There are some days when I have a thousand things to say to really anyone who is willing to listen.  I can usually carry on a conversation about almost anything, and I can definitely debate almost anything.  Today, I have no words.  Here are just a few of the things that have happened in the past 36 hours that have left me at the point where I just sit on my bed, wanting to sleep, but having my eyes forced open by the tears:

1) In the heart of downtown Kampala, a bustling and ever developing city, there are highrise apartment buildings and hotel suites (well, I say highrise…but I guess 12 floors isn’t exactly high rise), busy city traffic, and the hum of commerce.  In the very center of it all is a place where people don’t even glance.  its about 5 acres of land called the Kitanga Slums.  When you drive by you simply look to the other side of the road.  If you ignore it enough, maybe the sights and smells of that place don’t really exist.  But then you visit. You walk through the narrow alleys between houses, overwhelmed by the stench of the raw sewage you’re walking through that is right outside of everyone’s front door every day.  I say front door, but no one has a door, just an opening and a curtain.  Kids are playing in a pit that flows with all the sewage from all the area buildings that have running water (Kitanga has none).  Babies wander around the slum by themselves, nearly exclusively because their fathers are gone and their mothers are prostitutes that are either working or sleeping.   On the hill directly across the street is a coffin vendor, and the front of his lot is lined with dozens of tiny…overwhelmingly tiny coffins.

2) An orphanage way out in the bush welcomes us with cheers.  As they wait for their lunch to be ready (that we had purchased so they could have beans that day instead of just porridge), they sit on the front porch of the small building that serves as their lodging, gathering, and dining areas and begin to play a game with a couple dozen dirty, used bottle caps.  As they get their plates of rice and beans, they gobble it up with their little fingers, licking every morsel of food off.  One of the wooden bunk beds has the words “mom” and “dad” carved in it and then marked through with a big line.  The director talks about his dreams and challenges, and I leave overwhelmed by both God’s goodness, and a hundred “what if” questions running through my mind.

3) Perhaps the most powerful man in southern Uganda invites us into his home, talks about how he is getting older and wants to pass his ministry along to someone he can trust, and then offers us the blessing of land and his connections to get started.  He even offered us office space in his ministry headquarters until we are on our feet.  We ask him why he would do that and he simply says that he trusts us and what God has called us to do.

4) A pastor sits with me and he sounds JUST like me.  His passions were identical to mine.  It was as if I was looking in the mirror….until he gets to the part where he says:  “And so we must move northward to plant churches in areas in more hostile zones.  If we don’t, ISIS may get there first, and we want to make sure when they get there that they find strong believers and multiplying churches.”  The shame for the complacency in my heart was overwhelming.

5) I just left a hut where a grandmother knelt down and hugged my leg.  Her grandson, whom she is no longer able to care for physically or financially sits on the edge of being removed from school altogether, and the Lord has placed him in my heart.  He has no father to tell him how to be a man, what manhood looks like and how to build a life.  His tribe is scattered from the war and still recovering.  As we drove by the public park in the city, he said, “Papa, we don’t go there at night.  People get their neck sliced and some kidnapped and others killed who go there after dark.”
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And I sit here in my room, wishing I could close my eyes and reopen them and it will have all been a nightmare.  This couldn’t possibly be happening in our world.  Yet it is.  And the tough thing is, I can’t solve this for them.  I can’t throw money at the situation and make it better.  I can’t grab kids out of desperate situations and save the day every time.  But I can give them the source of ultimate hope, train them up to choose a better and more sustainable life, and inspire them to follow hard after God regardless of the circumstances around them.  I can love them unconditionally and tell their stories to everyone who will choose to hear it.  I can give YOU and opportunity to stand with one more…to help one more have life.  We are ONE tribe…ONE family.  Let’s stand together.

