Be Aware of What's Around You

For 21 years, the people in Northern Uganda have been at war. Only this war is not their own. The LRA (Lord's Resistance Army)began with Alice Lakwena, a spirit-posessed woman, who believed that it was God's will for her to overthrow the Ugandan government. Kony, the current leader of the LRA, claimed to be her cousin and followed her as leader of the LRA. Since the adults have grown tired of war, the LRA began kidnapping children as young as 5 and forced them to become soldiers. These children experienced violent indoctrination, brainwashing, and were forced to witness murders and commit violent murders as well. The LRA chose to abduct children that small because they were big enough to carry a gun, yet small enough to sneak into villages and homes and kidnap other children.

In effort to keep their people safe, the Ugandan government gave the people 48 hours to leave their homes and commute to an internal displacement camp, where thousands of people would live together. However, this temporary solution has not only turned into a permenant living condition, but it has also become one of the worst humanitarian crisis ever. Children die every 15 seconds from malaria. Thousands of people die each year from diseases that are caused by the water. The solution is simple: Give them back their homes, give them clean water.

On April 28th, tens of thousands of people traveled to 15 different cities all over the United States to make a stand for those living in the displacement camps in Northern Uganda. While there, the Invisible Children crew filmed a variety of things, including the group holding up banners, that put together will form a poem. This video will be edited to form a video petition that will be shown before the Senate in a couple of weeks. More than 67,000 people left their homes for one night to sleep outside in cardboard huts to represent the tens of thousands that have been living in horrific poverty for 10 years.

When we arrived, we were to turn in our water and crackers, which would later be rationed out. During the course of the evening, we wrote our Senators, we called 5 people who don't know about the invisible children to explain it to them, we had 21 minutes of prayer and silence for every year that Uganda has experienced war, and there were various video clips informing us of the situation in the IDP camps. Jacob, a former child soldier, was our keynote speaker and did an amazing job of sharing his heart and the importance of the event.



Just because these people are thousands of miles away does not mean that your voice can't have an affect on the way that they live. The place that you live should not determine the way that you live. Please go to www.invisiblechildren.com for more information. Educate yourself on the situation in Uganda and use your time, money and talent to do something about it.

Human Slingshots

I just want to bury myself in a dark hole, wrap myself in a blanket, and sleep. I want to forget about this broken world and the state of sin that we all live in. I long to be with my Savior. But since I am still here, I just want to hide. My soul feels tired, stretched out, waiting to be released.

My heart is with the poor. I'm in the middle of reading tons of books on modern-day slavery and human trafficking, watching whatever video I can that has anything to do with it, constantly thinking, trying to come up with different possibilities that might make a difference. My heart longs to be somewhere, anywhere, helping those that cannot help themselves. It makes so many things here seem pointless. That's something I'm fighting against. I watched the movie Tsotsi right before going to play cards with my friends tonight. I probably should have waited, because it broke my heart. So much of the world lives the way Tsotsi did in the movie. Doing whatever it takes to make ends meet, to make the pain go away, anything to survive. Few find enough hope to change things or do the right thing, depending on their circumstances.

I know I'm just rambling now, but I did realize tonight that my guard is still up. I thought it was down. It's not. It's still there. And right now, I can barely breathe. There's still that voice inside saying, "If you really knew me, you wouldn't give me the time of day.. so I'll show you enough to let you think you know me, but not enough so that you run away." Maybe its something we all do. I think its part of human nature.

I feel stretched, like a slingshot. Just when I think that the Lord can't break me anymore, He finds a new way and pulls me back a little further, Aunt Gayle passed away a few weeks ago with a lot of unresolved issues with her brothers; a little farther, Grandma's Alzheimers is so bad that she doesn't know me anymore; a little farther... the tension grows, you'd think the slingshot would have snapped in two by now. Still a little further, and a little further. Every now and then, the reminder comes that He hasn't forgotten me here, that even though he keeps pulling me back further and further, just when I least expect it, He's going to let go and let me go flying in all His glory and grace. Hopefully that day will come soon when He will release me to live out the passion in my heart. Until that day I have to remember to take hope in that He's preparing me. With each tug, pull, break he is molding me and shaping me.

So in the meantime, I have to not let myself run away.