Friday Afternoon
It’s 4:00 p.m. on Friday and I am back at the Gulu ADP office. The electricity is off again and the office has a generator providing the electricity for me to use the computer.
Yesterday I switched from focusing on the Children of War Center to the ADPs I spent yesterday, today, and will spend some time tomorrow with the Paicho Bunagataria ADP which I think I mentioned in an earlier blog. Phoebe, the Community Development Facilitator, is my guide and she is great.Yesterday morning she took me to a rural church in the ADP to meet with pastors. I would estimate that there were about 15 people there, most of whom were pastors. I was trying to assess what there needs are. Like many areas of life around here, there are a plethora of them. The people have virtually no money so when people come to the church for help, they don't have many resources. They don't have many bibles. New Hope Church, the church we were meeting in has about 60 members and about 25 of them have their own bible. Some cannot read. The church roof needs to be replaced almost every year which is time consuming for the congregation. Not one of the pastors has been to a bible school and not one of them has one theological resource to help them study the bible. They have no library. Where does one begin? On the way back from that meeting we were traveling on the highway when my driver Francis and Phoebe noted the primary school on the left. Before I share this story I want to say that there is a lot of good going on in the area, a lot of healing, and there are some very encouraging signs. So I don't want you to lose sight of this fact. But I want to share this story to give a sense of the kind of trauma these people experienced for over 20 years. I think northern Uganda is a smaller case of what happened in Cambodia during the Pol Pot regime--a whole nation as in the case of Cambodia or a whole area as in the case of northern Uganda is traumatized. To continue the story. They noted that during the war the headmaster of the school had been killed, butchered, and boiled by the LRA and they were going to make the children at the primary school eat him. By the grace of God the Ugandan army showed up before the LRA could do this. Now I understand why they have the question on the PTSD assessment that I gave last week,about having ever been forced to or witnessed someone eating human flesh. The thing is, they told me in so matter of fact way--these horrible things happened over and over. What do you say to something like that? In the mid afternoon we went to visit a family of six in which the parents are both sick and can't work. The mother has HIV/AIDS and is on medication, and the father looks--literally--like a concentration camp survivor because he is all skin and bone, and cannot work. He has taken the HIV/AIDS test twice and it has come out negative.The mother was so depressed and felt so hopeless that she stopped taking her medication. Phoebe worked with her and got her to start taking the medication and says she is looking much better even though she is not strong enough to work. I can't describe the hovel they were living in. World Vision built them a nice house to live in. I have their pictures. I wish I could put them on this blog. I struggle with the realities of the great disparaties in our world. It is a crime that people live and suffer like this. This noon I spoke to a group of young people who are in their late teens and early twenties, some of whom are married, all of whom are at risk of not making it. They weren't able to finish their education for various reasons and World Vision is helping them with skills training, like interpersonal skills, conflict resolution, etc. Phoebe informed me yesterday that I was going to speak to them FOR AN HOUR. One of the things that has happened since I have been here is that I have been preaching far more than I would have if I hadn't come. I preached this morning for devotions of all the Gulu staff meeting at the Children of War Center. In any case, the Holy Spirit gave me something to say that I think was helpful to them. I actually preached on Judges 6 and 7, about my favorite "mighty man of valor," Gideon. It also helped that Phoebe was translating. Tomorrow I am going to a big party for sponsored children. Thankfully I won't have to preach. But I am going to a church in Koro-Bobi on Sunday and I am afraid they are going to ask me to preach. I'm hoping that I can just worship. I gave the Gulu office the gifts that I brought from all of you and they will distribute them. On Monday I am going to visit the children Beth and I sponsor, Brenda and Eric, and in the afternoon I am going to the St. Thomas More School to get a tour of the girls' dorm and meet with the headmaster, Todo Alex and the teachers. My understanding is that the ovens have not yet been installed. God is good.