There are a lot of things that get lost in translation here. A wave that we would consider to say “hello” actually means “come here.”  If you only shake someone’s hand one time, you must not like them very much.  The more handshakes the better.  There are obvious language issues and even when you try to speak something in Luganda, the words are so similar that if you try to say, “Is it time for breakfast?”  you might just end up saying, “Armadillos swing from the tower.”
As we traveled today after church this morning, we ate lunch with a little fella named Brian.  One of our team members has sponsored him for a little while and got the chance to meet him while he was here.  Brian is from a very rural village and had never been into the city.  He had never seen a white person.  He had never tried ice cream and was a bit taken back by it being cold (they don’t have refrigeration that far out).  You expect stuff like that to be new and odd for someone in the bush.
When our team member went to see them off and tell them goodbye, he did the typical open arms so he could get a hug.  Brian just stood there looking puzzled.  One of the people from his organization broke the silence and said, “I don’t think he’s ever been hugged.”  When he told me that, my heart sank.  Of all the cultural norms that you expect to be different, that’s not one I ever wanted to experience.  In the US, children, even though many are neglected, are held in fairly high view.  In Uganda, children aren’t viewed very highly.  Physical affection from a father particularly is pretty rare.  I can’t imagine this.
Be a hug for a kid.  Get involved with what we're doing, today.

As we’ve gone through this week in Kampala, everything I see, I’m seeing in a slightly different light.  In years past, I’ve taken it all in, enjoyed the scenery, played with the kids, and tried to make as much difference as I can in 10 short days.  This year, every moment we’ve had, I’ve looked at things in terms of the future.  What will this look like when I live here?  What will this process be like when I’m waking up here every day?  How will I go about doing this or accomplishing this goal?  Kids aren’t just pictures of faces to me anymore.  They’re not just a crowd of eyes and ears.  I’m asking myself every day… Does that one have a home?  Does she have food?  I wonder when the last time he’s had a bath is?
Yesterday at the festival a group of kids were piled on me and I realized they didn’t have armbands.  The festival costed $1,000 shillings (about 30 cents) to get in.  If you didn’t pay, you didn’t get an armband and you didn’t get lunch.  There just wouldn’t be enough food to go around.  As we sat there it dawned on me that they had been there all day, in my lap, on my shoulders, in my arms and hadn’t had a drop of water or a bit of food the entire time.  I’m just not okay with that, and I wonder what would happen if a few thousand people would join me in not being okay with that…
I would expect to go through the day pretty sad, but its had a very opposite affect on me.  I’ve felt more alive than I have in years. It’s incredibly freeing to know exactly what the Lord created me for, and to be making plans to do it forever.  You may not be called to go for the rest of your life…but what if the Lord would call you to give of your excess, and maybe even sacrifice a little to help us in this task?  That calling is every bit as legitimate.  You might even find that it makes you more alive than you’ve felt in years too.  Help us tell the story of Benjamin House.  Share it everywhere you go.  See if your sleep doesn’t come a little easier and your love is a little easier to access.

Today, we went to a school a bit out from the city.  When we got there, they were a bit restless.  You can kind of tell within a few minutes which crowds will be really locked in to the message, and which ones will…well…struggle to be locked in. This one was definitely the latter.  They were on the edge of being wild.  Even as the worship was happening and our guest artists were presenting, they were just not quite paying attention.
As Jason got up to preach, they were still disconnected and loud.  I started getting pretty discouraged until I saw him.  He was probably about 16 years old and was standing inside one of the classrooms facing our stage area.  He was up on a chair with both hands on the bars that are on the windows (that are on all windows in Uganda), with his face as close to the bars as he could get them.  His eyes were fixed on Jason and you could tell that he was 100% in.
I then started looking around and there were others.  In the midst of the chaos, there were pockets of people, even people outside the gates of the school, who were listening hard and with expectation.  These kids are all over Uganda.  They’re waiting for someone to take an interest, to look beyond the rough exterior, and to invest in them.  I believe this country can be changed.  I believe that some of these very kids that we’ve ministered to could very well lead their nation to a great awakening.  Hope is difficult to mine, but once it is found it is stronger than steel.  It drives and moves us to be better than we can be.  I can’t wait for that to be our story for the rest of our lives.

