We’re a rag-tag group of people vigilantly pursuing self-sustaining educational & employment opportunities with and for students and their families living in rural communities in developing countries. We believe in asking hard questions like, “What do you need and how can we help?” We believe that communities know their needs better than we do and that it’s our job to listen. We’re big on being kind for the sake of kindness and we believe that even the smallest acts of kindness can make a big difference. We believe in keeping vigil over one another and watching for opportunities to help, no matter how far off the beaten path those opportunities take us. We’re vigilant in our belief that God has given each person unique gifts and that one of the highest forms of worship is using those gifts to serve others. We believe God has a purpose for each life and Vigilante Kindness is our purpose. Join us as we live out wild adventures in service of God and others. Join us in committing acts of Vigilante Kindness.
I borrowed a travel Bible from my mom. I’d given mine away and was in need of a small one for my trip to Uganda. She gave me this tiny one which is smaller than a deck of cards.
It was one of several small Bibles she offered up and I picked it from the stack because it would easily slip into my pocket. I added it to my pile of things to pack and yesterday before I slipped it into my carry on, I opened the cover and saw an inscription.
The Bible originally belonged to my Great Uncle, Courtland William Lieberg, Bill for short. He was probably seven or eight when he received this Bible in September of 1928.
I feel like I’m carrying my family with me as I travel to Uganda. I’ve got photos of The Hubs. Tucked away in my bags are special letters and gifts from my mother and sister to the kids they sponsor at the school. My mom even wrote a letter to one of my Ugandan sons. Best of all I’m carrying a Bible with pages fingerprinted by generations of my family.
I smile each time I add another item to my backpack and the Bible peeks out at me from its assigned pocket. I just love that this tiny Bible came through all that space and time to travel with me to Uganda.
When I was in Uganda last summer, Colin and I went on safari. We were joined by, Mikayla, another girl working in Uganda. Mikayla celebrated her 21st birthday while she was in Uganda. She’s a champion fencer and has the energy of a hundred people. When on safari, Mikayla was absolutely delighted to see so many animals from The Lion King. She sat in the car joyfully snapping pictures and singing ‘Hakuna Matata’, which, of course, means, “Don’t worry.”
Today I want to tell you a story about listening to God’s voice, the humor of God’s timing and, yes, ‘Hakuna Matata’.
As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve been yearning to return to Uganda since the day I got home last July. This year, several trips to Africa were planned and then fell through or were cancelled for reasons beyond my control. In the midst of being brokenhearted by all those undone plans, I’ve been trying to hear God in the quiet spaces and to heed what He’s telling me to do.
A few months ago I felt prompted to call the Public Health office and schedule an appointment to update my tetanus shot and get a prescription for malaria pills. Both are things I’d need before returning to Uganda.
Here’s the thing though, I didn’t have a departure date or a plane ticket or a plan or anything. It can take months to get an appointment with a travel nurse and so I wasn’t surprised when Public Health told me that they needed to give the appointments to people who knew for sure when and where they’d be traveling. It makes a lot of sense and I completely understood.
A month ago, Public Health called me and asked if I still wanted an appointment. Due to budget cuts, the travel health office would be closing its doors on June 30th, but one person had cancelled their appointment and I could have it if I still wanted it.
Mind you I still didn’t have a departure date or a plane ticket or a plan, but I heard that voice again and I took the appointment. The logical part of me reasoned that tetanus shots are good for two years and I could just hold onto the prescription for malaria pills and fill it when my return trip became a reality.
Almost a month passed and I still had no new information or plans. Holding onto hope of returning was becoming so painfully hard.
The day before my appointment with the travel nurse, I got a surprising phone call and before I knew it my trip back to Uganda, back to the children I love, unfolded before my eyes.
Of course it did. And of course it did the day before my appointment with the travel nurse. I should have known.
As hard as I try, I so often still miss the voice of God, but He patiently speaks to me, often in unconventional and even humorous ways.
The morning of my appointment with the travel nurse, I couldn’t help but laugh when the nurse came out wearing a scrubs top made of material with The Lion King’s Timon and Pumba romping all over it. I laughed out loud when I heard him sing a line of ‘Hakuna Matata’.
I left the Public Health office with a sore arm, a prescription for malaria pills and ‘Hakuna Matata’ running through my mind.
Okay, God, I got it. You’re timing things out in ways I can’t even dream of and I don’t have to worry.
This year has been a season of waiting. I am awful at waiting, even worse at waiting patiently. Since the day I returned home from Uganda last summer, I’ve been yearning to go back. Yearning is a powerful word and for that reason it’s a word I don’t use often, but it’s the only word that fully captures this visceral longing I have to return to the children and to the place I fell in love with last June.
