Sometimes a little boy on the street will ask me for money. Sometimes that same little boy will run up and offer to share his ground nuts with me.

Sometimes I want to cry looking at the poverty and dirt around me. Sometimes I want to cry because a whole cluster of Ugandan children just called out to me, “our white person!” in their local language.

In the four and a half months I have known Uganda, I have always found it to be a place of contradictions. A land of one extreme and then the other.

As I walk around my neighborhood I see my landlady, who owns several apartment compounds.   She is covered in jewelry, hair and nails done nicely. Her clothes are fashionable. She gives me a glare as I play with children on the street. Not far from her is an elderly woman I’ve never met. Her head is shaved and she is walking barefoot down the rocky hill. She wears an old, modest dress and says “welcome back” to me as I pass her. I think, “How is it possible that these two women live on the same road?”

When I was last in Uganda, I used to live in a village where I worked with the poorest people I have ever met. Children and adults alike who have never owned a pair of shoes, but people so joyful, so thankful, so eager to praise God. Now I work at a school made up of some of the richest kids in the country-kids that are told they have to have new shoes that fit the uniform requirements by next week, kids of privilege.

I used to sit in the dirt and pray for the sick, lay hands on those with Malaria, Typhoid, HIV, and teach bible stories and verses to kids who understood faith better than most adults I’ve met. Now I teach advanced levels of music, I give merits and detentions, I write extensive lesson plans and pray that I’m possibly having an effect on someone.

I’ve known a Uganda where kids just want to go to school and now I exhaust myself trying to keep kids on task in class.

I used to share my faith daily. It came out so easily, like breath. Now I’m not allowed to talk about my faith, and I have quickly realized that I don’t know how to not talk about Jesus.

Even within me my emotions are constantly contradictory. I can feel loved and scared, generous and selfish, surrounded by the presence of God yet lonely among people. I pinch my pennies (or shillings) feeling like I’m making hardly anything each month, while knowing I am rich in a country of poverty.

Uganda is a place that rattles me, consumes me, confuses me, and welcomes me into its messes and beauties.

Lately I have been re-reading Kisses from Katie by Katie Davis, a missionary in Jinja, Uganda. Katie is only a couple years older than me. She moved to Uganda directly after graduating from high school. She taught kindergarten in a rural village and one day began adopting children and caring for the poor. She now has 14 daughters and a well-known ministry called Amazima, which is a Luganda word meaning “truth.”

I read her book before the first time I came to Uganda. Back then I had very little context for anything she was saying. It’s incredible to read again now and to see lines that resonant so deeply within me and explain exactly what I have been feeling.

Katie Davis went through many of the things I am now going through. Reading her words makes me feel less alone here. Like I said, I’ve read her book before, but I can’t explain the jolt I felt when I reread these words that have ran through my head numerous times in the past six weeks: “The contradiction comes when I realize that all these experiences and emotions were real. The happiness that gave me chill bumps was as deep as my loneliness. My sense of certainty about being exactly where God wanted me was solid, but just as firm was the fact that I wondered at times what on earth I was doing here. The frustration that threatened to overtake me on some occasions was just as deep and true as the unbounded joy I felt at other times.”

There are so so many beautiful things about living in my little corner of Africa but there are just as many challenges and concerns. I remember saying before I left that I already knew the transition to Kampala would be difficult, but really, I had no idea what was in store.

Often I wonder why.

Your first teaching job is hard enough even when it’s in your own familiar community.

Why in the world did I decide to spend my first two years as a teacher, at a British school, in an African country, with a culture completely different than they one I’ve lived in for nearly the whole 23 years of my life? Am I trying to set myself up for a breakdown or something?

I’m gonna be honest (as always), in the last 3 1/2 weeks I’ve had a lot of stressors, some questioning what in God’s name I’m doing and whether it was the right choice. Why is Kampala so big and busy? Will I ever meet friends here? Is it possible for me to be a light to my co-workers?

My fears may be legitimate but that doesn’t mean that’s where my mind has to linger, because there’s a bigger truth out there.

Philippians 4:13: “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.”

I like to think of it as the Nike of Bible Verses, telling us to “Just Do It.”

When times are hard or unclear, you have to keep pressing forward to get through it. When tragedy happens, you don’t sit and wallow forever, you eventually learn to move on the best you can and put your life back together, because you have to.

