So, here it is. This is my story. I'm four days out from boarding a plane headed to Uganda, East Africa. Following is the copy of the informational letter I sent out to some family and friends about my trip. I didn't have everyone's address, though, so if you want one I can definitely email it to you.
Thus I find myself at the jump off point to my greatest adventure in life so far.
Here's to the journey...
My dearest friends and family,
Grace and peace to you. I hope this letter finds you all well. The fall now has quickly come and gone. Christmas is around the corner and in the midst of the hustle and bustle of the season, I am finding myself preparing to run full speed into the biggest adventure of my life so far. On December 8th, I’ll be boarding a plane headed to Uganda, East Africa.
In July of this past summer, I was approached by an organization called Light Gives Heat, and asked to consider a position overseas as their resident volunteer coordinator. After much prayer and deliberation, I accepted the job. At the time, I was still in Colorado as a yearlong property intern at Young Life’s Crooked Creek Ranch. I arrived back in Portland in the last few days of October, and have since been preparing to leave for Uganda. I’ll be living and working in the country for approximately ten months to a year, starting on December 10th.
Let me tell you a little bit about the recent history of Uganda, to understand what has lead me to make this move overseas. As you may or may not know, Uganda has been in a state of civil war for the past two decades. For over twenty-three years, a rebel faction known as the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has wreaked havoc in the north of the country. The war has resulted in the death of an estimated 200,000 people, the displacement of over 2 million people, and the abduction of over 25,000 children by the LRA to serve as child soldiers. Today, the LRA has largely vacated Uganda and has taken refuge in nearby Garamba national forest, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). They are still on the move, and continue to kill and abduct civilians in the DRC, Central African Republic (CAR), and southern Sudan. Many organizations have taken up the cause of telling Uganda’s story in hopes that a western world would be inspired to act upon the behalf of the nation to restore peace. Maybe the most well known of these organizations is called Invisible Children, named after the children in northern Ugandan towns who walked many kilometers at night to sleep in safer areas to avoid being abducted by the LRA.
Here is where my story intersects Uganda. My passion for its people and their struggle was birthed as the result of the awareness created by Invisible Children. In 2004, I learned about Invisible Children and their cause through a friend, and afterward spent time researching the war. In the following several years I organized outreach material for events in Portland and Seattle put on by the Invisible Children. My passion for Uganda grew and developed and I tried on a few separate occasions to work in Uganda directly. The Lord closed doors on each of those opportunities, and I felt the need to be patient and wait. I always believed my time to travel to Uganda would come. Then, while I was in Colorado with Young Life (a non-profit organization that works with high school youth) last year, I was told of an organization working with women in Jinja Uganda, called Light Gives Heat (LGH), by a good friend of mine. She urged me to check out what they were doing over there, and I did. From the second I clicked on the LGH website, I knew that this project was special. And it is. My heart soared as I read the stories of the women—stories that told of coming out of places of fear and death to places of hope and redemption and sustainability. It would be safe to say that I was pretty hooked on LGH from the start.
This past May was when the big breakthrough came for me, and the opportunity to pursue traveling to Uganda was again presented. At a local vendor festival in Boulder I happened to run into the Light Gives Heat crew who had a booth set up there. We chatted for a while about my year so far in Colorado, and I spoke with them about the opportunity to work for Light Gives Heat once my internship ended. A few weeks later I received an email from LGH saying a position as the volunteer coordinator for their operations in Africa had opened up. Two weeks after that, I drove to Montrose, Colorado to visit with Morgan and Dave Hansow, the founders of the organization, and Rachel Stroud, their communications director. After three hours of lunch and great conversation, I was offered the job with Light Gives Heat.
So let me clarify a little bit who Light Gives Heat is, what they’re about, and what they do in Uganda. LGH runs a program in Jinja called Suubi, which in the Lugandan language means “hope”. About 125 Ugandan women are part of the Suubi program. The women are from the Acholi tribe in the north. It was the Acholi people who were most brutalized by the LRA. As a result of the war and the ensuing displacement crisis, many displaced Acholis sought refuge further south. Some moved to Jinja with the hope of finding relative safety and also a means to support their families. Unfortunately, most families continued to dwell in extreme poverty, unable to earn any kind of consistent or sustainable income. The women who are part of Suubi make jewelry of brightly colored paper dipped in lacquer, and sell it to people in Jinja. In 2007, when Dave and Morgan moved to Uganda, they were met with a people suffering from twenty years of agony in the face of the civil war. Light Gives Heat was started as a response to their stories. Here is the excerpt from the Light Gives Heat website; their description is beautiful and communicates their purpose well.
