Author: Adventures

Happy

Contact with everyone back home is something that I am very, very thankful for. I receive so much comfort when I read an e-mail or a facebook message from people as they send me their love from all the way across the Atlantic Ocean. Many of the e-mails I receive are encouraging and positive as my family and friends genuinely wish happiness for me. And sometimes, it has been difficult to reply to those messages with the harsh reality that I'm not always having the time of my life. But that's okay. Because I don't think God is in the business of making us happy; God is in the...

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10. kony 2012

When I was fifteen my life was wrecked by a simple youtube video. It was a trailer for the Invisible Children documentary about child soldiers in Uganda. After that my life was forever changed. There was a war going on in Uganda and now a war going on in my own heart. My young eyes had been opened to a world of hurt that most of the world was completely unaware of. Seven years later many things have changed but my heart has continued to feel the burden of the injustice going on here. This past year there was an uproar over Invisible Children's newest video, Kony 2012. (If you want...

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Images

There are things I have seen here that unfortunately will be stuck in my mind for the rest of my life. Things that I honestly didn’t know existed. Sure I had heard stories about the LRA, third-world hygiene, or the medical treatment received here, but really had never paid much attention to them. As sad as the stories that you hear are, it’s just easier to forget about them and move on. But being here, and having these images crammed into my mind over and over again, how could I possibly forget? Whether it is the homeless old women with nubs for fingers begging for money, or...

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I’m ticked off.

LRA–The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) is a militant group/cult operating in northern Uganda, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Central African Republic. It has been accused of widespread human rights violations, including murder, abduction, mutilation, child-sex slavery and forcing children to participate in hostilities. I’m mostly venting here, but I promise you it’s a really powerful redemption story. Warning, it’s ugly…but it’s been made into something totally beautiful. One of our favorite ministries here in Lira is...

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when a number becomes a name.

‘The exact number of street children is impossible to quantify, but the figure almost certainly runs into tens of millions across the world.’ This is the result when I googled ‘number of street children worldwide’  Tony; A name that has changed my life the past three weeks. I met Tony a few weeks ago at Atin Afrika, a street kid’s ministry that we have invested in since returning from Nairobi. His story is like a lot of other street kids. He was living with his dad and step-mom in the village and ran into some problems with them. They abused him,...

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Neighbors.

I came here knowing I was going to live in Lira, Uganda I didn't come here knowing that I was going to love Lira, Uganda The past 2 months here have been rough at times, but getting to the peak is never an easy trail. And as a team, we have never climbed higher than we did in the past two weeks. We've poured our hearts and souls into this ministry that the irreplaceable people here have made available to us. But in reality, they were the ones filling us up in order to do so.  Lira isn't a town where I once lived, and it never will be. It is a town that I loved, and a town...

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