Brice's expalnation of why we are here and what we do:

"We are a ministry called healing faith we work for malaria. It is only musktoes that have malaria. only female can give you malaria. Malaria gets in your body two weeks. If you get malaria we will do a finger prick and test your blood and give you piles. We play games with them but we do not give them toys because they will beat up the child who has the special toy."

By Brice McMorris, 9 years old

God's Presence Always

Tuesday, Jun 24, 2014

Three more cases of malaria in the village today.

I can never decide if it is a good day or a bad day when we find new cases. It seems the worse the test results, the greater God’s presence. The more illness, the more God is glorified in the healing. With each new case, a reminder of why God has called us here.

Today, Jonah, a boy who just 3 days ago followed the Healing Faith team for 2 ½ miles as they educated and hung nets, who was showing off his dance moves and entertaining the team as they traveled, walked himself to our area and showed us the worst case of malaria I have seen so far. 3 days ago he was running, laughing and playing. Today, he was wrapped in an old suit coat, shivering violently, crying and weak. His fever was obvious to the touch. His eyes were barely open. I don’t know how far away he lived, but I am so thankful that he knew to come find us. He knew that we could help.

As Jonah lay there on the hard, wooden bench shivering, Jason gave him Tylenol for the fever. We began praying knowing that this was going to be rough. He couldn’t sit up on his own. Jason gave his first dose of malaria treatment, and someone brought him a drink. We helped Jonah sit up to sip the water, and no sooner than he swallowed, all of the medicines came back up. Another symptom, but if he can’t keep the medicines down, then the disease will not be treated. Jason quickly decided that the parasite had come on fast and severe, and this boy needed treatment beyond what we could give him. He needed to get to a clinic where he could receive IV fluids and malaria treatment.

We can’t simply whisk children away to clinics though. We need parents. We need permission.

This sweet boy, in so much pain told us that his JaJa was gone. Gone to market? Gone for good? Gone to where? For how long? We didn’t know. There was a teenage girl near us holding a baby though. She said that she is caring for Jonah, but she cannot go to the clinic because she is caring for other children, too.

Fortunately, Jason has developed a good relationship with the chairman of the village and was able to get permission as well as a recommendation for a trustworthy clinic nearby where Jonah’s family could check in on him.

Before we could gather and head to the clinic though, a group had developed around Jason. Sometimes crowds gather simply because there is something to see, but when a little girl laid her arm on Jason’s leg, he could feel the fever right through his pant leg. Another test, positive for malaria. A few children with cold and flu like symptoms, and then a third child with a positive malaria result. We begin treatment and pray healing over their little bodies.

In the midst of all of this illness and treatment though, there is Jesus. God’s presence can be felt. It is obvious that God is at work in this place in mighty ways.

11-year-old Chloe is leading a group of 5 pre-school aged girls in singing Jesus’ praises. Chloe sat with one of these girls just a week ago crying tears and crying out to God for healing on her behalf.  Today, they were practicing “group hugs”, dancing and playing. A group of older girls came over to hear their singing, and even joined in with Chloe. That would be ministry enough. That fellowship would be enough. But then, a 12 year-old tells Chloe that her little sister has just tested positive for malaria, and asked if Chloe would pray for her. Without skipping a beat, Chloe gathers all of the older girls in a circle, and they begin to pray.

Only by the hand of God. 

Update: 2 Weeks

We have been here 2 weeks now. Some days it feels so comfortable that I think we’ve been here much longer, and other days I feel like we must have just showed up because I have no idea what I am doing!

Thankfully, the Segner Family is feeding us most meals because cooking here is so much harder than I imagined. I felt pretty good the day that we purchased things from a specific woman in the market who we knew would give us good prices. We got some staples; rice, flour and beans. We got some produce; green beans, peppers, pineapple and bananas. And then we got home…and realized that preparing all of these things is so much different than at home.

I have made rice 2 times, and neither time has it tasted as good as it does at the Segners’ house. It has tasted dirty. Rice from the market needs to be sorted, and although I have attempted sorting it, I really don’t know what I am looking for. Luckily, when you add enough salt to it, it doesn’t taste so bad. The kids have even complimented me on the rice, so I know it must be so bad that they don’t want me to feel badly about it. They are so sweet.

