A Visit to a Local Slum

Last Tuesday, David and I, along with John and Jessica from eMi, visited orphans and widows in the Kifumbira slum in which our church ministers. New City ministers to the community monthly, sharing Christ’s love through praying, sharing scripture, listening, touching and giving. Before heading a few kilometers down the road to the slum, about eight of us gathered at the church to pray for our time there, that the women and children would be encouraged and come to know Christ’s healing love. I was a little surprised when Gerald, our pastor, explained that today the women and children would all gather in one place and we were going to individually encourage them though sharing bits of our testimonies, scripture, and whatever else the Lord laid on our hearts. I thought we were going to be talking, praying and sharing with the women and children one on one or in small groups, not speaking to a group of 75 ladies! Speaking in front of large groups is not something that I particularly enjoy or that comes naturally for me. I started to think of ways I could “hide” in the group or conveniently be playing with the children when it was time to share. The thoughts didn’t last long and I was soon convicted of my selfish heart. I have Christ in me who is so much greater than my own fears of public speaking! Many of these women and children are hungry, sick, suffering with AIDS, and are desperate for encouragement, longing for a taste of hope in their dismal circumstances. I know the only love that can truly heal their heart and give them hope for a new life where there is no more suffering..... I began to pray that Christ would give me the words that the women needed to hear from Him.

Driving down the bumpy, muddy road into Kifumbira, children waved and adults stared as we entered into their humble community. Wood shanties for homes, curtains for doors, a pit for the potty, a fire for the stove, life here continues in stark contrast to the luxuries that we’ve know all our lives. It’s also rather ironic that this slum, one of the poorest in Kampala, sits nestled behind the wealthiest district in Kampala. In Uganda it seems that you are drastically poor or wealthy, there’s hardly a middle class. My heart broke as Pastor Gerald pointed to one adorable little girl and explained that she had AIDS, judging by the spots on her skin. She probably had never been tested for the disease and definitely did not have money for the treatment. I wondered how many others in this community were living with AIDS and didn’t even know it, or how many were daily suffering and in pain because they couldn’t afford the treatments.

Our white truck climbed up a hill, interrupting about twenty-five boys playing football (aka soccer). The minute we stepped out onto the grass, children immediately surrounded us, appearing it seemed out of no where. I just held out my hands to them and they fought for them, simply wanting to touch my hand. We did a quick walk through of the community, and it seemed quite similar to the houses on our street and the poor living conditions all over Kampala for that matter. While we walked, the children chased after us, chanting like they all seem to do, “Muzungo, how are you? Muzungo, how are you?” (Muzungo=white person in Swahili).

Meanwhile, ladies of all ages gathered on a hill, many with babies and small children. New City had unloaded boxes of soap, rice, vitamins, and were attracting quite a crowd. Jessica and I played with the children and tried to get them to sing songs to us in Luganda (one of the main languages in Uganda) while Gerald spoke briefly to the group and introduced our team and our purpose in being there. My heart started to race once again as I realized that I would be speaking in a few minutes. One by one people in our group went up, we had four Ugandans and four Americans. I was tempted to run off with the kids or to go play football and have a legitimate excuse for not talking. Once again I realized that I have a hope that some of woman may not know and it would be a waste and selfish of me not to share it.

Before I knew it, David was up, sharing with the women and suddenly Gerald was making the eye brow signal at me, telling me that it was my turn. Yikes. Here I am, a young, healthy, rich girl, standing before women of all ages in conditions that I have never known or experienced, yet their eyes were all drawn on me with great expectation, longing to hear whatever words I had to say. I felt ill and weak as I walked up front. I prayed, telling Jesus that I could not do this on my own, I did not have words to say, asking him to please speak though me. I realized as I went to stand by Gerald that I was still gripping a little girl’s hand, dressed in a pink dress. Though she was about three, it felt secure having my hand in hers so I didn’t let go! She was not scared.

I prayed again, took a deep breath, and by God’s grace, spoke calmly and with strength that was not my own. Amazingly, the Holy Spirit gave me the words to say, and Gerald translated them in Luganda for the ladies to hear. They clapped and nodded when I shared that I know they are hurting, hungry, sick and suffering-BUT Christ’s shares in that because he came to the earth and suffered for them, ultimately to suffer and die for us, taking our sins upon himself. He cares and wants you to cry out to him. They smiled and clapped again, it was a crazy experience and I was close to tears the whole time. I shared a few more words, and with a breath of relief, went back to the comfortable circle of children, my hand still being gripped by the little girl. It was overwhelming because I knew that that was not me speaking, but Christ in me. Nothing in me could have had strength and known what words the women needed to hear except the Holy Spirit in me.