The bible says it so clearly: You, me, we all, can do ANYTHING because Jesus Christ gives us strength. And who could have more strength than the man who was beaten, ridiculed, murdered, dead for three days and then rose from the grave and loved the very people who tormented him and called out from the crowd for him to be killed?

Time and time again I’ve seen myself and others fail or not reach full potential because we’ve tried to do something out of our own strength. But that’s not how this world was created to be. Things are difficult and scary and uncomfortable, but YOU can do all things when you ask Jesus to be your strength. You can ask God to take away your troubles, but He doesn’t want you to weasel your way around your problems, He wants you to power through them, relying fully on Him, not yourself. Even the stumbling blocks the devil puts in front of you God can use for His glory, if you depend on Him to carry you through.

Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

-Matthew 19:26

“In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” -Romans 8:37

It doesn’t matter if my job is hard or if learning to live in Uganda is hard; I can do it all if I ask for God to give me the strength.  When you’re a Christian, there’s no need to ever wonder if something is possible because we believe it is. Jesus said so.

So when you’re struggling, keep pressing on towards the Father. Don’t stop and question the goodness of God because the enemy is begging to see you stumble. When you don’t know if you can, just do it, because the creator of the universe is rooting for you and He gives strength to all those that ask. Just do it, because, with God, you can.

Often things feel hard as I continue to settle into my new life but I hold tightly to the promises God made to me. He promised to deliver me back to Uganda and He did, so I have to believe it was for a purpose. He doesn’t do things on accident or just willy nilly. As I squirm and complain and wonder what in the world is going on with my life, He is molding me to trust more deeply in Him and He is continuously preparing me for what is to come.

With God “Can I?” turns into “I Can.”

And Just Do It into Just Did It.

I have been living in Kampala, Uganda for about two and a half weeks now and it has taken me that much time to put together some sort of commentary about it.

If there is one word I could use to describe the last two weeks (and every road in Kampala), it would be: bumpy.

I’m constantly back and forth, up and down. One minute I absolutely love my job at Rainbow, the next I suddenly feel like I have no idea what I’m doing. One evening I’ll be content on my own in my house, and the following evening I’ll miss my family enough to bring myself to tears.

Before I moved to Kampala I knew this time Uganda would be very different. Between January and April I lived in a village with very little access to internet, no tv, electricity that went off every day, no data on my smart phone, but I grew to love my simple lifestyle. I loved sitting on the porch of my house with two close friends, having nothing to do but chat and listen to the croaking frogs. I became accustomed to telling others about Jesus every day, to thinking about my relationship with God all the time, to expecting to see His miracles happening around me. But I knew this time, Uganda would be different.

I came prepared with the knowledge that life in the capital city of Kampala would be very different than village life in Uganda but the little things still surprised me. I immediately found it difficult to carve out time to spend with Jesus every day, like so many people with 9 to 5 jobs have a hard time doing. I have been desperately wanting close time with God but I’ve found myself struggling to do that while I’m navigating a new city and a new job, and trying to do things like get groceries home on a boda. I also became overwhelmed with the sudden realization that not every muzungu that comes to Uganda is a Christian; I had come to equate Uganda with an extremely Christian lifestyle, because that’s how I first experienced this country, but that’s not always the case. I’m also still trying to understand facets of the British school system that Rainbow utilizes and all the British terminology that goes along with it. I comprehend only about half of what my English colleagues say. And it’s still weird to be able to do things like leave my house at night. I’ve realized I’ve begun to basically live my American lifestyle in a very un-American place.

I’ll be honest and say it makes me a little sad to feel like I’m trading in my missionary life for an expat one. I’m not sure I’m completely comfortable with it yet. I miss the Uganda I first fell in love with- the lifestyle of simplicity, gratitude, and hospitality. Here in Kampala, poverty is still all around me but so are decent sized super markets, cell phone stores, fancy restaurants and hotels. I now have internet and tons of movies and my iPhone which are convenient for staying in touch with people back home and passing time, but I miss the days when, if I wanted entertainment I would go out of the gate and chase around the kids at the local well, or play cards with the little boys who lived next to the Field of Dreams. I am so grateful for my job and a concrete reason to be in Uganda for two years, but often I miss the days I spent the morning laying hand on this sick instead of discussing department budgets and photocopying. Sometimes I actually have to remind myself that I’m the same person that did those things back at Show Mercy. Even though I’m in nice teacher clothes and I’m tired after work, I am still the same girl I have been and I’m not too good to play with street children. But to my dismay, people in Kampala are different, and sometimes when I say hello to a child, they respond by asking me for money.