“The 125+ women of Suubi (representing 900 immediate family members) are amazing, generous, beautiful, and courageous. They all have a story that will bring tears and inspire the listener with more hope—they are the true heroes. Light Gives Heat is merely a vessel—an agent allowing them to help themselves by the buying and reselling of their beautifully handcrafted paper beaded jewelry here in America. With interns and volunteers on the ground in Uganda we are currently buying over 850 necklaces each week at triple their usual profit—providing a fair and consistent income where there once was none. We also help facilitate weekly literacy and English classes for the women and encourage our volunteers to love on the women and spend time with them doing the daily chores of cooking, washing clothes, or even rolling beads. Whatever form love needs to take, we want to be in the mix of it. And just as important are westerners—not just a means to an end, but an end in themselves. We are in need of an opportunity to look outside ourselves, to see that our neighbors are also the people halfway across the world.
At the end of the day it is not an ‘us over them’ situation, at LGH we truly view our relationship with the Suubi women as level and reciprocal. We can offer them our resources and time, but they offer us love, perspective, and hope! Really, it’s all about hope—we are in need of realizing that hope is a daily choice and our encounters with the women of Suubi have changed us forever. We have been shown a hope that doesn’t make sense, a hope that has changed everything!”
So there it is. The driving point and purpose behind Light Gives Heat is to see hope provided to Africa and the West alike. I’m honored to be part of a movement that seeks to love across cultural, socio-economic, and even religious boundaries. And I’m so excited to finally live out my dream of working among the people of Uganda. Suubi has been expanding since its beginning. Initially, resources available to run the program allowed for 60 women to take part. Now, that number has more than doubled. As the movement grows and more resources become available, more Africans will have a chance at a better life; one where there is enough food to go around, and their kids actually have the means to go to school, for example. This is exactly the kind of movement I’ve been yearning to be part of.
Now for the financials. This kind of trip certainly doesn’t come without a considerable cost. I’m writing to you for two reasons. Number one, I want to give you a glimpse of my heart and the things it beats for: particularly in regards to social justice, and the desire to be in the midst of working towards a solution to the intense suffering experienced by our African family.
Second, this letter comes with a sincere request.
I’m asking you to partner with me in my time in Africa by donating financially. I’m raising money for my airplane travel to and from Africa, my cost of living abroad and the homefront expenses I’ll need to cover while I’m there, travel insurance, medications, etc. All totaled, my expenses will come to around 5,000 dollars. I cannot do this on my own, and so I’m humbly asking for your help to make this dream a reality for me, and for the Suubi women whom I will have the pleasure of serving. Any amount helps!! If we do this together, I deeply and sincerely believe that not only will the lives of some amazing Ugandans change—our hearts will also transform in the process.
Finally—and this is more important than anything I could ask for—I need you to pray. Pray for the continued hope and restoration of the Acholis and their culture. Pray for peace and an end to this devastating war. Pray for the sustained efforts of Light Gives Heat and countless other organizations and NGOs—not only in Uganda, but also in other war-ravaged countries and areas like Darfur in Sudan and the Congo. I fully realize these are big problems. They aren’t going to have solutions overnight. And it’s true that there are forces at work here with the intent to perpetuate hate and violence and division. But there are much more powerful forces, just as present in our world, that are working tirelessly to bring joy and purpose and hope back into peoples lives. But it all requires that people be committed to prayer. And it also means that we have to intentionally choose compassion over complacency.
If you made it to the end of this letter, thanks for reading that far! Also, I need to tell you something else. Thanks for believing in my dreams and walking through them with me. Thanks for your support and encouragement and love over the years. Thank you most of all for your prayers. I’ll never be able to fully express how much they truly mean to me.
Also enclosed in this letter is a sheet of pertinent links to my trip and necessary information, should you wish to contribute financially to this mission. All donations are tax-deductible. I’ll be keeping up a blog so that information on my journey should be (fingers crossed) fairly up to date. I’ll have email while in Uganda and access to the internet, so while my facebook time will be limited, I’ll still be on that, too. J
Thanks again. My prayer is that your holidays bring an incredibly rich time for you and your loved ones. May you know the love of our Maker in increasing ways and experience the joy and true meaning behind this season.
Peace be with you.
Yours,
Marayah
No comments:
Post a Comment