We start with our hands

We spent most of our last full day in Uganda with Sam Kisolo. He’s adopted more children than he can count throughout the lifetime of his family. Literally, I asked him how many, and he answered my seemingly irrelevant question by saying, “I don’t know how many. I just know their names.”

Upon hearing that answer, I started to wonder if his house was just a place to stay with named-rather-than-numbered little bodies walking around, eating and sleeping. Until I went and saw for myself.

The traditional greeting in Uganda is for a child to bow on bended knees before an adult and extend their hand for a handshake. As we sat on the Kisolos couch pouring through their family photo albums, the children started returning home from school. Each came to greet their father first. (I lost count too.)

Every single one of those children who bowed before their father and reached out their hand was reached back for and pulled into their daddy’s lap. Sam would lovingly pull those children in and put his hand on their face.

There was a secret, intimate conversation - a named and not numbered interaction between a child and a father. This home was not just a place to meet the basic needs of orphans, widows and elderly… even though they are indeed doing that.

This father’s biggest dream for all of his children is that they know who they are in Christ and live it out. He wants them to know they are created in the image of their Creator and to create.

Some of his older children are studying agriculture, some business, some catering... And they are taking these passions, skills and giftings and putting them into practice. They are going together into desolate, hopeless villages to plant gardens, grow organic foods, bring that food into town, start a restaurant and create jobs for other people. 

You know that African proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child.”

Sam Kisolo is raising a village of creative children to transform the nation. 

This is what family is.

It is reaching out your hand, pulling them into your lap, touching their faces, and whispering secret, transforming Truth into them… and knowing that they’re going to grow up reaching, pulling, touching, whispering, and transforming others too.

I was so excited to get back and reach my hands and heart and secrets to these people I love in South Africa. Especially Mama Charity. Because God has been whispering transforming Truths to us at Ten Thousand Homes about her.

(If you’re just tuning in, it might help you to read this background story and most recent update.)

We gathered around the picnic blanket at Sunday Lunch this week, so happy to be back together. And as I told this orphaned mother the story of a reaching father, she leaned in.

Her eyes bulged; her head bounced up and down in the most eager agreement. It was like she was waiting for me to touch her face.

I told her that Ten Thousand Homes wants to live like that family.

Like the Father’s Family.

I told her I wanted to live like that – with her, with the Sunday Lunch crew, and with everyone I come across.

And I told her that, maybe, if we learn how to reach out our hands, pull people in, and live like real family with them, there won’t be orphans any more. Maybe our hands reaching out can change Dwaleni, the community she lives in.

I realized when I looked in those suddenly overwhelmingly childlike eyes that this woman with five children who has only experienced abuse, abandonment and being taken from has never been invited into something bigger than herself.

She’s never been pulled onto the lap of her father. And never been whispered to about the mystery of that kind of love that comes in its fullest when it’s given away. But she wants it.

She physically leaned in toward me during that moment, wordlessly proclaiming she wants to be a part of that thing that’s bigger than her… the Family that transforms.

So I told her we start with our hands. With reaching.

I pulled out paint, stripped the spaghetti-covered shirts off all the kids, and we started making art. Everybody at Sunday Lunch reached out their hand and added their perfectly-designed print to this family creation. It is BEAUTIFUL.

I proudly held it up, and showed Mama Charity, “This IS how you build Home. Everybody reaches and puts their hands in.”

And then… drum roll please…

I choked back tears but didn’t even try to fight the smile as I told her that this reaching, beauty-making piece of art would be the first thing we would hang up in the new home Ten Thousand Homes is going to build her.

She was so surprised she didn't know how to react. :)

WE’RE BUILDING MAMA CHARITY A HOUSE!!!

I’M SO EXCITED!!!

But better than a house, we’re building a gathering point, a reaching place, a beacon of light in Dwaleni. We’re building a family that is learning how to love and transform like family.

And I’m believing that this is going to be a turning point for Dwaleni.

For orphans of every age.

I believe Family is going to win.