It’s strange to love the people and the life I have here, but to have that same depth of love for the people I met in Gulu. It’s a wonderful kind of strange though, to feel at home in two such different places.
It’s the place where I had the privilege of facilitating students in writing stories of their lives, stories that both broke and mended my heart. It’s the place where I continually found unexpected beauty, so much so that nightly I dream memories from my time there. It’s the place where I first met my sons and began my surprising journey into motherhood.
All year my sons have been asking when I was returning. Each time they asked, I swallowed back the lump in my throat and responded that I didn’t know when, but I would return.
Each time I thought I had a return trip to Uganda planned, it was cancelled or fell through for reasons beyond my control. And each time the trips fell through I thought of my promise to my sons. I thought of how they have lives built upon the painful shards of other broken promises. I vowed not to become one of them.
Last year I went to Uganda with the words of Isaiah 30:21 as a guiding thought for my trip. The verse says, “Whether you turn to the right or the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you saying, ‘This is the way; walk in it.’”
As bad as I am at waiting, I’m even worse at waiting and listening for God’s voice. Then there’s the whole issue of hearing God’s voice and choosing not to be obedient.
Can I be honest with you? Even the word ‘obedience’ makes my spine prickle. It is a word and a concept that feels as easy and as appetizing as swallowing rocks.
But I love God.
More than anything else.
And here’s the great part, He loves me, too, and wants to work in me despite my impatience and disobedience. Because God is a good parent, a good Father, part of His love means helping me move beyond impatience and disobedience. Part of that love means giving me time and space to practice patience and, gulp, obedience.
So this year, I prayed and tried to listen for God’s voice telling me what to do. I don’t really relate to pious prayers filled with thees and thous. Wanna know the prayer I prayed most this year? Six simple, but not so easy words, “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.”
Sound familiar? It’s the prayer of a father who had a son inflicted with a spirit that gave him such massive seizures that on more than one occasion the boy seized so violently that he fell into burning fires and deep waters. The father brought his son to Jesus and the father said, “If you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.” Jesus responded, “If I can? All things are possible to him who believes.” And this is the part I love, the father doesn’t pretend to be pious. He doesn’t pretend to have faith that he doesn’t actually possess. The father says, “I do believe. Help my unbelief.” Jesus healed the little boy, which I think is the bigger reason that particular event was recorded in the Bible, but it’s not why the story captivates me.
What captivates me is the desperate honesty of the father who looks into the face of Jesus and admits he both has faith and lacks faith and then he asks for help. Now that’s a guy I can relate to.
Each time my return trip to Africa collapsed beneath me, I was left brokenhearted. I felt like a failure and a liar and it was hard not to lose hope of returning. So many times in the middle of the night, those words ‘failure’ and ‘liar’ looped in my head. In the middle of the night, with the sounds of the quiet house around me and my sleeping husband snoring next to me, I’d pray that father’s prayer. “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.”
And each time I prayed, the words of Isaiah came back to me. “You will hear a voice behind you saying, ‘This is the way; walk in it.’ I listened for that voice, listened with such desperation that my heart sometimes felt like it was going to pound out of my ears. Do you know that kind of desperation? I imagine you do. It’s the kind of desperation that comes when we are broken with such acuteness that praying six words and then being quiet enough to listen is all the faith we can muster.
I needed to be broken this year. I needed to learn to wait, to wait and cling fiercely to the promise of hope. I needed to learn to have faith that there is so much more happening than I can see. I needed a year to learn to listen for the voice behind me guiding my steps.
I listened and it was how I knew that I was supposed to begin getting my classroom ready for the next school year in June instead of waiting until August like I usually do. It was how I knew that I was supposed to book an appointment with the travel nurse and get the one last shot I needed for my trip, even though I didn’t actually have a departure date.
Last Wednesday my waiting came to an end when plans to return to Uganda came to fruition. Last Thursday I had my appointment with the travel nurse and booked my plane ticket. Last Friday I gave my sons the exact date I’d be returning. I leave in a little under two weeks and am counting down the days until I get to hug my beautiful sons.
With my son, Geoffrey, last summer.
These seasons of waiting, these times of fervent yearning for things that are yet to come, are sometimes called dry seasons. They are desert times when my spirit feels parched through to my very bones.
Here we have four seasons; winter, spring, summer and fall. Did you know that in Uganda there are only two seasons? There is the dry season and there is the wet season. The dry season ends in June, giving way to the beginning of the wet season in July.
After a year of walking through my own dry season, it is only fitting that my return to Uganda, my return to my sons, coincides with the start of the wet season when the rain in Uganda falls heavy and hard onto the parched earth.
Today I prayed a different prayer. I’m sure there will be many times in my life to come when I again pray, “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.” But today I was able to honestly pray three beautiful words, words that have been a long time coming, words that have never rung more true for me.
