After we passed out the care packages in Adacar, several children brought us thank you notes that they had written to their sponsors. One of them, Josephine, gave the following note to Elaine and Ansley to give to her sponsor:

Dear Chandler:

Greetings in Jesus. I hope all of you are fine. Thank you very much for showing me love, care and passion. Our family greatly smiled as we all jumped with joy.

The most wonderful thing was when I met Elaine Mayson and Ansley Mayson that gave me true confidence that the Lord Jesus Christ has beautiful dreams for me.

I loved all the things you sent for me and everything in the pack made me burst into happiness, laughter and praise to my sponsor. May the heavenly Father who created heaven and earth richly bless the work of your hands.

We also have our small dog his name is Dog Leo. I love praying for all of you in the family and I hope to meet both of you too one day. Especially Mom, Dad and you Chandler.

All the best,

Josephine

I have to take a little break between Uganda posts to switch over to the other African country that has my heart, Ethiopia, and my sweet daughter Evelyn Semhal.  We found out today that we were submitted to the U.S. Embassy!  I totally wasn’t expecting that today, so what a fabulous surprise!  This means that her court documents, birth certificate, and passport were received from the Ethiopian government and now everything is in the U.S. Embassy’s hands.  Some morning (soon?!?) we’ll wake up to an email either clearing us to schedule a visa appointment and go get her, or an email requesting more information.  We’re praising God for this step closer to bringing our daughter home!

On our final morning in Adacar, Immaculet sent us off with her delicious rolex chapattis in our bellies.  She makes chapatti, which is like a cross between a pita and a tortilla fried in vegatable oil, crispy on the outside, a little chewy on the inside, then she makes omelets with fresh shredded veggies and eggs from the chickens running around, and – wait for it – she rolls the omelets in the chapattis for spirals of mouth-watering deliciousness.  They give the breakfast burrito an inferiority complex. 

So, happy mouths and full bellies loaded onto the bus once more bound for Adacar.  Half of us went to the Catholic church and half to the Anglican church.  I was in the Catholic group and worshiped with a group of sweet people under a thatched roof while children stood behind me and felt my hair.

The night before, Dad had read us Romans 8, about creation groaning, and lo and behold, yes of course that’s exactly the passage that God had planned for the Catholics that morning!  God is really cool.  My in-laws’ sponsored boy, Martin Otengei, attended the church and we kept making eye contact and smiling at each other.  He’s such a cool guy.  Young teenager.  He found me earlier in the week and showed me a handful of letters and pictures from his sponsors, Lewis and Elizabeth, and all the pictures were of our family.  He recognized me in several of the pics, and I got to tell him all about his sponsor family and he had the biggest grin on his face.  He’d been hanging out with Donnie all week and Donnie said that he was such a great kid.

After church, we said our goodbyes and as the bus pulled out, Martin waved along the side of it.  We turned onto the road, and out of nowhere, he popped up again to get in one last wave.  I had my head hanging out of the window screaming goodbyes at my new friend.

As we drove away, I didn’t hear much talking.  Just a lot of sniffling.  Lots of tear-stained faces of people who will never be the same.

We drove to Soroti, relaxed all afternoon, which was a weird concept after having zero down-time all week, another great meal, and starting debriefing about the week.  Joseph stopped by, and David’s family.  One thing Joseph said that is so crucial for our Adacar kids, that it is very important for the kids to learn about forgiveness of the Karamajong.  They slowly need to seek peace.  Wow.  Yes.  That sounds very much like a God-sized prayer.

Okay, at this point my journaling broke down and I devolved into sloppy notes for me to deciper later.  I guess it’s later now, so I should start deciphering!  On Saturday, we hung out with the kids at the CarePoint in the morning, and I got to meet Catharine Isaat, my brother and sis-in-law’s sponsored child.  Oh my goodness what a special girl!  She’s a young teenager who lost her dad to the Karamajong five years ago.  I met the rest of her family, she’s the youngest, and sat with her and showed her the care package, with the help of David. 

Let me just mention how amazingly awesome Orone David is!!!  He’s HopeChest’s sponsorship coordinator for all 9 CarePoints, and he’s responsible for over 1600 kids!  He stayed with us the entire week, answered countless questions, and served as our primary translator.  During the care package distribution afternoon, while the rest of us are doing the thousand yard stare and kids and packages are swimming before our very tired eyes, he translated the contents of each package to each child nonstop for 2-3 hours.  Amazing.  So if you’re wondering if your child knew what to do with the bubbles or the play dough, oh yeah, she did, because David told her. 

