Some Reflections Before Life in the Village

If anyone would have said to me in December, "Americans need Jesus too. There is so much ministry that needs to be done here." I would have said, "Duh; all of us need Jesus." If someone had dared to express to me, "Maybe God will call u to stay here in the States." I would have said "I know that He can, but please no! Don’t make me stay here!"I think a big part of me really expected to come here and have some sense of "I want this to be home”—maybe not Uganda specifically, but somewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa, or anywhere but the States. I don't know why, but such is what I had pictured for so long in my head.

Culture shock for me was not a struggle with latrines or dirt floors (partially because I do not have either at my home here); culture shock for me has been the realization of something that I already knew on a cognitive level. Humans are fallen creatures who need redeemed by our Savior daily—Ugandan Christians as much as Americans. I came already affectively valuing Ugandan culture “as a means by which God reveals different aspects of himself," (our one syllabus) and I think I had a somewhat romanticized version of what Christianity would look like being lived in Africa anywhere. But I was soon blinded by the fact that sin distorts God’s revelation here as much as at home. Please do not misunderstand; there are indeed a lot of great people on this campus and the surrounding community who genuinely love the Lord and endeavor to follow HIm. But there are also those, just like in America, who profess faith in Christ and do not live as He bids us to. 

 I have for so long wanted to leave the States; since high school, I have desired to serve the Lord elsewhere. Missionaries (not the ones who served colonial interests rather than Jesus) have been my heroes of faith. I think I express that often to anyone who talks to me long enough! Now, I am aware that my home is a part of me that I truly love and miss, so much more than I expected to. That is not to imply that I cry myself to sleep here and long to go home already (because I'm definitely not anywhere close to being in that state of mind), but for the first time ever in my life, I think that I am legitimately willing to live in the States for as long as Jesus asks me to do so. Before coming to Uganda, I was also "willing"--out of a love, passion, and trust in His plan--but I would never have ceased to feel antsy and would have constantly asked, "Ok, can I go somewhere now?....How about now??" Today, I am more willing on an emotional level to enjoy my home culture, and I don’t know if I can adequately express how strange it feels for me to say that. I think I grasp more fully the concept Paul expresses in Romans 1, that the creation groans waiting for the Lord to be revealed. This world will never truly be home in the fullest sense, so I should stop subconsciously thinking that traveling anywhere is going to fix the spiritual longing that is in all of us for something beyond what we have here. This life will never bring complete fulfillment, and that is a large part of the point of the Gospel.