I am still very much adjusting to my new life in this city, and trying to figure out why it was so much easier for me to settle into a life in the village than in the city which is far more westernized. But what brings me comfort is knowing that God knew this was part of the plan for me all along, and He knows what is to come. He sees my heart’s pull to be out in the village again, among the little children who beam up at me with smiles blackened from sucking on sugar cane, back among people who invite you into their home and call you their granddaughter upon meeting you. He sees that I haven’t made any real friends yet here and He hears my call for relationships. He understands my pain of feeling disconnected from Him as I try to do the strange thing of living a ‘normal’ lifestyle in a place that is not at all normal to me. He sees it all and He knows it all and yet He has big, big plans.

I hope I haven’t sounded too negative and defeated because, most of the time, that’s really not how I feel. This lifestyle God has chosen me for is genuinely hard, but I know it will get easier. I might quit, pack up and go home if I didn’t honestly believe that God has magnificent plans for me here, plans I cannot wait for Him to reveal.

Daily I miss my family and friends, and wish I wasn’t alone so much of the time, but God is so strong, and He does not withhold that strength from His children that ask for it.

I’m excited to keep settling in to Kampala, to get into a routine and be able to fit in more time to spend with Jesus, more time to get out to the village, time to study Luganda, and more opportunities to teach people about the God who chose me.

Prayer Requests:

-Please pray that God will put great Christian friendships into my life, particularly with woman who I can relate to without a cultural/language barrier.
-Please pray that I will quickly adjust to my new job and be an effective teacher for my students.
-Pray for my family who I miss so much and God’s continued love and blessings in their lives. Also that they won’t miss me as much as I miss them.

I have a very wide range of emotions when I wake up on the morning of August 14. It took me a while to fall asleep the previous night, and I haven’t been in bed for more than six hours before I’m awake and my mind is running again.

Up until this morning, leaving for Uganda has not felt real. I have been so busy working during the day, saying my goodbyes to friends and family in the evening, then staying up late into the night packing. The reality of leaving had not yet sunk in. But this morning I feel it.

I remember waking up and thinking, “Oh my gosh, it’s today.” I feel all these things I don’t want to feel and know I shouldn’t. I feel nervous about everything that could go wrong in my 38 hours of traveling. I’m concerned about the amount and weight of my luggage. I’m nervous to say goodbye to my parents and the wave of emotions that will come from that. I’m thinking ahead to my overnight layover in Dubai and somehow trying to plan out how I will get to my hotel. I’m concerned about all these ‘what ifs’ and ‘maybes.’

I’m excited to leave for Uganda, but mostly just excited to arrive. I feel a longing to already be there, settled in, and done with the chaos.

In the past few days many many things have popped up, trying to derail my focus and give me stress. These things are not even worth naming because I know they are the enemy’s attempts to cause me to forget that I am on a journey, an assignment from God.

This time around, my stress level is way higher than the first time I went to Uganda. Last night, in a short conversation with my friend Patrice, we discussed how the enemy is really trying to throw me off course. He’s trying to keep me from whatever incredible plans God has in store for me. It occurred to me that he is trying so hard because he is afraid of the even greater glory that will be revealed as I take these steps into the destiny God has designed for me. Last time I went to Uganda, that was just a preview. That was like the little kid rides at an amusement park. Now the enemy can be scared, because this time is the real deal. I’ve devoted my life to this, and he’s not happy about it. I’ve got a one way ticket and nothing is stopping me. The enemy loses again.

This morning as I lay in bed and shuffle through my mental stack of worries, concerns, and list of last minute errands, God reminds me that His word says “the Lord will fight for you, you need only to be still,” (Exodus 14:14)

I’m trying really hard to push aside those annoying thoughts and focus on these truths: 1. God called me out of America to Uganda to begin a journey, bringing me closer to Him, 2. God will never leave me or forsake me, 3. I don’t have to fight my own battles, God will do it for me.

Please join me in this adventure by praying for me. I will needs LOTS of prayer over the next two years, but for now, please pray for traveling mercies over the next few days. Pray that I will not have unnecessary problems and God will protect me. Please pray that I will be still and remember the Lord God goes before me, and He will guard my path.

I am beyond excited to be back in Uganda-I have trouble holding my body parts still when I start thinking about it. I’m eager to be back in the country that sets a fire in my heart and see what God has planned there.

The LORD himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.”

-Deuteronomy 31:8