Anyway, like a few of the kids in the program, Catharine attends a school in Katakwi during the week, so she had missed the care package extravaganza.  So on Saturday, she arrived at the CarePoint and I got to spend quality time with her.  She and her friend Angella took me by the hands and walked me into the village, where Catharine bought tea biscuits as a gift for her sponsors.  I wrapped those things with the greatest care and presented them to Nate and Jen when I got back – surely the most precious gift I’ve ever seen!

We walked back to Adacar Primary hand in hand and went into her old classroom, where we hung out with a bunch of adolescent girls (pretty much just like back at Southside, only instead of teaching me words used at McIntosh High, they taught me Ateso words and laughed as I tried to pronounce them).  One girl was crocheting a school bag using a stick that she’d fashioned into a crochet hook and yarn that she’d pulled from an old sweater.  Another was crocheting a beautiful striped circle using a hypodermic needle.  Yep.  These girls are creative and smart and I’m now praying for people gifted in fiber arts and handcrafts to come on a trip to Adacar.  If that’s you, I’m praying for YOU!!!

Catharine told me that she’s doing well in school, and her favorite subjects are math and social studies.  She plays net ball, which is a girls’ sport in Uganda and I think might be kind of like basketball without dribbling?  She was dressed in her school uniform and new striped flip flops, and halfway through our time together, her young nephew brought in a plastic bag filled with Mirinda orange (think orange Crush) and they took turns drinking from a hole in the bag.  Bottles are expensive so it’s cheaper to just buy the pop inside.  It was fun showing her the photos of my niece and nephew that Jen had put in her care package and then her introducing me to her nephew.  Later in the day for the community meal, I saw her again, and she’d changed into one of the shirts that Jen had put in her care package.  It fit her perfectly, and we took photos with her family and me and Dad. 

I just love the feeling of family that’s happening between our communities.  So many of the kids had photos from sponsors and photos from their dresses or tee shirts and it was so much fun to tell them more, to say “I know your sponsor!  She’s a friend of mine!”  They got huge smiles on their faces.  Someone cares about them! 

After that, the team split into two groups and set out into the village to wash some feet.  We’d received lists from Stephen and the community of those suffering with HIV/AIDS and we set out to pray over them and present them with mosquito nets.  In the Ugandan culture, the children and some of the women will kneel as a sign of respect.  It was an honor to kneel at the feet of several of the community members, wash their feet, and spend time in prayer for them.  I was heartbroken when one of the mothers I prayed for told me that she’d nursed her baby for a few months.  I prayed for God to miraculously protect her child.

After we returned to the CarePoint, the other team returned and reported that two of the people they met with had accepted Christ as their Savior!  Wow!  And God wasn’t finished yet.  Three more people were waiting for us at the CarePoint who hadn’t been home when we passed by.  Dad and I met Grace, whose husband had just passed away from AIDS a month ago, leaving her with 6 kids, and she’s infected as well.  He wouldn’t take the medicine, but she’s taking it and feeling okay, other than aches and pains.  A widow, 6 kids, infected with HIV.  Lord Jesus, Grace needs Your help!!!

After Grace, a little 7-year-old girl came up and her grandmother introduced her as Rose Atim.  Once her parents found out that she was infected from birth, first her father abandoned her, then her mother left, too.  Her elderly grandmother is making sure that she gets the ARVs twice a day…and how long with the grandmother live?  Dad started praying, such a heartfelt prayer, and I could tell that that little girl, little Rose, had filled his heart till it broke open.  He cried a father’s tears for the little girl, infected and abandoned, shaking silence spread out over us, and I finished his prayer, words of faith smashing against feelings of hollow whys.

We ended the day with the community meal.  With our extra money raised for the trip, we bought a big bull, and Stephen slaughtered it (Say what you will, but the people of Adacar are so close to their food.  They pick it from the garden, they kill it and eat it.  No plastic-wrapped freezer section.  I admire it.).  We fed over 500 kids and about 200 adults (that’s a conservative ballpark figure!) rice, posho, The Big Bull, The Big Bull’s intestines, and chicken.  And we had food to spare.  It was awesome.  While the food was cooking, we ended up in a meeting with the community elders and guardians of the kids in the program, heard lots of positive feedback, as well as some suggestions and concerns.  The meeting ended with one of the kids’ choirs singing and Harriet Okaje performing a poem.  Dad had her write the words down in his notebook, and here it is, exactly how she wrote it:

Title Challages that Orphan Child face
 
What atterible life to be an orphan is
We face many challages like given mor work in turn of food
                                             given more work in turn of medical care
                                             given more work in turn of clothing and
                                                      more activities as wall
Whate atterible life is?
More orphans have gone to become street children
My question goes to parents, government, N.G.O.s and the all nation as well
How are you going to help orphan children.
       
