By Robin, Uganda
I've been in Uganda 17 years now. My heart’s desire was to work closely with the extremely needy here in Africa to help them learn that, if they follow the Lord, He can bring the solutions to this dark and difficult continent. I hadn't even realized that buying land and building a school would be such a key for people in extremely impoverished communities to begin to understand the Lord’s love. But in situations where they've had plenty of religion and even evangelists, they've been surrounded by such destruction, fear, mistrust, hate, and pain, Jesus showed me what they need, as Moody suggested, is “the Bible wrapped in shoe leather.” I would never have had the faith to bring kids in and to care for their entire living. But we soon learned that in our very rough area in Northern Uganda—where so many around us were returned child soldiers from the Kony LRA war of 20 years—that boys would follow horrible examples of violent drunkards, and none of the young girls would be able to stay safe, nonpregnant, and focused, unless we did. Faith is a very odd thing. We absolutely believe the promises, but I feel, sadly, at times that I’m not too different from the children of Israel. The Lord had brought them through so many miracles of protection, culminating in the Red Sea being opened, that it seems that their faith memory should be so clear. Wondering if they were going to get the next meal should have never happened—but it did, and it does! From the first days when the Lord miraculously provided a cash donation that we used to build the classrooms, and then the local-style teachers’ houses, it’s all been miracle by miracle. There has not been one single day our kids have not had all the medical care, clothing, bedding, or food on the table … and that’s impossible! —But that’s our Jesus! But it’s odd, because even though we pace ourselves in trusting Him to not fail, still there are times when a challenge comes, and the battle to fully trust the Lord and then follow Him with no obvious signs is as big a test as ever. It is one thing to trust Him for my own needs or direction, but when you’re responsible for 300 beautiful lives, it’s a bit scary at times! Since the beginning of this adventure, George Mueller has become quite a mentor of mine. He wrote something very interesting about faith. He was so adamant that his faith was not the gift of faith that only some people have, but it was the grace of faith that all Christians should have. I really relate to this because it’s simply a matter of taking God at His Word and believing it, then stepping out and trusting Him; and that’s something we each do many times a week, wherever the Lord has put us. I’m tested in practical matters so many times. The Lord will supply, and I’ll be tempted (again!) to want to build a buffer. After all, I’m supposed to be acting very responsibly for these extremely important, vulnerable young lives. But then the Lord will bring up a needy situation, and I’ll hear His still small voice, something like: “Withhold not good from those to whom it is due, when it’s in the power of your hand to do it” (Proverbs 3:27), and I’ll use the funds I had hoped to have in a buffer the way He’s showing, trusting Him to supply each day for my kids. I’m positive I make wrong judgments at times, but that’s the whole thing. It’s really nothing to do with me. I really don’t believe in praying in certain ways or trying to be “so righteous” so He’ll bless. It’s all about the Lord—He knows our weak vessels, and He loves these beautiful kids so wholeheartedly, so He has it all work together for good, despite me! And as Mueller famously said, “All this comes from taking God at His Word!” We now have two students in university, and one boy finishing high school, praying for a scholarship so he can go into medicine. Our kids from the remote Ik tribe, who the elders begged us to take, are now doing very well in secondary school and are just about to launch into training in midwifery, agriculture, business, and teaching, with two headed to be doctors. These things are going to be very instrumental in lifting their entire tribe from having one meager meal a day, into living more fully and healthfully! The Lord has shown us to take in South Sudanese kids from a refugee camp here in Uganda. Now we have three tribes with over 230 living with us, along with a large staff on our property, and we’re providing all the living and academics for over 40 of our students in high school. It’s all Jesus each step of the way! I used to think, before reading John Piper’s George Mueller’s Strategy for Showing God, that Mueller was probably a fairly staid, perhaps stern, Austrian chap. But the more I have read, the more real, down-to-earth, and fun-loving Ive learned he must have been. One of the last things he taught was something he’d repeated several times, and I totally concur: “According to my judgment, the most important point to be attended to is this: above all things, see to it that your souls are happy in the Lord. Other things may press upon you, the Lord’s work may even have urgent claims upon your attention, but I deliberately repeat, it is of supreme and paramount importance that you should seek above all things to have your souls truly happy in God Himself. Day by day seek to make this the most important business of your life. The secret of all true effectual service is joy in God.” The joy of the Lord is our strength! If anyone would like to help this project and these beautiful kids, contact Robin at her email [email protected]. http://www.familycareuganda.com/blog http://www.facebook.com/familycareuganda
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Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors. — African proverb
