Sharon.

I have been thinking a lot about the image of the little girl in my last entry. The one who smeared dirt on her picture while trying to sweep off paper scraps with her hand. It makes my stomach sink and my head all cloudy inside. I was talking it over with my dear new friend Jerusha [who is doing trauma counseling with girls forced to kill family members], and she took the image of the little girl and spoke a beautiful, haunting truth out of it. In this picture that I can't get out of my head is a girl that God created to be creative, and as she tries to uncover that creativity inside of herself, the reality of her situation smears across her attempt to be more, to be something different. The more she works to uncover her own desires and skills and beauty, the more the dirt crusted on her hand, the more the limits of her poverty and war cover it up.

What hurts me so deeply about this is that I can't really do anything to help her. I can love her in the immediate, I can care about her, I can pray for her. I can ask God to give her food, to wash the dirt of her body, to provide school fees. But God usually doesn't work like that. I have full confidence that He could help her in these ways, but I doubt that He will. Yes, i am doubting that God will provide for this girl. This is all very confusing. And overwhelming. This is just one girl of millions who are living in the disguisting hand of poverty, and many are far worse off. And it's so real. When I can barely hold this girl because her belly is so swollen and it awkwardly takes up so much space, it is real and it becomes my burden.

I wish that I didn't doubt God. That I could just trust Him with this. And that I wasn't so torn up and shaken. But then, is it really bad to be broken up over things that break God's heart? to cry with God over this girl? As much as I mourn for this little girl [whose name is Sharon btw], God weeps and weeps and longs for her to know that He loves her infinitely. He knows her inside and out. All her worries and fears and hurts. That is my comfort.

The neighbors are blasting Ne-Yo's "Sexy Love". I love this place even when it hurts.

wedding!

I am in a Ugandan wedding! I'm going to be a bridesmaid. Today the other intern girls and I went to the market to get fitted for dresses for the wedding. Lime green and black! With headwraps, which will probably make me look like a cancer patient. I am quite excited. The wedding is next Saturday. that's what's up.

Today we went to a village where I helped the children make mosaics. I was very impressed with their creativity despite their relative lack of motor skills. I saw many big bellies. They are swollen and tight. The kids I worked with today were so dirty...filthy. Dirt was caked all over their skin, making them look ashy. One of the little girls was trying to wipe paper scraps off her paper, but her hand left dirt stains all over the paper. I still don't know what to do with that.

Highlight of the day: a 3 month old baby named Calvin fell asleep on me.

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

things i will miss...

these are the things i will miss most while i am in uganda:

1. milk

2. meisha

3. you

i really wish i could teleport.

today will be spent running around much like a crazed creature, purchasing last minute supplies for our team. this morning i bought $400 worth of ink for the COTN staff in uganda. crazy. $400 worth of ink is sitting next to me in an office depot bag on the ground.
i have discovered that there are very few of my friends left in san diego :( but i will soon be one of the ones who is gone...so i can't complain.
26.25 hours until the beginning of a great adventure.

packing...

packing requires much thought. i feel like i am still in school. i don't know what to wear on the airplane. perhaps I will just apparate there instead. i'm trying not to get caught up and tied down with all the petty details...because they're really not worth it. big picture, alisa. big God. big picture.
i remember last year, when we were driving from kampala to lira, we passed so many people who were just living their normal, everyday life. and i intersected that life for just a second as we drove past in the van. i remember thinking about how God loves them and that he died for ALL of them and that he is after their hearts. i wanted them all to know that as we zoomed by. but then i had to ask myself if i really knew that. or believed it. do i really believe God loves me? i think sometimes i don't or i would live differently. i am striving to believe what i know and to let that saturate my thoughts and actions. i'm excited to drive north again. i wish that i appreciated that little adventure more last year, so this year i will appreciate it more.

two days from today.

i've never blogged before. this is weird. i've never thought of my thoughts as being blog-worthy. i'm scared i might mess this up...or read this a year from now and laugh at how confined my mind and heart were. oh well. here goes something.

i normally like packing...but not when it's combined with moving out of the castle after the brutal wake of finals. today i racked up an impressive ten hours of packing and cleaning. i do like being able to look at 3 boxes and know that all my stuff fits within them. i was able to simplify down my stuff...getting rid of things is great. that is one thing i am immensely looking forward to in uganda: simplicity. it is refreshing. i sometimes feel like every material thing i own is a little string tying me down to the world, like how gulliver gets tied down by a thousand tiny lilliputians. getting rid of stuff reminds me of its insignificance.
today, i overheard a dad praying before his family ate: "thank you, father, for being up in heaven, watching over us." i wanted to interrupt and say that that is not our God. he isn't up in heaven looking down on us. he is with us. he lives in us. and he brings his kingdom to earth through us. i am glad that my God is not a god who sits up in heaven and stares down at me. no. he is moving, running, crying, laughing with me.

as i've been preparing for uganda, to return to that beautiful, challenging place, i've been thinking about how i conceive of God. like how i picture Him. and how i fit into that picture. for a while, my picture has been like this: God is up high, slightly bored of me, who is running around in a circle on a patch of grass below him. in my concept of God, God is waiting for me to just stop what i'm doing and just exist as his beloved. ugh. maybe i am as confused as that praying dad. my picture of God is starting to change though. it doesn't have me in it anymore. it looks sort of like a collage of all the lovely and precious and humble qualities that i see in the people that make up my community. it's God who puts those little pieces of himself in us...and they are cultivated with love and time and experience. every good thing in a disciple is a little bit of God's character revealed to me on earth.
in 2 days i will be on an airplane flying first to dubai, then to addis ababa, then to entebbe. then an 8 hour bus trip to lira. beautiful lira! i like flying. i'm excited to read and drink ginger ale. lschurpe. and i like the bathroooms on airplanes...they're so compact and everything is metal. i hope i get to sit next to someone on my team that i don't know very well. travel always brings out the real in people.