AMA Post-Uganda: Part One

What are some things you notice about the "necessities" of American living that really aren't necessities at all? What can we do without?

I have to admit, I left the US very bitter about Americans and our values, priorities, and “problems”. God had been preparing our family for a few years to live with less and to focus our energies inward as a family and outward in mission. We were focused and living very differently from most of our friends, and frankly, I thought we were doing it right.

We let our fridge remain broken because it still functioned, we didn’t replace our carpet, we stopped paying for haircuts, we embraced the imperfections, the weeds and the scratches. What martyrs we thought we were.

I was talking to an American friend who I met in Uganda about this, and she was quick to remind me of grace. Grace is a necessity no matter where you live or what you do. Just because God had revealed something to me, a way that He was calling me and my family to live for a season, He didn’t call me to impose that on the rest of the world. We are each called according to HIS purpose for us individually. There is simply no right way to live out God’s call except with absolute grace and humility.

It’s funny, too. After living in Uganda and missing some of the modern conveniences, I am desperate to have nice, clean, things that work! We did replace our carpet as soon as we moved back into our home, and as much as I thought I would continue hanging my clothes out to dry in America, I am over it. I love my dryer and my extra-large capacity washing machine. And, I even think God is okay with that.

Inevitably, I would hang out clothes, and it would start raining. Our clothes also were faded, eaten by bugs, and stiff as a board. Do we need dryers? No. Are they awesome? Yes.

I need grace. We all need to both give and receive grace freely. 

So, could we live without a dryer, an ice-maker in our fridge, air-conditioning, radios in our cars, dishwashers and a million other things, yes, we could, but unless God is convicting you as an individual to eliminate those things, then there should be no guilt.

I will say that our family is at a stalemate over the TV issue. We gave up cable several years ago, had Netflix for a short time, check out videos from the library for free, but we are once again trying to decide what role TV will have in our lives at this point. I feel that TV has the potential to draw us away from each other as a family and away from time we could be spending with God. My family likes to have downtime and relax with TV. Honestly, I do, too, I just wish it was easier to strike a healthy balance.

I now believe that it is healthier to ask: What gets in between God and myself? What distracts you from living in obedience? What hinders your relationship with Him? 

Those are the things that you can do without. I promise, they will be completely different than the things your neighbor can do without. 

Would you go again? And would you ever consider staying there permanently, if that were possible?

We would all go again in a heartbeat. Our friends there became like family and it is so, so hard to not know when we will see them again. Many of those closest to us don’t have facebook or internet access either, so there is absolutely no communication. We loved our year for a million reasons and in a million ways. If we could visit once a year for the rest of our lives, we would be so happy. Unfortunately, with a family of 8, that would be near impossible financially.

I would not choose to live overseas permanently, and I think the rest of the family would agree with that, though some would probably consider it if the right opportunity came up. It was just too much of a burden on my heart. I struggled with situational depression while I was there, and it just wore me out mentally and emotionally. There are no easy fixes and no obvious solutions to many of the problems facing Ugandans. Our call in being there was very much to walk beside others IN their suffering. That is hard.

There are several teaching opportunities that Dave and I could have had in Uganda to stay. There are also a few organizations that would welcome us back to serve with them. We don’t have any plans to travel again though. We feel that it is a time to dig our roots deep until God tells us otherwise.

What were your favorite new foods you ate?

I need to preface this by saying that we are NOT adventurous eaters at all. I had at least one friend who was sure that I was going to starve to death when I left the U.S. We did stretch ourselves though, and tried many things. I don't know if we would categorize any of them as favorites, but we could eat them all when the occasion arose. 

Dave was offered a cup of warm milk straight from a scrawny, sickly cow, but he did get out of drinking that somehow.

The kids loved sugarcane, which isn't shocking. It is like a giant pixie-stick in its most natural form. 

There was a little four-leaf clover-looking plant that grew everywhere, and someone told the kids that they were called “yum-yums”, so the kids ate them all the time from our yard. I tried one and it just tasted like grass, so I am not sure why the kids loved them, but they did.

Chapati was the Ugandan staple that we ate the most of. It’s sort of like a greasy tortilla, but it’s the only meal you can get that doesn’t take over an hour to prepare, so in pinch, chapatis are an easy dinner. The street vendors also will wrap eggs and vegetables in chapati and serve it as a rolex. Typically we did that on Friday nights after soccer club.

A Ugandan staple is matoke and g-nut sauce, but we were not fans of it. Matoke is similar to sweet potato, but more stringy and bland, and it would be covered in a brown sauce that tasted like liquefied peanuts. To me it was a strange combination, but we could all manage to eat it when we needed to.

Passion fruit, mangos, and papayas grew everywhere, so we did help ourselves to so much fruit right off of the trees. Our neighbor cut down a papaya tree one day, and the top half fell into our compound. They said we could have all the fruit, so that night I took 3 or 4 giant sacks to church to share. You should have heard the hooting and cheering that accompanied that abundant blessing!

Why is it so hard to transition back?

I have heard this question answered with an analogy, and it really is a good question.

Living in America, we are all “yellows”. We know how to do life, what the norms are, and how to speak and act like “yellows”.

We then traveled to Uganda, a land of “blues”. We loved the “blues” and learned how to live with them. We learned their language and their customs. Although we never turned fully “blue”, we were changed.

Now, we return to the land of “yellows”, and because of our experiences with the “blues”, we find that we are no longer fully “yellow” anymore.

We are now “green”.

A part of both cultures is alive in us and have become part of who we are. The only problem is, that we are different, we are not fully “yellow”, nor are we fully “blue”. We will forever be “green”, and there is a joy and a sadness that accompanies that. We are richer because of it, but there is a tug, a part of us that longs to be both wholly “yellow” and wholly “blue”, and an acknowledgment that we can never be fully one or the other.

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Traveling to a developing nation is different than traveling anywhere else in the world. This is one reason that people are so dramatic after returning even from just a week or two in Haiti, the DR, or other African countries. We are extremely isolated in the US. We can stay on one side of town and avoid seeing the homeless. We can avoid certain schools and never see a hungry child. We can stay out of the hospital and avoid seeing the sick and dying.

In Uganda, there was no avoid any of this. Every day, every waking hour, we were surrounded by things that just shouldn’t be. Each day my prayer was simply, “God, come quick.” So much is beyond “fixing” and requires us only to trust that there is a plan and a purpose far beyond our understanding. That can be a gift, but it is overwhelming.

Musisi suffers from chronic jiggers. No matter how  many times we teach his mom what she can do to prevent infection, she doesn't do it. Our heart breaks for him when it gets so bad that can't even walk.

This was Morris when we first met him. We connected him with the proper help. Below, his improvement is visible. Will his mother continue to follow through, or will she abandon him again?

Coming back home leaves us with the burden of knowing that people we love are still hurting. Once we have seen, we cannot pretend that we haven’t. Once we have held that starving baby, sitting alone outside his hut with his mother nowhere to be found, we can’t forget. I think about that baby every day and I wonder if he is there alone again. I know he may not live much longer if his mother doesn’t make different choices, but I will never know. That baby, and the fact that I had to set him down, starving and alone haunts me, but I know that there is nothing else I could do, and that there are millions of other babies just like him.