My name is Jane, and I am HIV positive.

Our first stop in Uganda was a joy-filled face and a piece of land brimming with possibility. She sat on a mat on the floor next to the beans she was drying. Her eyes, her words and her voice celebrated our presence in her humble, welcoming home.

Teopistar’s words tumbled out in Lugandan, and, through a translator, we heard a story that was somehow laced with hopes and dreams.

Without flinching… well, without her flinching, she said, “I am HIV positive. My husband died because of the sickness and left me with nothing. I had so many small children, and no way to provide.”

I had to remind myself to breathe.

Not because I was sitting with a woman infected with those three letters that come to steal, kill and destroy… but because I was sitting with a woman whose identity, hope and joy was NOT infected by HIV.

She spoke with no shame.

Her face was not covered with those weary, shame-laden trenches that I know so well. She was not aged far beyond her years on behalf of her burdens and her body’s condition. Teopistar’s voice… her laugh… sang a freedom song. “God is so faithful and has provided for me so much.”

She walked us around her land where she grew and sold vegetables in order to expand onto the one-

room home she was left with. Not only does she have enough space for her family now, but she is also building extensively and renting out rooms. One of her daughters greeted us with a smile and showed us her brand-new graduation picture. She wants to open her own cosmetics shops one day.

I was floored.

This is not what I know. This is not what I understand.

In South Africa, you don’t talk about “that condition”. You don’t even use the word “sick”. You don’t ask how someone died. You don’t use any letters… not HIV, not TB, no positives or even negatives.

In South Africa, you can see the stigma smeared on their faces.

Or their secrets stay buried and the sickness spreads.

But there’s no freedom.

And there’s no hope-songs, no glory-giggles, no dream-daring.

Teopistar laughs and hugs. And she smiles.

Later, on that same day, we went to Jane’s house. Jane wasn’t feeling well that day, but it didn’t stop her from welcoming us, sitting down with us and sharing every detail of her story.

“My name is Jane, and I am HIV positive.”

Same freedom voice. Same freedom smile. Just like Teopistar.

Also like Teopistar, Jane is a widow. She was left with six young children and incredibly destitute conditions.

The events of her lifetime were flogged with loss.

The story she told was narrated with faith.

I could not make sense of this reality I had entered into with a handshake, a hug and a genuine, “You are most welcome.”

But I could identify abundant life.

 I could see that Jane was living in something… It’s the same thing that I have been sitting on my comfy couch with my over-sized coffee mug and iPod, and begging God for.

I could hear that her heart, her words, and her eyes were set on the glory of God… not on the afflicted child wrapping himself around John, not on the cramps in her stomach, not on the things or the people she could not have in that moment.

I knew the letters written on her medical chart and the letters that could have been written on her husband’s grave… but I looked up in that little living room, and I saw the letters Jane had written on the wall.

And then, while telling the most excruciating part of her life-story, she said the words that are re-writing everything in me.

“I went down into the lowest pit of HIV/AIDS… 

And it was all for the glory of God.”

And Jane smiled.

Jane began our conversation that day with, “My name is Jane, and I am HIV positive.” And she ended it with that smile and that satisfied promise, “It was all for the glory of God.”

That’s it. That’s abundant life. That’s what’s really true, Jane.

Jane still has HIV. Jane still has sick kids and not enough of a lot of things.

Jane has what’s really real – and she has it for eternity.

It always starts right here in the present-tense, with names and circumstances and comings and goings.

But I want to my story to end with that smile and that hope.

I’m not sitting on my couch and begging for it anymore.

I’m welcoming people in to see what’s written on my walls, no matter what I feel like today.

I’m praying for a heart and a mind and a smile like Teopistar’s and Jane’s.

I’m exchanging the words of my story in the name of the One who exchanged his life for mine.

I’m smiling and I’m telling the story that goes, “And it was all for the glory of God.”

There were mango trees.

We are in Jinja, Uganda going house-to-house, greeting-to-greeting, smile-to-smile.