In the stillness of morning I sit in my living room. The lights are out and my husband is sound asleep in our bedroom. The sky outside is just beginning to be edged with light. It’s one of my favorite times to write and I sit in the company of the stories of my Ugandan students. I’m editing and revising, marrying their written pieces with the notes I took from our one on one interviews.
One particular story grips me today. It’s the story of a girl who was never expected to be born, the story of a girl with a heart that beats for the orphaned girls all over the world. This is Beatrice’s story.
Uganda is called the Pearl of Africa and as I sit with Beatrice’s words spread out on the carpet around me, I can’t help but feel the weight and truth of that name. Natural pearls are born when an irritant like a piece of sand or a broken bit of shell works its way into an oyster, or more rarely a clam or mussel. As a defense mechanism the mollusk secretes layer after layer of a crystalline fluid called nacre that coats the irritant and turns what was once a broken bit of shell or an insignificant piece of sand into a lustrous pearl.
Beatrice (Photo courtesy of Colin Higbee)
Beatrice is smart, kind and has a quick wit that had me smiling at something new each day I spent with her. Did I mention she’s a poet? Beatrice is a girl cut of my own heart.
I met Beatrice when I was sitting behind a hut on campus. I was flicking through yearbook photos on my camera when she and two friends sat down near me.
“Hi. What are you girls up to? No class right now?”
“We want to have a discussion.” Beatrice said.
“Oh, let me move out of your way so you can have some privacy.” I began to collect my things, wanting to respect their space.
“No, we want to have a discussion with you.” Beatrice laughed.
“Oh, okay.” I blushed, feeling silly that I didn’t understand the first time around. “What should we discuss?”
“California.” Beatrice said decisively.
Our conversation began with California, delved into this crazy book project that brought me to Uganda and then sunk down deep when brave Beatrice began to share her story.
Beatrice was born to a mother with special needs, a woman who cannot think or speak on her own. It’s not known how Beatrice’s mother came to be pregnant or who Beatrice’s father is. Even her mother cannot give voice to how it came to pass that she grew this child inside her. I shudder imagining how the pregnancy began and yet, my arms prickle with goosebumps that such an amazing life began with such an unlikely start.
Beatrice and her mother were raised by her grandmother and her Uncle Angelo, a man who loved to read, a man who tells Beatrice with assurance that she is a blessing to this world. In writing about her Uncle Angelo, Beatrice says he is everything to her because he instilled in her a love of learning and gave her all the things that other children with parents had.
Every little girl should be so fortunate to have an Uncle Angelo who coats their most broken places with layers of blessings.
Beatrice aspires to be a lawyer. And an accountant. And a politician. In fact she’s got her sights set on being a member of Ugandan Parliament. She wants to push corruption out of Uganda and help her country shine brightly.
Her other goal is to care for and educate orphaned girls because according to Beatrice, “When you educate a girl, you educate the whole nation.” I’d wager to say that the reaches of educating this particular girl stretch far beyond the borders of Uganda.
As my trip was drawing to a close, Beatrice asked if I’d help get her story out to encourage other girls. When she tells her story in our upcoming book, I have a feeling it will strike a chord in the hearts of girls all over the world.
I leave you with a snippet of Beatrice’s encouragement for young girls. “Take care and know that your life is important. The world is because of you. It is up to us to make the world shine.”
As I lay out Beatrice’s story, as I look at her photo, my heart is full for this girl who blesses the world with her very being. She’s right, it’s up to us to make the world shine.
Across the ocean, ten hours ahead of me, where night is beginning to draw the curtains on the day, there’s a girl who already is the bright shining pearl of Africa.
On one of the last days in Uganda, my friend Colin & I rafted the Nile. THE NILE! Let me just say from the get go that it was as cool as it sounds.
One of the best things about my time in Uganda were all the amazing people I met. Around every corner there were people with fascinating stories and our rafting trip was no exception. Meet the players:
Papa Bear, Mama Bear and Baby Bear were in Uganda working with AIDS orphans. I can only remember Baby Bear’s real name: Eva. Incidentally Eva is afraid of water and extreme sports. She also has extremely poor eyesight and didn’t wear her glasses.
Next up was our terrific guide, Tuutu, pronounced tutu, although he didn’t seem overly thrilled when I told him his name was also the name of a pink tulle ballet skirt. After we survived each rapid, we’d all put the tips of our paddles in the middle of the raft and lift them up with a hearty, “Team Tuutu!”, which I believe is the Lugandan translation for ‘Hooray, nobody died!’
Johan, a Finnish Red Cross worker, was also in our raft. He was in Uganda helping people recover from the massive mudslides there. He also wore a Speedo, so he’s daring in lots of ways.
Rounding out our boat was Canadian Rob who was spending a long holiday traveling the length of Africa. Johan and Rob would have been thrilled had our raft capsized in every rapid. Such boys.
