The High Notes

Where do I even begin? How do you start to describe a two week long adventure with so many facets, experiences, and life-changing realizations? Hence why it’s taken me nearly two weeks to sit down and post this. I know many of you have been anxiously and expectantly waiting. My apologies. I hope this post touches at least the tip of what I desire to convey about my first mission trip.

Of course, if I go into every single detail of each of the 14 days, this post will probably go on forever and you would get bored of reading. I haven’t really thought of a good way to deliver most of my experiences either. There was so much that happened. Even now, I’m not entirely sure of how to organize this post. So again, my apologies if it seems a bit unorganized. For now, I will try hit some high notes and break down specific stories in future posts.

So taking a journal with me was a great idea. Starting on the plane taxing out of Amsterdam, it was soon evident to every team member that I was a bit of a journalizer. I stole time out of nearly every day to jot down sensations and personal observations. Our last night together as a team, we shared what we learned and appreciated from each other. No surprise, my journaling was mentioned. One teammate said he really appreciated how I took the time to write my “memoirs,” as he called it, and how I took that quite personal time seriously. The one thing I learned in Uganda about myself is that I really am an introvert when it comes to social gatherings. I knew at home I would steal away to my room after a period of being with my entire  family during holidays or birthdays but I always thought that was because I was bored or thought to do something in my room, not because I was in sensory overload and required some downtime. I was craving the same social downtime on this trip. I was perfectly fine to slip away to my room at the guest house or sit out on the enclosed porch by myself after a long day at the clinic while everyone else was gathered in the main living room singing praise songs with Derek on a borrowed guitar.  

As expected, I was completely out of contact with my normal day-to-day here in the states starting when I turned my phone off at the overhead announcement while taxing on the Detroit runway and not turning it back on till 16 days later when the same announcement was made that we may use our phones. But that didn’t stop my head from traveling the 7,497 miles back home whenever it wanted. And it mostly traveled to Rick. Perhaps the biggest life-changing realization I came to was the blessing I have in him. Being a young white girl in Uganda, you are automatically a target for matrimonial bliss. I had the pleasure of deflecting a couple of offers, as one stranger pleaded with Inell between Katie and myself, “Please, just give me one of them!” My automatic answer to these subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle probes into my personal life was, “Soon, next year.” In the car ride home I informed Richard light-heartedly that every eligible Ugandan bachelor expects I’ll be married by next year.

But since coming home, Rick and I crossed that threshold of casually talking about the possibility to seriously talking about the probability of permanently walking one life together. Those closest around us have seen differences in our personalities and have openly expressed our compatibility. Rick and I are similar in the sense that we both have emerged from recent incompatible relationships and both our families have seen us at that worst. I can only imagine what the difference looks like from the outside and I can only tell you what a difference it feels from the inside: to be loved and treasured and valued the way Christ loves, treasures, and values his church. Coming home from Uganda really catapulted this topic into our discussions and it’s something that we are both pursuing and have been pursing for some time. It’s now whether or not our paths are align and this is something we may pursue together with God.

On this side of the trip, I don’t feel I was ill-prepared at all. There was no moment when I was so far uncomfortable that I said to myself, “I’m not prepared for this!” I do feel that in coming home, I have a greater desire to seek God in my daily walk, to be a light to those around me, and to seek God with a more earnest passion alongside Richard. During a small woman’s sunday school class, a lady shared a moment she had with a close friend of her’s that came to Christ as a result of a bible study she attended. Afterwards, this woman came back to her friend and asked, “You knew of salvation and you knew that I didn’t. Were you going to love me all the way to hell?” I immediately was struck with all the people I love that don’t know. Am I loving them and sending them to an eternity in hell? Then I saw all the people I encounter daily. Those I work with, those I’m aquatinted with that may not know. Am I loving all these people to hell? Is my daily walk a light pointed to Him? Only the third day into the mission trip and God had delivered His “ah-ha!” moment that I suspect will forever shake and nudge me out of my “private relationship” with Him. 

So those are some of the big things that I took away from Uganda. There are many more brushstrokes that paint the entire picture. I’ll write about everything else at a later time. Like the boda boda ride I took up a mountain, the elephant that crossed the road, that time I swam in the Nile, and the dinner where I ate fish. Yes, I ate fish. Believe it.