I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination. — Jimmy Dean The good things of prosperity are to be wished; but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired. — Seneca You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude toward what happens to you, and in that, you will be mastering change rather than allowing it to master you. — Brian Tracy A man is insensible to the relish of prosperity until he has tasted adversity. — Sa’di Musharrif-uddin Reflect upon your blessings, of which every man has plenty, not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some. — Charles Dickens The only disability in life is a bad attitude. — Scott Hamilton In the middle of a difficulty lies opportunity. — Albert Einstein All the world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming. — Helen Keller We have no right to ask when sorrow comes, “Why did this happen to me?” unless we ask the same question for every moment of happiness that comes our way. — Author Unknown A bend in the road is not the end of the road... unless you fail to make the turn. — Author Unknown A wise man adapts to circumstances as water shapes itself to the vessel that contains it. — Chinese Proverb The world is on the side of those who are left standing. — Turkish proverb Quote of the day:
"You are what your deep driving desire is; as your desire is so is your will; as your will is so is your deed; as your deed is so is your destiny." - Upanishads Think about it: I read an article called Discovering Your Dharma by Simon Heighwaya that I thought was interesting and wanted to share it with you. “I heard a story once about an eagle's egg that had gotten lost or abandoned and was found by chickens. When the eagle hatched, it was loved and cared for by the chickens, brought up to act and behave as if it were a chicken. It knew nothing else. “One day, the eagle was with his brothers and sisters pecking at the ground, like a chicken, when something made him look up to the sky. High above he saw a majestic sight: a beautiful bird soaring gracefully. Something stirred inside him -- a remembrance, a recognition of 'home.' “He asked the chickens, ‘What is that beautiful bird up there?’ The chickens looked up. ‘Oh that,’ they said, ‘That's an eagle, king of the birds. But forget about him. You are one of us; you are a chicken.’ “I don't know how the story ended and, to me, it is not a case of an eagle being superior to a chicken. An eagle's just different. “As I understand it, it's all just about remembering who we really are, regardless of what we've been told by others or how we have been brought up. A rose will grow into a rose even if it's in the middle of a field of tulips. “There is an ancient Indian word, "Dharma", which has two meanings. The first is, "Your nature: your true, real, essential nature." The second is, "Your purpose in life." To me the two are inseparable. I believe the word literally translates as Truth. “Whatever we are at our most fundamental level, at our most base, whether that be something metaphysical, or something like DNA, I believe that to discover or remember it is our 'raison d'etre.' And to live in harmony with our deepest selves is the meaning of success.” At age 53, Michael Gates Gill was at the top of his game--he had a lovely wife, an expensive home and a $160,000-a-year job in advertising. By age 63, he was divorced, unemployed and nearly broke--then his doctor informed him that he had a slow-growing brain tumor. In desperate need of health insurance and a regular paycheck, Gill took an entry-level job serving coffee at Starbucks for $10.50 an hour. To his amazement, he loved the work. Here are his thoughts on what recent years have taught him about life.
“Your own expectations can constrain you. In my earlier life, I defined myself by my career and social status--I was an affluent, Yale-educated ad executive. When I lost my job in advertising, I was certain that the solution to my problems lay in landing a new job in advertising or, if not that, a new client to get my own advertising consulting business on its feet. My mental image of myself prevented me from considering opportunities that did not fit that picture. I could not see myself in a service-sector job wearing an apron and a baseball cap. It took an outside force to break me out of this box. I was in my local Starbucks when, out of the blue, a manager asked me if I needed a job--it turns out that the Starbucks I had entered was having a "Hiring Open House." “You may not know your true priorities. I spent most of my adult life chasing bigger paychecks, loftier job titles and flashier possessions. These were my goals not because I chose them, but because I never considered that any other goals existed. My friends and family seemed to want these things, and I assumed that I wanted them, too. “When I accepted the job at Starbucks, it struck me that I probably would never again have money, titles or expensive possessions--yet one evening at Starbucks, I realized that I was as happy as I had ever been in my life. This "low-level" job gave me supportive bosses and coworkers, lots of human interaction and enough money to live a simple life. These were my real priorities, and I had never even known it. Instead, I had wasted most of my life pursuing other people's goals. Perhaps I could have discovered my true priorities long ago if I had listened to my heart, rather than allowing myself to get swept along in what those around me were doing. “Any task can be worthwhile if it involves serving others. I had considered serving coffee an unimportant job--until I figured out that my job was not really serving coffee at all. It was serving my customers and my coworkers. I might not be curing cancer, but I am doing my best to make life a little better for anyone who steps through the Starbucks' door. There are few feelings as wonderful as the feeling you get when you help someone feel better. The only job that's