One of our teams has been in a rural village this week working in the school, partnering with the church to reach out to the border villages, and building a home for a group of 4 orphaned children. The village cares for them, but the hut they were in was literally disintegrating. This group of kids would normally end up being brought to an orphanage and institutionalized, separated from their extended relatives and the village and tribe they’ve grown up in. This isn’t working. Institutions don’t change kid’s lives. Families do.
As we drove through the city, I was a little overwhelmed by the sheer number of children. There were kids everywhere, in tattered clothes, dirty, and with no caretaker in sight. Contrast this to the kids we saw in the schools we visited. They were well dressed in their uniforms, clean, and cared for. The reality is that if a child’s family can’t afford school, they’re either relegated to a life without education or they end up being given up by their families in order to attend a school at a children’s home.
I could literally see Benjamin House in my mind today. In fact, at one point one of the recording artists we are traveling with came up to me and said, “You’re dreaming of bigger things aren’t you?” I confess I was, and it was a beautiful place. A place where families are strengthened, the vulnerable and truly orphaned are cared for and set into families, where education is available for a price that allows families to stay together, and a lighthouse of truth for the teenage culture in Uganda so that we avoid much of the orphan care crisis before it begins. It’s big…but God is bigger. And I am so ready.

Today, we visited three more schools and ministered to nearly 600 teenagers, encouraging them and challenging them to be the generation that makes a change in Uganda that lasts.  I stood there in front of them, asking the Lord to give me words that would make an impact.  Their eyes were so intently focused.  They listened to every word and we saw some make significant decisions for the Lord.  The last school we went to was a boarding school, so many of the kids there spend a large portion of their year away from their families.  They are away from those influences during the most influential times in their lives…when they need strong families the most.
My prayer, as dozens of students came up to be prayed over, was that the Word of God would not return void.  I prayed that there would be one student…one young man or young woman who takes the task seriously.  I seriously can’t wait to be investing in the lives of children and teenagers like this who are so hungry and ready to just be given a glimpse of hope.  As we drove back to the guesthouse, I couldn’t help but smile.  This is life.

First day on the field is in the bag! Today we went to the rural village of Najjanankumbi, Uganda.  It’s a village with hundreds and hundreds of children.  I preached at their morning services (which are definitely full of life, and dancing)! They then invited the whole village to come eat a huge lunch with us followed by a huge soccer match between our mission team and a couple of the local teams there.

The greatest 2 moments of the day for me were about as different as night and day.  The first was as I led a pastor’s training session for about 200 pastors and ministry leaders.  It was incredible.  They were locked on to every word and asked so many great questions.  It was as if they couldn’t get enough of Scripture and practical ways to apply it.  I loved it.  Then, I went out to the soccer field and sat down.  One by one, kids started coming up to me and sitting down.  Before too long, there were about a dozen kids all sitting close enough to touch me.  They stared up with their beautiful brown eyes and bright smiles.  I was in heaven.  As I looked down I noticed one little boy’s feet.  His toes were all cut up, toenails mangled and rotting, and he had an open sore on the top of his foot.  It hurt me just look at it.  I asked a translator to ask him if his feet hurt so that I could find some bandages and try to help him.  She asked and her response made my heart drop.  She said, “He says it doesn’t hurt anymore.  Bucky, these kids hurt all the time.  Eventually they stop feeling pain.”

I’m not okay with that. I do realize I could work my whole life to try to keep kids from being in this position, and not end the problem.  But I can make a difference for one more.  And I’ll wake up every day with that burning in my heart.

In about 20 hours, I will be boarding a plane to head to Uganda. My family and team of like minded people are moving there soon, but that’s not why I’m headed over right now. This is the first of two trips where I begin the leaving process. We will be finding partnership ministries, locating where to build our central campus, and visiting rural villages to see how we can affect the orphan care crisis there. I will lead a team of 40 doing ministry in villages who have never seen anyone other than their tribe, and others in the main city in a very urban context. We will speak to a family of 4 in a mud hut, and to 3,000 students in the city center. And, in the excitement of all we will do, I will have one thought… why do I have to go back to Moore, S.C.?  Don’t get me wrong, I love our city.  Spartanburg has had my heart for 9 years now. But I have another home, and I cannot wait to get there.
Over the next 15 days I will be blogging about our journey, and I hope you’ll join in and experience it with me. Follow the story and find yourself standing with us in the dirt path to the bush, washing the feet of people who have just had jiggers removed from them with razor blades, pumping water for a widow from a local well, and standing before kids who have absolutely no hope, and promising them there is something more. Comment. Ask questions. Dig deeper.