Author: Adventures

Comfort What? Comfort Zones

Spend about 20 minutes around our team and chances are you'll hear the phrase "comfort zone" a time or two. I knew that picking up and moving thousands of miles away to rural Uganda with a bunch of strangers would undoubtedly involve stepping out of mine, but it seems that every day there is a new lesson to be learned about abandoning familiarity and comfort to follow God into the hard places. For starters, I never expected that my ministry here would involve playing volleyball with a bunch of high school boys. If I had known that as I was signing up for this trip, I...

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Love transcends all

I am continually amazed by the amount of joy the people, but especially the children of Uganda have. Even in the midst of such poverty they have the brightest smiles that capture your heart. Whenever I am surrounded by children here, I am overwhelmed by their love. I can only hope they feel as loved by me as I do by them.   Today our team went to a Sunday church service at Kinyansano Cathedral. There I sat with a six year old girl and her two little sisters. None of us spoke the same language but it didn’t matter. The Lord continuously reminds me that love can transcend any...

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Why Follow When God Says Lead?

I have to be honest, leadership is never something I wanted for myself. And Uganda isn't somewhere I ever pictured myself coming back to. But I am SO thankful that the Lord knows better, and that his plans are way better than my own. I went on the World Race in July 2011. Toward the end of my race,God kept putting this whole leading a Passport trip thing on my mind. But I was terrified. So I kept ignoring it and dreaming of what my life in America would look like. I had all these plans for my life, and they were my plans. I wasn't considering God's, but he had much...

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Go, Tell it on the Mountain

Today, I was "one of the guys". Over the weekend, Garrett and Colin hiked out to some of the more remote and rural villages a few miles away, and ever since they returned with stories of the people they met and things they experienced, I've had an inexplicable desire to go see for myself. I tried to get them to go back and take me with them on Monday. And on Tuesday. And again on Wednesday. And I was a little confused about what God was doing and discouraged when the days came and went and we still hadn't gone. And then I realized, for about the thousandth time since being...

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Toilet Paper…?

Alright.  I know you are wandering about the title, as you should be. The story is a little embarassing but hey, i am in Africa. Ok, so we went to church sunday and its like a forty minute bus ride, which I LOVED!!! Anyways, we got done with church and were waiting to head back home, so i figured i should probably go to the squatty. (For those of you who dont know what a squatty potty is, it is nothing but a hole in the ground where you go to do your business.) So i make my way to the squatty, do my business, reach for the toilet paper… There is none. Anywhere. I was looking...

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Plateau on a mountain top.

Before I left for Uganda everyone was telling me "you're never going to be the same again" or "you're life is going to be flipped upside down ".  In a lot of ways those words are true. I definitely have a larger appreciation for the things I took for granted. Drinking water from the sink, stove tops, and garbage service to name a few. Those are the things you never really learn the value of until you are forced to live without. I definitely have learned a lot about improvisation.  We are two weeks in and things have been rather different, but I very...

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