John, Carla, Jen and I are here to learn from a network of families that are really living it out. Living like Family.

There are “core families” and “satellite families” within the partnering organizations called Foster Family Network and Orphans Know More. Core families are married couples with their own children, who have taken in other children and welcomed them as their own. Their complete love and all-the-way-through-them joy is overwhelming; their burdens are underwhelming.

Besides their own homes, full of bustling children and chickens, they have taken in “satellite families” as their own extended family members. Satellite families are widows with children that they stand with and stand for in every way you can imagine.

It’s the real thing.

And the best part is that it’s not glamorous. It’s not polished.

It’s not a super-funded program built by overseas super-heroes.

It’s Ugandan people loving Ugandan people.

The structure and the terms came later… after life was already going, the kids were getting married, and the roots of redemption had wrapped around the hearts of so many.

The only thing extravagant is the love… and the pineapple.

It’s unbelievable.

An overview won’t do it.

So let me tell you about Mabel’s house.

We found ourselves on lumpy couches, watching and waiting, while a starving cat sang a hoarse hunger song, and a hen and her chicks ran wild across the floor. I wasn’t sure if the construction of the house was complete, and I was bracing myself to hear a widow’s story from a satellite family.

And then Mabel walked in with a smile as big as Africa and exclaimed, “You are welcome!” with hugs and gushing love. Suddenly, this held-together house and that I-don’t-know-what-that-is-on-my-skirt became the most strikingly beautiful background for a fantastic love story that is changing everything. This was a core family that I want to live like from the core of my being.

She had always wanted a family. One day, God told Mabel that she was going to have a family that was bigger than what she dreamt of. She would welcome into her home the people that needed family.

“The first one, she is called Susan. She followed us home from outreach one day. She told us her story, and we took her in.”

Margaret, another orphan-made-family came in to join us with sparkling eyes. She had just finished university, but wanted to volunteer before beginning her career to “give back” for the ways she’d been given to.

Joshua, a high school student with perfect posture, came to the door with his suitcase from boarding school, a common education policy in Uganda, during our conversation. Mabel’s words stopped as her eyes lit up. “Joshua! Welcome home!!! How were exams? Come and greet our guests!”

Joshua was happy to be home. As he kneeled before each one of us in respectful greeting, Mabel kept going with her story.

This strength and this faith that made her and her husband a core family was not from growing up in a household like Joshua and Margaret’s. Mabel had grown up in a Muslim family and was disowned when she chose Jesus.

She was orphaned when she accepted the adoption of Christ… and then she started adopting.

“God intended that human beings grow up in families.”

Exactly.

Mabel lives something I want to live.

Her giggles escapes like glory-bubbles when she tells the parts of her and her children’s stories that should release tears and mourning because she so obviously encountered Christ in those moments.

Living like the Family of God didn’t start with a rock-solid home life for Mabel.

And it didn’t start with a financial foundation, enough space, enough food, or enough of anything.

It didn’t wait until things were ready.

We asked her how it started… where this came from…

“There were mango trees,” she said.

Mabel knew the God who designed us for His Family. To be welcomed and loved and known.

So all she had to say, with those glory giggles and matter-of-fact gestures was about the place they were living when it all began:

 “There were mango trees, so they could come. “

It was really that simple. That obvious.

There were mango trees. So why would she not live the way she was made to?

In a country flogged with HIV, with parents being claimed by sickness, there are children who wander. There were mango trees at Mabel’s house, and they wandered there.

“They could sit, relax, be free, eat mango. I can cook for them, serve them, and they can tell me who they are.”

Loving God.

Living like family.

And mango trees.

Mabel reminded me that’s all there is to it.

Sometimes, for me, it’s a pot of beans and rice in a too-small cottage. Or a band-aid and a make-it-better kiss. A hug, a handshake, a smile.

For some, it’s a cup of coffee and a conversation. Or just some time together.

It doesn’t matter what the mango tree looks like… There is a way today, in this very moment, to live the way God made us to live. We may not feel ripe, but the harvest is ready. Mabel didn’t wait. I won’t either. 