What touched my heart even more was the little girl who bravely went up with me and held my hand. I asked her afterwards what her name was. I made out a name I thought was Susan jumbled together with some other sounds that sounded to me like Natalee (the name of my sister who died almost 3 years ago.) I couldn’t believe it. I thought that I must be hearing things. She barely spoke English, so I asked her several more times what her name was. Her friends told me it was “Susan” but I knew that I had heard Natalee. As the others from New City spoke, she and her brother sang several songs for me and I still couldn’t get over her name. She even pointed to and touched my sister’s butterfly ring that I wear. At the end, right before we left, her mom found her with me and I asked what her name was. She answered “Susan Natalee.” My heart was filled with joy and I found it so providential that the little girl who held my hand while I was afraid to share with the women about Jesus’s love name was Susan Natalee. What an encouragement to my heart and a sweet gift of grace from the Lord!

Exodus 4:10
Moses said to the Lord, “O Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past not since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.”

The Lord said to him, “Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go; I will help you speak and teach you what to say.”

A good reminder of why EMI exists...

People often notice that when I walk into a house or building, I look around and consider how the building was designed and constructed. I don't think I'm doing anything special, really. The flaws seem to jump out at me without me even looking for them. Sometimes a room will feel too big for the six people eating there, or a wall that should be smooth has ripples, or a window that should open will be obstructed by a piece of steel.



During the course of the Westminster project trip (see below), our team visited a church EMI had designed to see some interesting features put into practice. Next to the church was this school, which is almost completed. At first I thought the poles were temporary supports, maybe for scaffolding. What we found out was that they were actually permenant columns supporting the roof trusses. And on the other side of the building, you literally could not open a window because of where the steel was placed. Yikes.

There are a lot of reasons why eMi exists and why I believe that our work is valuable to the work of the kingdom. Ensuring that errors like this don't happen in other places is one of the more obvious reminders.

Mberera Forest

This is my first real effort to make good on something I mentioned a while ago. What was that? you ask. To provide you with shorter, more frequent posts. See, the Westminster Recap post I wrote took about 6 hours to produce (writing, editing, resizing pictures, uploading, etc). My plan for this post is to finish it in less than 15 minutes. I better get rolling...



The picture you see above is from a hiking trip Amanda and I took with John and Tom and Jill Fontaine. When did we go? Oh, about a month ago. September 30th to be exact. We visited Mberera National Park, which is only about 45 minutes from Kampala, on the way to Jinja (east of Kampala). To be honest, I was expecting to see a lot of colorful plants and interesting wildlife on our hike, but I was kind of disappointed. The forest was primarily green vegetation and there weren't many animals that we saw. (The welcome center had a picture of a ~4 m Python that had been spotted on site. Amanda wasn't happy.) There were two redeeming aspects of the trip though: The first one is these amazing trees that are shown above. They remind me of trees I've seen Florida where the root system is also exposed. Of course, the big differences were that the Ugandan trees were over a hundred feet tall and the visible root systems were 8 or 9 m wide.



The other really neat thing we saw was a group of five monkeys. We had hiked for a few hours hoping to see some monkeys but didn't. At the end of the hike, with the welcome center literally 50 m away, we here these guys making all sorts of sounds. We watched them run around on a few different trees for a while before they scurried out of view. If I remember correctly, these are Red-Tailed Monkeys, even though you can't see it in this shot John took:



Alright, it took a bit longer than 15 minutes but I'm still happy with my time.

Go Cards!

Westminster Recap

About one week ago I came back from the Westminster project trip. I’ve been looking forward to posting some pictures and comments about the trip since I’m really excited about how our work turned out. If you haven’t already, I would encourage you to read my previous entry so that you’re familiar with the names. Here’s a brief synopsis of what happened:

Saturday, October 7:

Chad, John and I, along with Amanda and Shanthi, left the eMi compound in Kampala and made the 30ish minute drive to Dave and Darlene Eby’s house in Zana. Amanda was instantly comforted that I would be taken care of after meeting Darlene and hearing her meal plans for the week. Later that night Chad, Darlene and I went to the Entebbe airport to pick our volunteers (“pick” is used here, not “pick up”).

