UGANDA!

As most of you know, my best friend, Raquel, and I have been talking about our desire to go to Africa for a long time now. We started planning a trip to Uganda about 8 months ago and were all set to go with a secular global volunteer organization. Well, about 3 months ago, we both felt God telling us to change our plans. WHAT? But we like having an exact schedule of what we'll be doing and where we'll be! Well, God had a different "plan". We listened.

We told the organization we weren't going. We requested our refund. We waited. A month went by and we still didn't know what we were doing. We waited. We prayed every week for guidance. Where could we find a place that could use us in Uganda? We kept meeting people who knew people there. So, we emailed them. We were making connections but nothing was resonating with us yet. God was telling us to wait. We searched diligently online for organizations who were there or organizations who were going. We still had no idea what we were going to be doing. All we knew was that God was saying "Go." Money kept rolling in. We kept praying. We kept waiting.

We held a last minute garage sale and God gave us $800! We said,"Okay, God. You are still telling us to go.". We were going on faith now. We requested the dates off of work. Still no flights purchased, still no organization to go with, still no place to live once we got there. We waited. Another few weeks passed. Then one day, with 6 weeks to go until our departure date, Raquel emailed me, saying that a Christian organization (African Hearts) had contacted her regarding volunteering on the exact dates we had already planned to go. How did they find us? GOD. It turns out that they are doing exactly what we have been longing to do more than anything else- spending time with kids on the streets and in orphanages. It was God's answer to our prayers, so clearly!

All of a sudden, things were falling into place. We booked our flights, got our vaccinations, and started packing! This organization fits us better than anything we had imagined. We will be spending all our time with kids. No schedule of subjects to teach, no skill set needed (just our style :). We can just BE. We can be with kids, loving them, learning from them, investing in them.

We will be spending three days a week in the city's slums, giving medicine to the kids who live there and spending time with them. In the afternoons, we will spend time with the boys from the orphan homes that African Hearts takes care of. We will teach them Bible classes, music, games, and art. During the evenings, we will live at a Babies' orphan home (also sponsored by African Hearts). On Sundays, we get to take our boys to church. On our free days, we have the flexibility to go wherever we were needed or simply spend time with the various people we are sure to meet.

On some Thursdays, it turns out we may be "preaching" or giving our testimonies to the kids at another orphan home that we had contacted earlier. Even though we will not be working with them as we had anticipated, they still want us to come. We're also going to go visit a little girl who Raquel sponsors through World Vision. Uganda is exactly where we are meant to be. God told us so. Isn't it amazing to be so completely in His hands? I couldn't be more in awe.