Saturday, February 4, 2012

Kaabong, Uganda, 29 Jan 2012


                                       Week-One In a New Land

We have been in the North for only a few days and I feel as if I will never get over the beauty my eyes have seen in Karamoja. I am now setting on the roof of our house. The bearded moon looks like the crooked smile of a Cheshire cat. I look all around me and nothing is the same. My home in Tennessee, ten thousand miles from here, has no Karamoja equivalent. Behind me, the boulders stand as high as our roof, but on climbing to top of these boulders, I see the puniness of my little pile of rocks. As I look all around, I realize the savanna where I now find myself is boxed in on three sides by shear rock ridges, over ten thousands feet.
 I thought Africa would be hot. Here it is 55 to 80 degrees year round. I thought it would be noisy, but the only human voice I hear is the singing from the village, five hundred yards away. I thought the bugs would be bad, but here in Karamoja the bugs do little more than sing the same song I have heard so many times while walking on the farm in Tennessee.
I am overwhelmed by the peace that surrounds me. It is hard to image this place as the setting of so many wars, cattle raids, killing, and droughts. I have found a new peace in here. A peace that comes not from the serenity that surrounds me, nature can be deceiving, but from my God, the One who brought me here. What is it that You have brought me here to do? Am I ready? Will I be strong enough? God help me to trust in You for all of this. It is You who brought here, it is You who will keep me.  

2 comments:

  1. And that really all you need to know, isn't it! 123 my son

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  2. I miss you my brother. More than you know.

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