After lunch a pair of Turkish doctors, Turkish Neurologist and Turkish Pediatrician, joined in the fun, but more on that later.
After learning paddle commands and what to do if the raft capsized, we were off. The Nile was beautiful and to my delight we didn’t see a single crocodile or hippo. We came upon our first rapid, a 3 meter drop down a waterfall, which is as scary and thrilling as it sounds. I’m the one with the big grin on my face, fourth from the front.
We paddled down the Nile enjoying calm spots in between lots of Class 4 and 5 rapids. The funniest part was when we’d approach the rapids, Papa Bear and Mama Bear would describe what the rapids looked like to Baby Bear Eva, who couldn’t see anything beyond the raft. I’m not sure if their descriptions assuaged her fears or not, but it made for good entertainment in between Tuutu’s commands of, “Paddle, paddle, paddle!!!” or my favorite “Get down!” which meant get down in the boat, hold on for dear life and try not to pee your pants. It’s quite a mouthful really. I can see why Tuutu went for the much simpler “Get down!”
Under Tuutu’s excellent guidance I was having an amazing time. The rapids were really spectacular. We even saw a tree full of giant bats take to the sky. Along the shores people fished and went about their daily business.
Prior to my trip, I met with a travel nurse with lots of good advice, but mostly she reminded me not to drink the water. Don’t drink it. Don’t brush your teeth with it. Keep your mouth closed in the shower. I did all those things vigilantly. And then I rafted the Nile.
In the middle of the trip we stopped for a delicious lunch and sadly, the Bear family and Finnish Johan only signed up for a half day of rafting and so we said goodbye. They were replaced with two rafters from another boat, Turkish Neurologist and Turkish Pediatrician, also known as Ahmed and Assad. After asking a few times I still wasn’t clear on who was who. Turkish Neurologist knew a little bit of English, which is far more Turkish than I know, and when he said “Turkey Neurologist and Turkey Pediatrician”, I entertained brief thoughts of doctors performing brain surgery on turkeys and taking care of tiny poultry. My waterlogged brain discerned that perhaps they were doctors from Turkey instead. So disappointing. The doctors were a perfectly lovely addition, even if the language barrier meant that they didn’t always understand when to paddle.
As the trip drew closer to an end, we faced one more class 5 rapid. Much to Canadian Rob’s delight we flipped. Big time.
Colin and Turkish Neurologist were bounced around so much in the rapid and ended up so far away from the raft that they had to be scooped up by the rescue kayakers on standby. When the raft capsized, I found myself underneath it briefly which is not ideal in calm waters, let alone a churning class 5. I kicked my way out from underneath the raft and grabbed onto the rope lining the side of the now upside down raft.
In between getting dunked by the rapids, I spotted Turkish Pediatrician and, there’s really no other way to say this, he was FREAKING OUT! I’m not sure he knew how to swim and the poor guy kept getting submerged and he was on the brink of hyperventilating. His ‘Doctor In An Emergency Mode’ didn’t kick in, but to my surprise my ‘Teacher Mode’ did. It’s the same mode that kicks in when I’m making sure all 30 of my little ones are accounted for on field trips. I held onto the raft with one hand and did a one-handed doggy paddle with the other. I paddled over to him and grabbed his hand pulling him to the raft, where he grabbed onto the rope next to me. Canadian Rob popped up on the rope on the other side of Turkish Pediatrician and I couldn’t help but laugh at the huge grin spread across Rob’s face. Finally we’d capsized and he was thrilled! Turkish Pediatrician was not. He was still panicking. So I held onto the rope with one hand and patted his back with the other. “It’s okay. You’re okay.” I told him in between getting slammed by the raft and the water.
Our fearless guide Tuutu, clambered on top of the raft and clipped one end of the strap to the raft and the other end to himself. We’d practiced this in the morning. Tuutu was going to jump off the raft, effectively flipping it right side up. Tuutu yelled down at us, “Let go of the rope!” Canadian Rob and I let go and swam a few feet away. Turkish Pediatrician maintained his death grip on the rope. I paddled back to him. “You have to let go. Tuutu’s going to flip the boat.” Turkish Pediatrician shook his head. And so I peeled his claws off the rope myself and grabbed the back of his life jacket and swam away with him.
Tuutu flipped the raft and helped us all back in. After we cleared the rapid, the kayakers deposited Colin and Turkish Neurologist back into our boat and we all put our paddles and gave a hearty “Team Tutuu!” After which Colin and I high-fived because hooray-nobody died!
After the end of the trip we stopped for a delicious BBQ where we relived the glory of the day. In bed that night I prayed that drinking the Nile wouldn’t come back to haunt me and then I swam into my dreams with a huge grin on my face.
Vigilante Kindness 