beneath you is one that you do not give your full effort to. I no longer consider it degrading to clean the toilets in a coffee shop bathroom. What would be degrading would be cleaning them poorly. Doing a task well--any task--is a source of self-respect. “Having money only creates a desire for more money. I earned a lot in my previous career, yet I was always in debt and worried about finances. Today I no longer have a car, a big house, stylish furniture or $2,000 suits... and I do not miss my former possessions in the least. I can't even remember why I thought they were important. Living without luxuries doesn't feel like a sacrifice. I love my cozy apartment. I love that I can go for a walk or sit at home reading a book and not feel that I should be out at a business event or an expensive restaurant. “Only when I started working behind a counter did I discover the joy of work that keeps you in the here and now. There are no long-term projects in my new career. When I prepare a cup of coffee, I don't worry about past mistakes or future challenges. I just do what I am doing right now to the best of my abilities, and I immediately see the results of what I have done. That is a wonderfully gratifying way to live. Most people work long hours and think about their jobs even when they are home. When I worked in advertising, a boss once ordered me to fly to Detroit on Christmas while my young children were still opening their presents. I went. I love the fact that now when I leave work for the day, I do not think about my job again until my next shift. That is what a job should be--a relatively small part of life. “It is natural to fear change, but things are rarely as bad as we fear. When we're faced with change, we worry that we will not be able to adapt or that we will not enjoy our new situation. I was scared of taking a job at Starbucks... scared that I wouldn't get along with coworkers half my age... scared when I was put in charge of a cash register, because I have never been very good with money. “Each time, I was scared before the change occurred--yet once it did, it was never as bad as I had feared. Sometimes we just have to take that leap into a completely unfamiliar situation and expect that we will rise to the challenge.” “The course of true love never did run smooth.”—William Shakespeare
“Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for.”—Erica Jong “Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.”—Peter Ustinov “You come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by seeing an imperfect person perfectly.”—Sam Keen “Love at first sight is easy to understand; it’s when two people have been looking at each other for a lifetime that it becomes a miracle.”—Amy Bloom “All the best things in life come packaged [with] a ribbon of risk. You untie the gift, you assume the risk, and equally, the joy. Parenthood is like that. Marriage is like that. Friendship is like that. In order to experience life in the full sense, you expose yourself to [continual] vulnerability.”— Kristin Armstrong “Love is like a precious plant. You can’t just accept it and leave it in the cupboard or just think it’s going to get on by itself. You've got to keep watering it. You've got to really look after it and nurture it.”—John Lennon “We mistakenly assume that if our partners love us they will react and behave in certain ways—the [same] ways we react and behave when we love someone.”—John Gray “It’s not love that blinds, but self-love.”—Voltaire “Relationships of all kinds are like sand held in your hand. Held loosely, with an open hand, the sand remains where it is. The minute you close your hand and squeeze tightly to hold on, the sand trickles through your fingers. You may hold onto some of it, but most will be spilled. A relationship is like that. Held loosely, with respect and freedom for the other person, it is likely to remain intact. But hold too tightly, too possessively, and the relationship slips away and is lost.”—Kaleel Jamison “You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; and just so, you learn to love by loving. All those who think to learn in any other way deceive themselves.”—Saint Francis de Sales “Love is like a Rubik’s Cube: There are countless numbers of wrong twists and turns, but when you get it right, it looks perfect no matter what way you look at it.”—Brian Cramer Quote of the day
“The secret of prosperity is generosity, for by sharing with others the good that life gives us we open up the wellsprings of abundance.” —J. Donald Walters Think about it An old man sells all of his goods for a large lump of gold, which he then proceeds to bury in a hole just outside his property. Every day he visits the spot, uncovering the gold, looking at it for a bit, then covering it back up. One of the man’s employees notices this odd behavior and follows the old man. He sees the buried gold, and when the old man returns home, the employee removes the gold and runs away with it. The next day the old man finds that his gold is missing and cries out in agony. A neighbor hears the old man’s story and suggests that he place a rock in the hole and cover it back up. “It makes no difference, does it? You didn't do anything with the gold anyway.” The lesson: Working hard is great. Making money is great. Saving money is fine. But money itself is nothing more than pieces of paper. Don’t forget that money’s true purpose is in service of a happy, healthy life. The size of the lump of gold doesn't make much difference if you don’t know how to use it to feel fulfilled and to share with others. Faith is a reasoning trust, a trust which reckons thoughtfully and confidently upon the trustworthiness