Mabel's house

Margaret on the far-left and Mabel on the far-right.
Mabel's husband, Dickson, was attending a burial.
They have 15 in their family + a widow with four children.

Not Your Average Nursery Rhyme

There once was a woman who’d never had a dream.

The ways of the world were just too loud, it would seem.

They told her, for true love, she’d have to give herself away.

She was beaten and abandoned when she wouldn’t do it for pay.

She got stepped on and walked over all the days of her life,

Her five babies crying only magnified the strife.

No parents remain and not a single thing in her name,

Mama Charity trudges on; every day seems the same.

Hope tells a new story about her tomorrow,

But it was so hard to hold on to amidst all that sorrow.

For two years I have come, and we’ve shared in the day-to-day,

Because it takes a long time to trust that Someone will stay.

Road trips and slumber parties, God said, “Be family, and don’t hold back.”

I didn’t come to pay a sympathy visit to the poor lady in the shack.

We started this year in the hospital’s children’s ward,

Even then, we insisted that she find something to look toward.

With a baby’s burns in her lap, still feeling the loss of the fire,

We asked Mama Charity to share with us her heart’s greatest desire.

A flicker stronger than a flame sparked for just a moment in her eyes,

She wondered if it was safe to dream past all those lies.

Maybe it was simply that there wasn’t anything left to lose,

What’s another scar or just one more bruise?

But she picked up her head, a piece of chalk and that board,

And in a hospital yard, she bared her cries to the Lord.

Her deepest longings spelled out, she asked God to give her a stand,

Something to call her own, rather than getting kicked off other people’s land.

Photos and "Year or the Lord's Favor Project" by Carly B

"I want to have a stand." Mama Charity was asking to have a piece of property
in her own name in the community she lives in. 

The months kept going by, and the burns began to heal,

But was this chalkboard God and this family thing real?

She dared, in faith, to ask if there were any stands for sale,

Everything she tried seemed to invite humiliation and to fail.

One day, she gave up. She was packing up and getting out.

Maybe God abandoned her too. She was consumed in her doubt.

I told her I was also still waiting on my chalkboard dreams to come true,

I asked her if she believed for me that this God would come through. 

She scoffed and said, “YES” with her mouth and with her look,

I saw something change suddenly. That was all that it took.

Something broke loose right then, and she learned how to hear God’s voice.

Her life hadn’t changed, but hope became her choice.

She said she would stay because God would give her a stand this year,

There was still no money, but now there was no fear.

On the other side of the Equator, through a girl and her church in Norway.

The heavens opened up and sent exactly what Mama Charity needed to pay.

The finances had been given, but took so long to get in the right place,

It seemed like it was going all wrong, until we saw God’s hand in that pace.

This week I got to tell Mama Charity that her prayers had been heard,

She froze. She just stood there. I opened up the Word.

We worshiped right there, a holy moment in a decrepit shack.

We prayed in two languages to the God who doesn’t turn his back.

We remembered our Lord through communion together,

We celebrated that He was the Branch on which our hopes would tether.

Mama Charity giggled and cheered when we dared to look back again,

God had heard her the whole time, and hearing His voice was the biggest win.

Hope became the language, and stand number 326 is a battlefield of grace.

Mama Charity’s cries have been heard. Her name has been signed on that place.

We had to give the kids a little bit of communion early to keep them busy
while we prayed together. :)

Given's healing hand

And this is how we found Karabo... A communion hang-over.
I SWEAR it was just grape juice in that cup!

Such a happy day! Me: "Mama Charity! I know you're in shock... just TRY to do a real smile."

Healing in the Hallway

It's been a long time since I've blogged...

I have REALLY good intentions.

But, sometime just before I posted that last blog, I got broken. I felt both hopeless and trapped on this ginormous, closing-in-on-me... I'm-too-far-in-to-turn-back-now continent.

