedom to fly and bless the flowers with the pollination process. This might sound like greek but let me explain.

When I left Kampala, I said bye to friends near and dear, I thought I would be back and life would continue from where we left off. Well that was a cute idea but sadly it doesn't work that way in real life. People move on, it's like a job, colleagues are sad to see you leave but a week later they can't remember your second name. Like wise you make new friends and acquaintances at the new station.
If one cultivated true friendships you can meet up for coffee and catchup. The catchup sessions work well to put everybody on the same page.

Being on the other side of the globe has complicated my situation. I always feel close to family whether or not we communicate, friends are different (or so it seems).There is a special link with family that continues no matter how far away one is. I know that when ever I get to see them again, there will not be a strain to fill in the gaps, I guess that's the way God intended it.
Keeping friendships though seems to require a different art. If I don't call or keep my emails coming then the friendships seem to fade.Even when I send the emails the grip seems to losen as time apart thickens . I know it's not on purpose but life gets in the way. So much is going on in their individual lives that, I can't keep a breast with everything. I may get to know some of the things that are going on but not being there physically deprives me of a certain dimension to their lives.
The same applies on my side, even though I try to document, or share everything that's going on in my life, there are certain experiences that I can't document. It's those small things that change who I am, my perspective. Just being in the States changes aspects of my life. The foods I eat, the way I relate with people, my view on certain things...
That's expected to happen,I now have one foot in each world. I've made new acquaintances and friends but because of our different backgrounds/cultures/ethnicity it's hard to absolutely understand one another. By interacting with them I'm influenced and they are influenced too but me more than them because I'm not around my kind (so to speak). That makes it hard to develop genuine friends who understand where I'm coming from. The things that are offensive in my culture, the jokes that crack me up back home, the Ugandan slang, just being Ugandan period. The effort to explain kills the fun.
Then keeping close friends back home is almost futile unless there is a two way effort. I know I will get back home and we will either have a lot to talk about or we will be scratching our heads for things to say. They are at different points in life than when I left them. New jobs, promotions, some got married, some still single, some now have 7 kids, you know?!!!
I'm stuck in the middle.

From the mouth of Babes

This child pretty much summed up what it took me the whole of 2007 to learn.