Sunday, October 8:

The entire project team visited New City Bible Church (Amanda and I attend here) in the morning. While I wanted the team to hear Pastor Gerald since he is a Ugandan, our host Dave Eby preached a great sermon this morning. Two quick thoughts from the sermon on Romans 8:28-29: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he may be the firstborn among many brothers.” 1) The “good” which God is working for is for us “to be conformed to the likeness of his Son.” It seems that during difficult times it is easy to hope that the “good” will eventually be something that we deem good, something other than Christ-likeness. I can remember thinking during school that the difficulty of my courses would eventually pay off and that I would get a great job. Actually, and even more personally, I remember thinking that the difficulty of my courses would lead people to think, “Wow, isn’t he smart!” My messed up view in those situations saw “good” as something other than Christ-likeness. 2) Paul didn’t write “And we know that in most things…” or “And we know that in some things…” but rather “And we know that in all things…” God is at work in everything to sanctify us. We don’t have to guess at whether God is using an event to make us more like Christ. He is.

After church the Eby’s hosted a lunch for the eMi team and Westminster Theological College (WTC) faculty. After people interacted a bit, Chad asked Emma to share his testimony and plans for WTC (incidentally, Emma is short for Emmanual).


Later that evening our eMi team took a while to share about God’s work in our lives. I was struck at the different ways God had pulled people to himself despite abuse, neglect and other forms of unlove some team members had endured. Another thing that I was excited to learn about was Kathryn’s foundation back in Ft. Meyers, Florida. A few years back she quit her job to start the Harlem Heights Foundation to provide for the spiritual, educational, recreational and physical needs of her community. What an amazing way to love people in her own neighborhood!

Monday, October 9:

Monday was the first real day of project work. Chad, Gene, Kathryn and I met with the faculty at WTC all day to discuss the architectural program. We discussed what buildings were needed first, how many would be needed at the completion of the campus, the number of current and eventual students, what type of feel the campus should have, which buildings should be in close proximity to each other and scores of other questions. Kevin and John went out to the project site to begin the survey.

Tuesday & Wednesday, October 10 & 11:

If my memory serves me correctly, Tuesday and Wednesday were pretty similar in that Kathryn, Gene and I all worked together on the site master plan. Tuesday began with the three of us working on one plan together. We weren’t completely satisfied after the preliminary sketches; it seemed too rigid—the buildings were all arranged perpendicularly like an old Western campus. That led to the development of a second plan, the meandering pathway, which was very random with no order at all. We decided this one wasn't right either, so from that point we each decided to develop one plan per person: Kathryn took the Western plan, Gene took the Meandering plan, and I developed a new one, which Gene affectionately called the Zulu plan. We spent the rest of Tuesday and Wednesday working on the different versions of our site plans so that we could have three distinct options to show the WTC faculty.

The architecture team also toured African Bible College to see their newly developed campus. They have one of the nicest libraries in Uganda along with a functional radio station. Dr. Palmer Robertson gave us a tour and provided some information about what he thought helped and hindered the campus. I took note of something myself…Most people in Uganda do their laundry by hand sitting on the ground. I noticed that ABC provided an area for students to stand while doing their laundry. This initially seemed like a great idea to our team, but I was skeptical of whether this was an improvement since the students would be leaning over for at least 30 minutes. I asked several students “How do you feel after washing your laundry in these sinks?” in an effort to confirm or refute my skepticism. Each student said their back hurt after leaning over for so long…so yeah, we’re not including them in our design!

In addition to the site planning, the survey continued on despite some problems with the Total Station.

Thursday, October 12:

The faculty from WTC came over again for a meeting to review the three site plans we developed. Before we began, Chad said that he wanted them to feel comfortable telling us what they liked and didn’t like. I wanted to underscore the necessity of their candor so I planned out and said something similar to “It is very important to us that you share with us what you think because we want to create a campus that works well for you. At this point we’ve spent less than 100 hours as a team working on these designs, but we’ll easily spend hundreds of more hours finishing the report and drawings. If there’s something we’re doing that is making it difficult to share your opinion, would you please let us know?” Gotta love Advocate-Illustrate-Inquire.

The meeting did seem to go well. The faculty identified which aspects of the plans they liked and disliked. It seemed a bit personal when they pointed out things they didn’t like on my plan that I thought were marvelous, but I think that was really my own pride. Talking afterward, Gene and Kathryn seemed to handle the critiquing much better. Maybe it’s because they’re so used to it (as real architects) or they got so conditioned to it in college (in real architecture school).

Friday, October 13:

Friday was more drafting, done primarily by the Gene and Kathryn. We talked for a bit about structural issues, but the highlight of the day was going to a great dinner at Lindsay Cottages. Amanda would have come except she was in charge of the Rain Festival (it's what Heritage has in place of a Fall Festival since we're in the rainy seaon now) at school that night. Gene and Kathryn treated the whole team…Thanks!

From left: Kathryn, John, Amil, Gene, Darlene, Ida, Dave, William, Chad, Joanna, me, Kevin

Kevin also spent some time using Google Sketch Up to draw our site in 3D. The entrance to the site is along the lowest elevation.