So I've been healing.
With really good people around me. And really great conversations with God. And one really long walk on a mountain in Swaziland.
And I'm going to Uganda in less than a week... because you believed with me. And I think there's more for me to learn, hear and grow in there.

I don't quite have words yet.

There is a story to tell you. But not today.

Today I went to the hospital, where the hallway was full of (unattended) children that have lived in hopeless circumstances and are trapped inside of broken bodies.

They are healing too.

Every day is not a good day in the hospital. And not every day has a story to tell.

But there's something about a lot of healing bodies being together...
Even if you're just sitting on the dirty hallway floor.
There doesn't have to be words, but a melody usually comes out. A healing song.

When bodies sit and heal together, and joyful noises are shared, sometimes strength comes out of the most unexpected places. Sometimes in the silliest ways.

It could be an album cover.

Rachel cannot walk on her own right now, but she
was NOT going to miss out on a photo bomb!

Sweet Selina has been in the hospital since March with
severe burns. And still smiles like THIS.

perfection. 

The Wheels of the Kingdom...

Today (and yesterday), I loaded up a grocery cart with the basic needs I am so familiar shopping for and delivered them to another family whose babies are crying because there’s just not enough food.

Today I grieved with and offered all that I had within me to my friend, the pastor’s wife from my local church, when she told me she’d been with a family from our church for the past two days. There was a funeral this morning for the family’s 19-month-old baby who had been poisoned by a witchcraft-practicing neighbor.

Today I was greeted with a, “MAMA KACY!!!” as soon as I stepped into the hospital because one of the newest little boys in the children’s ward already knew me from play-dates and feeding programs.

Today I parked in front of Mama Charity’s temporary shack to find her and her friend Busi out in the sun, babies scattered around them and tools in hand, doing physical labor to try to make enough money to feed those babies tonight.

And that was all before noon!

My tires know every bump and pothole on the roads to the hospital, the grocery stores, and countless shacks. I’ve worn those roads down with heavy loads of people and provision. But, even with all of those trips bearing all of those good things, I wonder if I’m just spinning my wheels.

Is there more to this than meeting these immediate needs with loaves of bread and wiping tears off cheeks?

I want to bring the Source of never-ending daily bread and forever-ended sorrow.

He says to pray for His Kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven.

That sounds all-inclusive to me.

It sounds like He says to call down heaven even to the places on earth covered with dusty potholes, empty bellies and small caskets. Even to an empty cottage on a lonely night when all you can hear are crickets and questions.

The wheels of the Kingdom don’t just spin.

They propel. They compel. They move.

The have to move.

Because I can’t fill up another shopping cart or dodge one more pothole if nothing’s moving. If eternity dripped with tears, what would the point of it all be?

I’ve been in a spiritual wheel-spinning, motion-going kind of rut for a couple of weeks. I’ve felt like everybody else’s lives are moving on, going somewhere, and that I’m stuck in this Africa-sized pothole where money stays short, babies stay hungry, and birth certificates never come.

The thief comes to steal my perspective, kill my will to keep going, and destroy my ability to see where He’s leading me.

But the wheels of the Kingdom go round and round.

They go to the ends of the earth and to the depths of my loneliness and fears.

There’s a highway being prepared.

It has no place for the wheels of sorrow or suffering to spin.

It’s not paved with loneliness, shortsightedness, or questions.

“And a highway will be there; it will be called the Way of Holiness… only the redeemed will walk there… Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.” (Isaiah 35: 8, 9b, 10b)

I’ll keep driving those same roads – because He says to. And because I still love it. But I have to look for more there. Or my days, my spirit and even my hugs and kisses send me deeper into this rut.

I’m compelled to keep driving down Old Plaston Road until it is called the Way of Holiness.

I’m surrendering my spinning wheels for something out of my hands and understanding.

On November 3 – 13, my Community Development team leaders and I are exchanging wheels for wings and trusting God all the way to Jinja, Uganda.

We’ve heard Him say there’s more for us – there’s more for the way we live and love at Ten Thousand Homes. He’s ready to trust us with the keys for what’s next, and I believe it’s something so much deeper than a pothole.

