A dream long awaited... A once war torn country.. now thriving.. from what I can see. Yes, there are always needs, and there is always progress to be made.. but from the time when I first heard of the happenings here in Uganda and watched the movie Invisible Children back in 2005, so much progress has been made.
For those of you who have not heard of the movie Invisible Children or the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda- it is a crisis in which, little children are being kidnapped, manipulated, abused, and trained to kill. They then are sent with guns to go and kidnap other children and thus the cycle continues. It is a horrible horrible injustice and a scheme of the enemy.
Ever since I first heard of these children, my heart broke. As you can imagine.. they have seen a lot, done a lot, and have had their innocence stolen from them. As time passed, God showed me that the things happening to these children are not that much different from things happening in the United States. The enemy uses the same tactics.. trying to manipulate and steal from little children, and training them how to teach other children how to do the same... he just masks it in different ways. In the US, children are being exposed to pornography and the like, and then exposing other children and teaching them to do the same. Innocence robbed. My heart is burdened to see this cycle END.
"He has sent me to comfort the brokenhearted, and to proclaim that captives will be released and prisoners will be freed" Isaiah 61:1
While this atrocity has caught the attention of people worldwide, it has been extremely beautiful to experience what the local church is doing here in Uganda. More specifically, here in Kampala, there is a local church called Watoto, meaning "children", that has created villages and programs in Gulu working with many of the kids that have been released from the LRA. While the war in Uganda has come to a close.. the children who were affected by the war.. the ones who were stolen and forced to kill.. or the ones who were forced into prostitution.. are now forgiving themselves, forgiving one another, and forgiving Joseph Kony, the man in charge of the Lord's Resistance Army. But most of all, these children are receiving God's love and forgiveness; experiencing joy and healing for the first time in a long time...
We head for Gulu this week.. and I am so excited... it is truly a vibrant nation.. and a dream come true!
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| Me and my new teammate Maggy |
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| Watoto Living Hope Ministry- restoring dignity to women and teaching them skill sets |
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| The new and improved Ugandan coffee bean and paper bead earrings! |