Dave attempted to make beans. The directions are to soak them overnight and then cook them on a little charcoal grill, called a sigiri, for 3 hours. Easy enough, right? Dave worked on those beans for 3 ½ days before we decided it was just best to give up this round and try again another day. We think that our problem is that we are not keeping the fire hot enough. Dave is out there stuffing charcoal in and blowing on it and poking it with a stick, but evidently we need a little more practice!

The produce is amazing, and we are thanking God for that every day. Even I can’t screw up peeling and slicing a fresh pineapple or a cucumber. The kids have been eating cucumbers and carrots for “snacks”, and I couldn’t be happier about that. Snacks are not a thing here, in Uganda, but it is hard for our American bellies to understand that they don’t always need to be filled to overflowing.

We knew that we would struggle with Wren and her picky eating. She does not care for any of the main sources of protein here; beans, peanut butter, or g-nuts. She is living mainly on carrots, rice and bread and butter right now. I do make her try some of every meal served, and when there is a “sweetie” on the line, like the cake that Mimi made a few nights ago, Wren will clear her bowl. I need to decide when it is time to bring down the hammer and just make her eat a good portion at every meal. Those battles are never fun.

(I wrote this Saturday, and am just getting to post it today, Monday. I am so happy to report that Wren ate ALL of her beans at lunch today! Just 2 weeks in and I consider this major progress!)

Another surprise has been the difficulty of drying our clothes. Hand washing them is not exactly fun, but trying to hang clothes to dry when rain storms are an almost daily occurrence is much worse! The first time, Dave spent a morning washing a week’s worth of clothing, got it hung up around noon and at sunset, when we had to bring it in, realized that we needed many more hours of sunshine to actually get it dry.

The second time, I got up early to wash clothes and get them hung as early in the morning as possible. As we finished lunch around the block from our house, a storm began rolling in, and we had to run home to quickly grab our damp clothes off the line…3 lines actually…it takes three clothes lines to hold our wash. When that storm passed, we hung them out again. Until the next wave of rain came. At that point we decided to hang them all over our house and let the fans blow them dry. Our couch was covered in drying underwear, each of the chairs were draped with towels, and every hanger was drying some garment. It took about 2 days for most of the clothes to be dry enough to put in our drawers.

(Again, progress has been made since the writing of this entry. I washed all of our clothes today, hung them out to dry before 10am, and it has been a beautiful sunny day all day! It is 4:30 now, and I think all of our clothes will be dry by the time I bring them in before dinner! God is good!)

Our hearts were so ready to just jump right into ministry work when we arrived, and in some ways it would be easier for us to see progress and success in accomplishable tasks each day, but we so need this time to figure out life. We are learning, just slowly. The kids are excited about the adventure of learning to do all of these tasks, so that is motivating for me.

We do go into the villages a few times per week, and seeing our kids interacting and caring for other children as if this is exactly what they were created to do in life is truly a gift from God. When we go around the giant circle to introduce ourselves and quiet, meek Wren shouts out her name so loud and proud, I also know that God is growing us all in great big ways.

What a journey we are on. 

Father's Day

It was Father's Day yesterday, I completely had forgotten. Believe it or not, Hallmark doesn't advertise here. Funny enough, God did place this on my heart on Saturday night, and it ended up being the perfect gift for my kids' wonderful Daddy!

I was just realizing today that I am really good at taking giant leaps of faith. I hear God, I listen and I go. But, I get scared and filled with doubt every single time I step out. Much like the disciple, Peter, I take my eyes off of the One who called me, and I focus on the crashing waves instead. I get scared, I convince myself that the leap was a mistake and that someone else could do it much better, and I want to quit. Most of the time, if it were just me, I would quit, honestly. I tell Dave that I am done, I don’t know what else to do, so I quit.

Dave though… Dave doesn’t let that happen. I get us into these situations, Dave gets us through them. He simply picks up the reigns and takes the lead. He is suddenly empowered with persistence and confidence and he just keeps us moving in the direction that God set us. I know that many times Dave is just as nervous as I am, but still, he just puts one foot in front of the other and forges ahead. Eventually I come back to a place of faith and I can be productive again, but man, there is no way that we could persevere without Dave’s endurance. What a blessing our partnership is. God knew what He was doing when he paired us up! 

