i do not miss america.

Today is Wednesday, July 1. But I feel like it could be any day. I have no sense of time here. I like not knowing what day it is or what time it is…it is almost like time is irrelevant or even non-existent. But it matters so much at home. My life in San Diego runs on time, but life here in Uganda runs on love or experience or people or something lovely like that.
I have cried many tears. I have smiled much and laughed more. I have many stories to tell, the kinds of stories that are best told face-to-face. So it is intimidating to even try to write something that feels like Uganda, that feels like I feel. But, alas, I will try.
This place is so beautiful, more than I remember. It is impossible for me to imagine such horror happening in a place so saturated with beauty. The sky is massive, higher and wider and deeper than you think it could be. On the drive from Kampala [the capital city] to Lira [where I am living], I was the audience to a glorious sunrise. It started out as a pale orange stripe across the bottom of the sky. It looked like the light was repelling the clouds. The color grew and grew, as if God was painting slowly a watercolor, adding more and more colors and slurring them around.
I have been reunited with a family of Ugandans who are the fiercest lovers I know. They love so well and so deeply. I could write pages about each of the COTN staff. And then there are the children…the COTN kids. 30 orphans, each has their own story, their own trauma. They are selected from IDP [internally displaced people] camps to come live at the COTN home, where they are cared for by a new family of mamas and aunties and uncles. I love these kids, children in general. I feel an immense love for them…it feels like an enormous creature swallows me up when I am with them, or if I even just see them. I can’t really put it into words. It’s like that piece of God’s heart inside of me starts swimming or ringing or screaming or stabbing me or something. Sometimes it is almost unbearable, but if I didn’t bare it, I wouldn’t be me. Every time I feel that inside me, I remember that what I feel for these kids is a small portion of what God feels for me. How great is our Father’s love.
I have experienced many heartbreaking things in the 2 weeks I have been here. At church, I sat next to a baby who had an abnormally large head. Like, very large. Either something was wrong with her or something was not right. A fly was burrowing into the inner corner of her eye. The baby just laid there; it seemed like she was dead. It is a disturbing thing to not be able to tell the difference between alive and dead. I walked through a prison of men [many all who are falsely accused] most who had horridly distended bellies. I have shaken hands without fingers [cut off by the rebels] and heard unimaginable stories of abduction and torture and rape. I was talking with our driver, Jimmy [a fearless servant] and he told me that because Northern Uganda has experienced such immense pain, that there is great opportunity for joy to come alive. It doesn’t make sense to my small head and my confined heart, but I know it is true because I see it and I feel it all around me here. God is inescapable.
The Ugandans’ smiles are joy. Smile. Smile. Smile. The smiles here are more genuine and powerful than ours, each one aggressively defying the pain of the past and claiming the joy that only our Creator can give. Everything here, the people, the trees, the dirt, the sky, seems to be crying out to our Father, who smiles back down on them. They know how to just be here. Be alive. Be human. Be loved. Be lovers. I am daily challenged by their capacity for love and joy.
I’ve done so much already. We are building the new children’s village. We have worshipped with prisoners. We have Jesus Film-ed. I bought a chicken at the market and carried it home by its feet. I helped put on a 3-day leadership conference. I have held hands and wiped tears. I have prayed hopefully over sick bodies. I have taught art to orphans. I have witnessed the casting out of a demon. I visited the Invisible Children office in Gulu. I went to Sacred Heart Secondary School. I swing danced in the rain. I laid on top of our broken down van and watched the lightning pulse in the sky. But all of this stuff I have DONE shrivels in comparison to what I have BEEN. I have been loved by God. How awfully often I forget that BEING is what I am called to do. My worth lies within a God who has already accepted me and I can BE His.
If you made it to the end of this, thanks! And sorry for the length. I do not miss San Diego, but I do miss you. I am too overwhelming content with this place and my God to miss home. I think of you though, and I pray for you too. Pray for the health of my team [many have been sick] and pray for the people we will be interacting with. Pray that I can love like my God loves me.
Amari [I love you],
Alisa