Hello everyone thanks for taking the time to read our updates even though they are rare. Hopefully through them you are able to experience some of these adventures with us and getting your own taste of Uganda. I wanted to write about a quick story about one of our friends here who took us to his village.
In Uganda everyone has a village, even if they have lived in the city their entire life they still belong to the village of their parents or relatives. Pastor Ben, one of the Ugandan staff members at CLD, is from a village called Kaliro about 3 hours north-east of Kampala. Ben has an interesting story about how he ended up re-connecting with Kaliro. Similar too many other cultures around the world there is a major emphasis put on having a son to pass on the family name. Ben’s father had many wives, all of which gave him daughters, eventually after having 6 children Ben’s father met a woman that would finally give him a son (Ben). As he was growing up they lived in the village farming the land that his family owned, waking up at 4:30am to “dig” for 3 hours before they went to school. The village has one dirt road that runs through the middle, some of the families have mud huts with grass roofs, some of the families have upgraded to brick homes with tin roofs. Each home has a plot of land that the family uses to grow maze, potatoes, beans, kasava, and my personal favorite mangos. When you are there you begin to realize that there are many children and many people over 40, however there is a large gap between generations because so many have either moved to the city to try and find work or there is a large portion that has died of HIV/Aids. The people live a simple life focusing on providing for their families and making sure there is enough food to eat. There is no electricity but some of them have cell phones that are either charged the sun or they take them into town to be charged (the batteries last for a week or so).
Anyway back to Ben’s story, when Ben was a boy his father died, many people in the village desired the family’s property. There was a group of men that began to make a plot to kill Ben so there would be no legitimate heir for the property and they could take it over. At the time Ben was staying in Ginja with his mom attending a primary school. Fearing for his life Ben’s mother took him to a local Pastors house to stay until they could figure something out. Fortunately he stayed safe and was able to continue school in Ginja until he was P7 and finished Primary School (Elementary School). In Uganda the government does not provide free education, so everyone has to pay school fees to attend school each year. As a result many children have to take time off of school until they can find a way to pay their way; it is not uncommon to find people who are 20 years old and in High School. Due to the expense of school fees Ben moved to the Kampala area to try and find a sponsor to help pay his way through school.
In secondary school he met 4 guys that would play a huge role in his life. Away from home and his family Ben was challenged to question if Jesus was this guy who everyone said he was, as he made his way through school he grew closer and closer to these 4 guys. Eventually Ben submitted and gave his life to God and with these 4 four began to do some amazing things. They began to reach out to their classmates explaining their personal stories and how God had proved true to be a provider and a hope in all times. I laughed so hard when Ben told me that he was actually expelled from a school for sneaking out a group of students to take them to pray. Ben transferred schools but stayed very close with his 4 friends. Finally in S4 (the equivalent of our junior year) at the age of 17 Ben and his friends planted Light the World Church (LTW). Eventually he graduated Secondary school and moved onto study business at Makere University, the whole time he was working as a Pastor at LTW. During this time LTW began working with Shane to develop what would eventually become Come Let’s Dance (CLD). When Ben graduated University he continued pastoring at LTW and he began to work as the Ugandan head for CLD, managing the employees and the business/financial side of the ministry.
2 years ago Ben decided he wanted to go back to his village and begin to reinvest in the place he was from. His first project was to set up a church in the village; they began to clean up the property his father passed on to him. They built a large hut with mud walls and a grass roof so they would have a church for the community. He worked hard bringing the gospel to his home, working with local leaders to teach them and encourage them in the work they were doing. Recently they were able to donate 10 bibles to the church, all of which are printed in the native language, Luganda. Ben returns to his village a couple times every month to visit the people and work on his current project “Pigs for Hope”. They have built a small pig shelter where they currently house 2 pigs, hopefully soon the pigs will fall in love and make babies. When the pigs start to reproduce Ben and the other leaders will begin working with the other people in the village. All of the families will get on a list to receive piglets from each litter. As the pigs grow each family will be required to apply the same model with their pigs, gifting them to other families – it is kind of like network marketing with pigs in Uganda. Last week we had the opportunity to go with Ben to his village, picture a bunch of white people showing up to a small African village in a mini-van. The kids crowded around us as we pulled in, some were excited while others were so scared they would run away if we got within 50 feet of them. The people were so welcoming to us – two families opened up their homes for us to sleep in, and Jacob (the pastor of the church) immediately invited us to a prayer meeting with his church.
On the second day we visited the primary and secondary school in Kaliro. The primary school children had prepared for us a choir performance, about 30 kids singing traditional African songs. We spent some time in smaller groups encouraging them, learning about what they were studying, and praying for the older ones that were about to take their exams to get into secondary school. Just before we left we were able to present a soccer ball as a small gift to the headmaster, the kids went crazy because they had been played with a ball made up of rolled up plastic bags.
After the primary school we headed to “Bright Futures Secondary School”. We were set to have a program to speak to all the students and have a Q&A session, unfortunately it rained for 3 hours. We split up and went with different groups around to see their classrooms, they were so excited to pick our brains. Some kids were fascinated with America, most of the older kids had questions that stopped me in my tracks, asking about the history of Uganda and Africa. Asking questions about the UN’s involvement in Uganda, curious about the American perspective of Africa’s future. It is amazing to see how mature and passionate these students are about life, I was thinking back to the things I cared about when I was 16 and how shallow and selfish I was. After some intense time with the students they challenged us to a football match, of course we accepted. It was still raining so the field was covered in mud, the entire student body gathered around the field to watch and laugh because we all kept slipping. As you can probably imagine they dominated us, the final score was 4-2. We headed home soaking wet and muddy, but full of joy at the experience we had to do life with these kids.
The rain finally stopped so we able to do the movie night that we had planned on. We brought a generator, speakers, and a projector from the church, we strung a white sheet in between to sticks and planted it in the front of Ben’s home next to the church. Close to 200 people came to watch, Ben had picked out some movies that showed bible stories – one was in Luganda and the others had to be translated. It was a fantastic experience for all of us and fortunately for most of the night the rained stayed away.
The next morning we had to leave so we packed up the taxi. We ate porridge with our host family and Pastor Jacob. During breakfast we talked with Jacob about his ideas for the future of the church. We prayed together and they sent us off. We were there for such a short time but Ben said that he was so thankful that he was able to share his home with us.
During the 3 hour drive home all you can do is think. Think about the strength these people have, think about the joy living inside of them. Think about how even 3000 miles away from home in a small village people are pursuing Christ with their lives, learning what it means to be a disciple of him. I am amazed by the perseverance that exists in these people, to see how persistent their prayers are to God – begging for rain to come down and grow their crops. I can also see so many similarities between myself and them: the pain they experience from the loss of loved ones remains the same, the fear of not being able to provide for their families, the happiness that comes from small victories, and the joy that comes from building relationships.
Ben’s story is encouraging to me, but more importantly it is encouraging to the people here. He understands what it means to be blessed by God and to use that blessing to help others. I pray that as he continues he will stay solid in his commitment to these people, to his people.
The more time I spend here the more I realize that Uganda doesn’t need more money, they don’t need a superhero to swoop in and save them, they need stories like Ben’s. Stories of commitment and love, stories that teach people that living for others is more fulfilling than silver and gold. My encouragement comes knowing that God has placed people here to rise up and fight corruption, to refuse to let Uganda go down.
AMEN (let it be)