of God.—John Stott Doubt isn’t the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.—Paul Tillich Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.—Frederick Buechner The relationship between commitment and doubt is by no means an antagonistic one. Commitment is healthiest when it is not without doubt, but in spite of doubt.—Rollo May The great leaders of the people of God, like Moses, have always left room for doubt. You must leave room for the Lord, not for our certainties; we must be humble.—Pope Francis Sometimes doubting is not a lack of faith, but an expression of it. Sometimes to doubt is to merely insist that God be taken seriously not frivolously, to insist that our faith is placed in and upheld by something other than seeming conjuring tricks.—Mark Buchanan I think there is no suffering greater than what is caused by the doubts of those who want to believe. I know what torment this is, but I can only see it, in myself anyway, as the process by which faith is deepened. A faith that just accepts is a child’s faith and all right for children, but eventually you have to grow religiously as every other way. … If you feel you can’t believe, you must at least do this: keep an open mind. Keep it open toward faith, keep wanting it, keep asking for it, and leave the rest to God.—Flannery O’Connor For many people in our world, the opposite of faith is doubt. The goal, then, within this understanding, is to eliminate doubt. But faith and doubt aren't opposites. Doubt is often a sign that your faith has a pulse, that it’s alive and well and exploring and searching. Faith and doubt … are, it turns out, excellent dance partners.— Rob Bell You can’t stand effectively on “blind” faith. You must have a “knowing” faith, and that comes from believing wholeheartedly what the Word promises. You know God has spoken it and declared it to be so, and you know you can depend on that.— Gloria Copeland For many of us, the great danger is not that we will renounce our faith. It is that we will become so distracted and rushed and preoccupied that we will settle for a mediocre version of it.—John Ortberg If you try to make your circle closed and exclusively yours, it never grows very much. Only a circle that has lots of room for anybody who needs it has enough spare space to hold any real magic. --Zilpha Keatley Snyder
If you judge people, you have no time to love them. --Mother Teresa The greatest and noblest pleasure which we have in this world is to discover new truths, and the next is to shake off old prejudices. --Frederick II, the Great I always prefer to believe the best of everybody—it saves so much time. --Rudyard Kipling If you approach each new person you meet in a spirit of adventure, you will find yourself endlessly fascinated by the new channels of thought and experience and personality that you encounter. —Eleanor Roosevelt Until you have learned to be tolerant with those who do not always agree with you; until you have cultivated the habit of saying some kind word of those whom you do not admire; until you have formed the habit of looking for the good instead of the bad there is in others, you will be neither successful nor happy. —Napoleon Hill How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and the strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these. —George Washington Carver Quote of the day:
“No matter how small and unimportant what we are doing may seem, if we do it well, it may soon become the step that will lead us to better things.”--Channing Pollock Think about it: A little boy happened upon a large, stone pitcher filled with tasty hazelnuts. The boy slipped his hand through the narrow opening and grabbed a huge handful, but found that he couldn’t pull his hand back out of the jar. The boy yanked and yanked, but couldn’t pull his hand out, and so he started to cry. A man standing nearby said to the boy, “If you were satisfied with less, you could pull your hand out easily.” The lesson: Pace yourself. There’s nothing wrong with big dreams, but sometimes when you try to grab everything at once, you end up with nothing at all. It’s the same thing with financial goals—slow down, and don’t be afraid to pick out a series of little goals, one at a time, rather than a massive handful of goals all at once. A story is told about a woman who was grief-stricken at the loss of her only son. Her sorrow overwhelmed her, and she could find no comfort. Finally she went to a wise old philosopher for advice. “I will give you back your son if you will bring me some mustard seed,” he told her. “However, the seed must come from a home where there has never been any sorrow.” Eagerly the woman started her search from house to house. In every case, she learned that there had been some sorrow—a loved one had died or some other great misfortune had taken place. “How selfish I have been in my grief,” she said. “Sorrow is common to all.”
These days, we can hardly view the news or read a newspaper without being confronted with tremendous suffering and hardship throughout the world—earthquakes, fires, floods, wars, rampant disease, airplane and train crashes, and much more. The need for consolation has never been greater. Everyone needs comfort at some time or another. Everyone needs to be assured that no matter how bleak the future may appear, there is hope for a brighter tomorrow. There is peace to be found, if we will only hold on and believe that there is Someone who cares. We hope that this post will be a comfort to you personally, and will help you reach out to others around you who may be in need. Most of all, we hope it reassures you that God cares for you. |
AuthorThe goal of the blog is to provide interesting, motivational, soul feeding material. All to help remind us that God loves us all and wants a personal relationship with each of us and will take care of us in times of trouble. I aspire to be a force for good by providing you with positive input. I encourage you to share the blog with others. Archives
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