Happy Father's Day, Dave!

Reminders of Home

What an answer to prayer! We went to Acacia Church and it was amazing. The worship music was right up there with Ben Matthews and Scott McCormick, the pastor was quoting C.S. Lewis just like Dave Berry, and the guest musician sang, “Oceans” just as beautifully as Katie Eckeberger!

This past week has been so hard without the Christian community that we are so used to. We were completely drained from traveling last week, and without Christian radio here, I just never felt refueled…until today.

The Segner family, who direct Healing Faith have a house church that we will attend this afternoon, but the interns who are here for several weeks this summer wanted to visit Acacia Church, too. They haven’t had a vehicle to get there, but we were happy to pile all of us in our van and make the short journey.

One intern, Katie, had been to Acacia once before, and sort of knew the way, but that was all the direction we had. I figured that, worst case, we would worship together on the side of the road somewhere. That wasn’t necessary though. We stopped and asked as we went along. We asked one boda (motorcycle taxi) driver if he knew where it was and he said, “Yes, do you know how to get to someplacewehadneverheardof?” I said no, and he said, “Well then how do you expect to get to Acacia?” I just smiled, he gave us the best directions he could, and wouldn’t you know, it lead us straight there!

Acacia Community Church began 10 years ago as a house church meeting with Pastor Terry and his wife in their living room. They outgrew the house and began meeting in their yard. A storm last year destroyed all of their shade trees, so they began meeting under the Eucalyptus trees in a field. We happened to arrive today, their very first Sunday in their beautifully constructed, open-air church shelter.

I couldn’t stop crying through the first several songs. God’s presence was so strong. The Ugandan voices singing familiar lyrics brought such peace to my heart. Once again on this journey of obedience, God calms my heart and soul with simple, familiar occurrences that let me know He is still leading. I simply need to follow.

The very first words we sang, “Blessed be Your Name, in the land that is plentiful, where Your streams of abundance flow.” These words, this praise, it is true still. Here, in Africa, a third world country where the people we will be serving for the coming year do not even know that simple protection from a mosquito will save their lives and the lives of their children, THIS is the land that is plentiful. THIS is where the streams of abundance flow. Why? Because it’s not about the stuff. None of this life is about any of the stuff. It has nothing to do with resources or education or opportunities.

It is about us praising and worshipping Our God.

Our God that is enough.

In Him, even when we have nothing else, even when we know nothing else, we have the abundance of grace and love. We will never be without.

When we are found in the desert place, when we walk through the wilderness, we will turn every blessing back to praise. In the villages of Africa, in the neighborhoods of America, everywhere, regardless of our situation or our lives, we have enough by knowing, loving, and following Jesus. 

Learning to do life in Uganda

We have been in Uganda for 7 days now, and we have already learned so, so much about how to do life here!

We arrived in Jinja on Sunday and it was so great to finally meet the Segner family face to face! All of the kids, 11 total, hit it off right away, and they are having a great time doing life together. The Segner family lives not far from the home that we are staying in, and there are currently 3 interns working with Healing Faith who live in a different house, just down the street from us. It is nice to have so many great places to walk to when we need a change of scenery.

For our first 6 weeks we are staying in a tiny home. There are two bedrooms, a bathroom and a living room/kitchenette combo room. That is all. I keep thinking of the old country song, “Love Grows Best in Little Houses”. It really has been a great place to be though. We are all together playing, talking and getting along very well for the most part. Carter mentioned just yesterday, “Halie and I haven’t fought once in Africa!” Of course today he decided to change that and they were annoyed again with everything the other one said and did. I guess it’s good to know that not everything has changed here!

The kids are loving life, and they have adjusted so well. Wren was throwing up on Monday, and Carter was on Wednesday, but each just had upset tummies in the mornings, threw up a few times and then felt fine from that point on. I am assuming it was simply nerves. Today my stomach is churning, but that was a common occurrence in America as well. Halie may be allergic to her mosquito net. Some mornings she wakes up with red, itchiness around one or both eyes. We are hoping that as the nets air out, she will not be as sensitive.

