I apologize for not having any previous blogs, it was mostly due to the fact that I couldnt figure out how to sign in.
Anyways…
We have now been here in Uganda for over a week, though where the time has gone is unknown to me- I feel as though I am just catching wind of its flutter. There is a beauty here that is unsurpassed- even in all my travels, a beauty that catches you off guard with its simplicity. Its a beauty seen in a widows eyes, the laughter of a small child, in the footprints left behind by a passing stranger. I was told to look for color when I arrived, soon to understand it was the color of a people, the different hues of a nation. It has only taken a few days to see within myself a dull reality, a reality that has been stirred by a deep hunger…a yearning.
Last tuesday we went to the "Sanyu Babies Home". Its an interesting name because the Ugandan people have called me Sanyu…which means happiness. It was a home filled with over 150 infants that were abandoned by their mothers at the hospitals or dumped on the side of the road. One of these was a baby girl named Daniella who will have forever changed my heart. She is 9 months old, but has the body of a 3 month old. Her head is deformed and she cannot hold down a full bottle, so the job given to me was to feed her every 15 minuets.
I stared into her fragile face, broken by it. Her little fingers grasped my own in a weak attempt, she was intently staring at my face. Maybe she saw beauty that I could not. I smiled at her, singing over her healing… prophesying a future and a hope. Even in her deformity, her fragility, her unability she was still amazingly beautiful to me. And it was in this moment the Holy Spirit spoke to me "Larissa even in your spiritual deformity, weakness, fragility, vulnerability, and unability you are still beautiful to me". It was a statement that encountered something deep within me, a voice that said you have to do A B and C to walk in the greater depths of Gods love. But the truth is I already do. His love was never hidden from me but rather it was a gift freely given. And as I walk out this process of being transformed by the renewing of my mind, my crippled nature will come under the alignment of heaven, and the once broken reflection will begin to look more and more like Christ. He will bring forth beauty from my ashes….