Saturday, October 14:

The WTC faculty dropped by in the morning for a review of the totally new site plan. They were really excited about it but had a few suggestions, none of which were too difficult to work into the plan. Here’s the rendering:


Some things to keep in mind…the reddish/orangish roofs are for buildings constructed during Phase 1. The grey roofs are for buildings constructed in later phases. The little circles you see represent bandas. Think of them as concrete gazebos with thatched roofs.

The final site plan really incorporates aspects of each of our designs. The campus portion of WTS retains the order of the perpendicular buildings from Kathryn’s plan, the dorms are loosely arranged in the spirit of Gene’s plan, and the placement of the church near the entrance of the site, as opposed to the back, came from my design.

Sunday, October 15:

The highlight of my day was being able to play the Indelible Grace version of “And Can it Be” at Zana Community Presbyterian Church. A quick story…Amil is a Ugandan who lives with the Ebys and the worship leader at Zana. He was a Muslim but became a Christian in the 90s when the Ebys visited Uganda. Last Saturday I heard him singing the old version of “And Can it Be” and asked if he would like to learn a new tune. He said "Yes" and so I taught it to him. An hour and a half later I went to their Saturday afternoon practice and taught it to the choir (no CD!..yikes) and then we sang it together on Sunday. Perhaps the idea of putting old hymns to new music will catch on here--several of the choir folks said they liked it much better than the old tune.

Later that afternoon our team presented the WTS plan to about 100 people. The crowd had a mixture of locals, current WTS students, and other Presbyterian Church in Uganda folks. After the presentation there was a time for questions, several people prayed for the project, and everyone had a soda while they talked.
That evening the Ebys invited people over to their house for a light dinner.

One quick note..."Darlene Eby, you rock!" I told her that and then we did the whole fist-punch thing that baseball players do when they go into the dug out after hitting a home run. Her hospitality was amazing the whole week and she was also great to talk to. My favorite quote of hers, in reference to a discussion our team had on Ephesians 5:22-33, was, "It's not old school, it's biblical!"

Well, I wanted to get some sort of description up here and I think this is where I’ll stop for now. We took Monday off as a “tourist day” which I’ll describe a little bit later. Also, I want to share a little bit more of what I learned on the trip and why I’m so excited about the work of Westminster, but that will have to wait for another day.

A Visit to a Local School

On Monday, October 9, I had a holiday from school. Uganda celebrated its “Independence from Dependence (England),” to quote our Pastor. Pam Sinclair, a missionary here with MTW (Mission to the World) took me and several other girls to visit an elementary school across town that was started in a community with a high percentage of orphans. The children, despite having a day off from school, attended school anyway because they knew we were visiting. We were rather overwhelmed and felt almost like celebrities when 200 children showed up to see us, many of which did not even attend the school (they just heard we were coming!)


The school, Kawempe Community Nursery School, was very bleak, consisting of dirty, cement floors adn walls, crude benches for desk, and tiny, open windows. On a typical school day, about thirty children are crammed into each tiny room. The children, ranging from ages 3-12, were so excited to see us. They all wanted to touch, hug, and hold our hands. I even had children “petting” my arms! They drew us pictures on newsprint torn in half with colored pencils and wrote about what they wanted to be when they grew up. Doctors and teachers were the most popular. One little boy wrote, “If I grow up I want to be a conductor.” (Someone who takes the money on a taxi.) The fact that he knows he has a chance of not making it to adulthood is heart wrenching to me. I had never heard a child say “If I grow up…” It’s always “When I grow up…”


We sang with the children outside (where there was a lovely breeze!) Paul, a Ugandan teacher from Heritage, came with us and helped lead the children in songs in their first language, Luganda. It was so cute to hear them sing, my favorite was a song about a Mango tree. We brought cupcakes for the kids that had to be split in ½ and some into ¼ so each child could be served. Sodas were also handed out to all the children they’re only 30 cents a bottle here!


Pam is organizing the collection of “Love Boxes” for the many orphans and poor children in this community. Some People/Churches in the states are helping to raise money, along with Heritage, to collect clothes, socks, shoes, medicine, school supplies and other basic necessities to be boxed up and given to these children for Christmas. Boxes will also be taken up to an orphanage in Gulu, where the LRA rebels have displaced many children. I will post more information soon on how/where to give money to help with the Love Boxes if you’re interested. (Unfortunately supplies are way too expensive to ship over here from the states!) There are so many precious children here in need of the very basics, including the gospel of Jesus Christ. We pray that we can make a difference and share his love with just a few!