We are going to Uganda to serve, support and learn from an organization called Orphans Know More. The awesome team at Ten Thousand Homes is making it possible for us to step outside of our daily lives for 10 days and to trust God to pave a little bit more of His highway… to fill in a pothole or two.

Please pray for us to have eyes to see, ears to hear and hearts that can receive what more God has for us.

Pray that even now I can step out of this rut and into the faith I need for the rest of this day and for this Uganda trip.

Pray for us to bring back what God has for us and to start next year with more.

Please also pray for the practical details of our trip. We have airplane tickets… and that’s all! Carla, John and I each need to raise $850 more for in-country travel, accommodation, meals, etc. We have invested what we have, and now believe for about $2500 MORE.

If you would like to be a part of paving the way through giving toward our trip, you can give directly from my blog to my PayPal account or, for tax-deductible giving, you can give online at www.tenthousandhomes.org. Please make sure you write in on your donation as well as letting me know that the funds are designated for “Community Development Uganda Trip”.

Thank you for believing more for me, for Ten Thousand Homes, for South Africa, and for us doing this together.

When You Give A Kid A Water Bottle...

Summer is coming! And it was hot yesterday.

I was so excited to pop into Mama Charity's yard for a surprise ice cream cone party! 

All photos by Laura Uechi

It was amazing how fast that ice cream dripped, dribbled and disappeared. 

It was a huge hit for the 5 minutes it lasted!

Kevin after ice cream.

When we were all sufficiently sticky and sugary, I sat down in the dust in front of Mama Charity to share Scripture. I told her what God had been telling me. And asked what He'd been telling her. We flipped from Daniel to Hebrews to Haggai, and we remembered together the Kingdom that cannot be shaken. 

She was having a rough day, and the Truth was hard to digest as she sat in a borrowed yard, in front of her borrowed shack with nothing but 5 kids to her name. But we prayed together, and we prayed boldly. I believe she got a little taste of Love as she listened and licked that ice cream cone. 

After all of yesterday's sweetness, I marched into the feeding program today to find Mama Charity there waiting for me. And when I say I marched... I mean, I stomped. 

Stressed. Worried. Anxious. Overwhelmed. 

I told her about it. And that I needed help remembering what we had just read... what I had just preached to her in her yard 24 hours before. 

When I came home today, after all that stomping and after feeding almost 300 children, Laura shared the pictures she had taken from the previous day's ice cream party. I loved what I saw... Because while Mama Charity and I were drinking in the Word, Kevin and Karabo had snuck away to the corner of the yard with my water bottle and were having their own little party. 

It was just a water bottle. 

The same old one I carry with me all the time.

But so many different delights came from an almost unnoticed moment in the yard. 

They played and played and played. 

They laughed and celebrated, and it had nothing to do with the big ice cream cone surprise. 

I want to live that kind of life and have that kind of faith. 

I choose the kind of life that's greatest joys and deepest drinks come from everyday moments with your family in the corner of the yard. The places where that belly-laugh bubbles out uninvited in the most unnoticeable moments. 

I stomp and pout and forget and worry when I'm waiting for the ice cream parties.

And as soon as I finish the ice cream, I get thirsty.

I'm taking life lessons from Kevin and Karabo today. Their circumstances say they are bound to poverty. Their eyes, their smiles and their hearts say they were carved in the image of Freedom and Love.

Beautiful brown eyes sparkle with delight, not at the ice cream, but at the one bringing it to them.

Cravings reach beyond the scrumptious gift, and long to share it with the one who gave it. 

This isn't (really) as bad as it looks... or maybe it's exactly what it looks like:
Given and I racing to see who can get to the ice cream on the spoon first.

No worrying about how to pay back, but instead reaching for the water to meet the next need. 

Simply because they know that all of my resources are theirs too. 

It wasn't just a water bottle. Inside there was enough joy for that day. And there is satisfaction for every day. 

***Another special thank you to Laura Uechi for giving your time and your talent for His glory.