On Tuesday we did go into the village for the first time. It was a children’s ministry day, so we were able to meet with some families, gather a ton of children for songs, games and a Bible story, and do a health check. After our activities, Jason began the very informal clinic. Mothers line up with children and explain to Miriam, our translator, their child’s symptoms. Miriam passes on the information to Jason and he does his best to give advice. This day in particular there was a little baby with tiny bumps all over her body that keep coming and going, a girl with a fever and stomach ache, a baby whose mother thought she had a fever, a sweet little girl with an infection on her toes that made the skin painful and cracked, and a man with a burnt leg, among others.

Jason does an amazing job talking with the families about what he sees and advises, but it is hard to not be able to treat each and every ailment. Healing Faith is a malaria education, prevention and treatment organization. It is registered in Uganda as such, and they are only allowed to treat as they are permitted. This means that many conditions are beyond their scope, and the families must take the initiative on their own to get to a clinic for some things. There is help available, but to see the crying child and not be able to help immediately is hard. Jason did a few malaria tests, and all were negative.

As with any great ministry, the physical work being done is not the whole of what Healing Faith does. Building and maintaining relationships is the cornerstone of their work.  Both on our way into the village and on our way out, we stopped to meet with families, check in on those that the Segners have worked with previously, and even bought charcoal from one household. The more we can support those who are working hard to support themselves, the better off the village will be.

At the very first home we were able to hand deliver a Baby Kit that so many of you helped to provide. I was able to hold the new baby and whisper sweet prayers over her as she slept in my arms. The baby kit will provide her with 2 outfits, a blanket and a hat. The mother was extremely grateful for the resource for her daughter.

At that same house, I was shocked to look next to me on the bench and see Wren holding a baby rabbit. For those of you that don’t know, Wren is my shy, always scared of everything, clinging to Mommy or Chloe kind of child. Today though, she was all about this adventure. She was walking with goats, chickens, roosters and rabbits all around her and she was happy to be doing her own thing!

The animals have been a dream come true for my kids. Our very first day at the Segner’s house, Jasmine came running around the corner with 2 goats on leashes pulling her along. Out the back window, Brice and Halie were feeding rabbits in the hutch, and all of the kids were chasing these giant, ugly birds that are all over here. We have caught chameleons in the village, and there are little geckos running on the walls all around our house. The Segners have several dogs of all shapes and sizes that the kids love, and at our home there are 2 dogs and one adorable puppy that have claimed us as their own.

Each home is on a “compound”, so while there may be more than one house, the property is secured either by a fence or a concrete wall as well as a guard at the gate. It is so nice that the kids have such a large, safe space to be in without us having to watch every single moment or worry that they are wandering off or that anyone else is wandering in. When we first left our compound to walk down the street, we assumed that our dogs were stuck inside. We were about a block away though, when suddenly the dogs were walking right beside us, barking at anyone who came near us. There must be a hole is our fence somewhere, but it is such a blessing to have guard dogs that follow us and then return home after we reach our destination.

Yesterday was our first day without power all day. Dave has a Ugandan phone, but of course it wasn’t charged before the power went out, so that was pretty useless. Fortunately, the modem for the internet at the interns’ house can run for a little while without power, so I was able to post to facebook and check email.

Now, we are playing catch up to try to charge our devices and then hopefully I can make a call to AT&T and find out why my phone is not unlocked like they said it was before we left. When I live chatted with a rep yesterday she said, “Your lines are suspended, we can’t unlock them now. You needed to do that before you left the country.” I assured her that I have every reason to believe that the process was completed prior to leaving. Her response was, “Well, I don’t handle that issue, so you will have to call them after 7am.” I have no idea what time zone she was referring to, but as soon as Dave’s phone has some power, I will begin the process of finding that out. Once I can get my phone unlocked, we will have wi-fi at home, and I will not have to go to the intern’s house to use the internet. Oh, the trouble with technology!

Thank you for all of the love and support that you are sending half way around the world. Even when I can’t check in on-line or throw out a prayer request, I know that we are being lifted up each time we come to mind. Our support system is the best!

We love you all!