Privileged living and Uganda flashbacks

UGANDA: Life & Death

I write this story 2 weeks after leaving Uganda…..and find myself finally starting to process and truly feel the weight of things I witnessed over the last month.

I woke up this morning in Dublin Ireland; rolled over to hit my alarm off, grabbed my towel and headed for the shower. I turned on the water on to feel the first hot shower in nearly 3 months.  Like most world racers who are freshly out of Africa; I was ecstatic to feel the foreign experience of warm running water cascading over me once again. It was like a dream come true to feel the dirt washing from my feet and the grains of sand trickling out of my hair. After the first few minutes of bliss I found myself frozen in time, watching the water swirl down the shiny new silver drain…. As I watched the water quickly disappear, I unexpectedly began to weep as memories of Africa invaded my mind….yes, you read that correctly, crying in the shower….In that moment my mind had flashbacks to….

Naked children laying out on dirty mats, with leftover rice stuck to their cheeks, flies infesting their faces, and crusted snot running from their nose; the baby that was handed to me who’s mother had died at her birth, had recently contracted Malaria and she was left with no one to care for her; I saw children running down the street yelling Muzungu (white person) and holding out their tiny dirty palms with worn fingers cupped for change and food donations; I saw the child who said “Water is Life!” as I realized they didn’t have ANY!  Those with sickness continued to get dehydrated and the children were severely malnourished as well. As I watched the water run down the drain, I realized that the substance I was using to clean myself was the very substance that could save the lives of many of the children I met. I was overwhelmed by the mental image of watching the life saving substance get rapidly washed away.

Last month we were working in communities on the borders of Congo that hardly had any water available to them at all. Women & children would have to walk 5+ hours with plastic jugs on their heads to get water for their families to survive. The 2 cups of water than we would pour out of a dirty plastic bucket to clean our hands before meals was more water than most children had to drink the entire day.

God rocked my heart to the core this month with love & conviction. In addition to seeing those newly born being left behind from sickness & disease, we also attended a funeral of a man in a small village. God really contrasted life & death in this moment as I stood at the edge of a man made hole in the ground where a corpse lay rotting in the earth. The smelly stench of the body was overwhelmingly pungent and i tried not to gag as a group of Africans began to sing over the body and shovel dirt on top of him.  You can help but think about how fragile life is when you see something like this. How this life is so temporary and how our God promises us eternity with Him.

After 4 weeks of heart wrenching experiences I have come to understand that being a christian isn’t JUST about receiving salvation and being done- but it is also about the promises of abundant life while you are here on the earth.  Are you living and abundant Spirit filled life?