                     Harriet Okaje

She had tears streaming down her face as the words flowed out of her soul, her voice so clear, so compelling, and by the end, the rest of us were crying with her.  How are we going to help orphan children.  The how dominates my entire life.

Last night God blessed us all with a good night’s sleep.  We needed it.  And this morning we took a few hours away from the CarePoint.  We also needed that!  We drove to the big market and Immaculet helped me buy Bosco’s mom cabbages, tomatoes, onions, and salt as a gift.  We purchased a jack fruit for Immaculet to prepare.  A jack fruit is the size of a large watermelon and is covered with spiny bumps.  I’m excited to taste it.  She also grabbed some sugar cane for us to try.  Yummy!  We headed to Ngariam, where there are 3 CarePoints serving 600 kids, all sponsored by Westmore Church in Oklahoma.  We met with Bosco and Christine at the second one.  Oh, it was so good to see them again!  He’s grown and on his way to adolescence.  I showed him the photo album with pics from our visit last year, and then I hopped out of the bus to visit their kitchen and saw his baby brother, Otim, looking healthy after his bout with malaria last year.  When I returned to the bus, I found Bosco still looking at his photo album – not the fruit strips, not the card game, not the school supplies.  The photos.  All these kids treasure the photos more than anything!  When the girls put on their pillowcase dresses, they didn’t want us to take off the photos of the women who made the dresses.  They proudly wore their dresses with the photos attached, and the ones that had my photo attached to them kept coming up to me and pointing!

We drove with Bosco, Christine, and Otim back to their home and helped unload the food into their hut.  We also gave them a mosquito net and hugged and hugged.  The time was too short!!!  One of these days, I’m going to need to sit down for a good ol’ visit with them.  I wish that I spoke Ateso to be able to speak freely without an interpreter!

Observing the Ngariam CarePoints, we picked up on a couple of things that we’d like to see implemented at Adacar.  The kids washed their own dishes after the meal and it looked like they picked up the trash around the CarePoint.  We need to get those initiatives going at Adacar, to give the kids more ownership of their CarePoint.

When we got back to Adacar, Dad performed another round of what I call “MacGuyver Medicine.”  Remember that show from the 80’s when MacGuyver would make a bomb out of a stick of gum and nail clippers and save the day?  Well, my dad has spent the week treating deeply infected wounds with bleach and water, plus whatever first aid items we brought with us.  He’s worked pus out of wounds and taught the locals how to mix up a solution to soak the infections.  Lucy’s arm is looking GREAT, and he has several other patients that he’s working on now, too.  He saves the lives of animals all the time, and this week, he’s gotten to save some human lives, too.  His ability to diagnose animals who can’t talk to him is coming in handy with children who speak a different language and his agricultural background is at home here in this community that depends on it’s farming and livestock.  In addition to guiding us spiritually with just the right devotionals each night, he’s also become the guy to jerry rig the toilet at the mission and provide first aid to our bumps and scrapes.  MacGuyver indeed.

The kids here are the strongest, bravest kids on the planet.  Dad’s worked on their wounds all week, and several of us have rubbed their backs and held their hands as they flinch in pain, never uttering a sound, never backing away.  They know that he’s helping, and they sit bravely without complaint.  They muster strength from deep within, never crying, and those of us doing the hand holding are the ones with eyes filled with tears!  These children are incredible.

We led the kids in some songs, and Rachel had the brilliant idea to do “Praise Ye the Lord,” with two groups standing and sitting.  Oh my word, the kids loved that, even the older kids.  They were all shrieking with laughter and it was awesome hearing several hundred kids scream PRAISE YE THE LORD all together!!!  After the songs, we handed out mosquito nets, and oh my, did God ever give us a loaves and fishes experience with that.  Dawn’s church paid for the nets, and we found out at the beginning of the week that all the merchants were on strike and we might not be able to get all of them.  Joseph worked and worked and we prayed and prayed (and Dawn prayed specifically LOAVES AND FISHES!), and when the day came and we unloaded the nets, we didn’t have 200 like we hoped.  We didn’t have 300.  We had just under 400 nets.  All the sponsored kids got one.  All the unsponsored kids.  The CarePoint staff.  The disciplers.  The teachers.  The contractors working on the kitchen.  David and Joseph’s families.  The people living with HIV/AIDS.  We just kept passing them out.  A mosquito net miracle.  So many cozy families tucked safely into their nets.  How can I praise God enough!?!?!?