I learned to love

I made it back to heartland of the United States all fine.

Gumira mukukireza ne mkwagala. hold strong have faith believe in love.

I remember at the beginning of my journey someone taught me this phrase and I felt that it represented my time in Uganda very well. At the beginning I learned how to get my strength from the Lord, then in the middle I learned how to have true faith in God's promises, and finally I learned about the power of love.

I have learned to love people simply because they exist.

I miss my Ugandan children...all 64 of them.

There are still 15 kids that need sponsors immediately. It is only 250 dollars a year to give one of the children an education. Please let me know if you are interested. hannahmarienusz@gmail.com

I love you all

Webale Nyo Uganda!

Einstein once said that "the world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing."

I now know that the problems that I have seen here are not ones that are going to be solved by a change in policy alone. When Christ commanded us to go out and feed the poor and to take care of the orphans and widows he didn't mean that we should just play for a benefit golf game where the proceeds may go toward some good cause, he meant that we physically needed to get out there and meet those people where they are at. There needs to be a personal level of interaction for these things to change.

Tomorrow I will leave my life of beautiful living in Uganda. And while I will miss these people immensely and it is hard for me to leave my children, I am ready to come back to love people. I am ready to come back and love my family and friends and to love anyone that I may encounter...why...because they exist! Simply because they exist.

So far 6 kids have been sponsored. I went to tell their families this week. Almost every family cried, they never thought that their kids would have the chance to go to school. In one family whose daughter is being sponsored, they are all refugees from Sudan so they mother doesn't even speak Lugandan. Here son translated for her and while I didn't know what he was saying to her I knew the exact moment that she found out that her daughter was to be sponsored because her eyes just lit up and she gave me a huge hug.

There are still about 14 kids that could use sponsors. I would cost around $240 a year. If anyone is interested please email me at hannahmarienusz@gmail.com I will see you when I get back. Pray for safe travels.

Webale nyo Uganda! (Thank you)

hold strong have faith believe in love

My African Name

Today I received my African name. See if a mzungu, "white person" in Lugandan, has been here for long enough and if a person likes them then they will ask the mzungu if they have an African name, if not then the person will give them an African name. One of the other teacher's gave me the name Aine. It is pronounced ah-ee-nay. This means "God has everything," and if you want something you should just ask God for it because he has everything that we need.



More good news: So we have all been praying for my kids that they would stop fighting and would learn to love each other, and it has really been paying off. I was playing soccer with some of the boys in my class today and a couple of times the ball hit one of the younger kids who got in the way. Now, whenever a kid gets hurt or is crying I always got over to them and hug them and tell them that everything is ok and soothe them until they are calm and then tickle them or something to make them laugh. After one of the kids got hit I saw the older boys go over the kid and hug the kid and say "it's ok" and soothe the kid until the kid stopped crying. Instead of just ignoring the kid and not caring like they used to they have begun to look out for one another and love one another! I am so excited because this is part of what I have wanted to teach them and what I had faith in since I first arrived here.



Pray for the older boys at my school. The all have such good hearts underneath their fighting and cruelty to one another. The example I just shared expresses that. Pray that the boys would seize their positions as men of God and that they would combat all of the evil that exists in their worlds. There are so many bad men out there, not just in Uganda but the corruption is all over the world. I hate to say this, but pray that the boys would not follow the examples that were set by their fathers, but that they would follow the good that is taught by their father in heaven.

This photograph was taken in 1994 by Kevin Carter. This photographer's image won the Pulitzer Prize that year. The boy was unable to walk but was very thirsty so he was pulling himself along the ground to United Nations food bank that was about a kilometer away. This is the point at which the photographer snapped his prize winning shot. The young boy is on the ground and behind him was a vulture, following him. The vulture was just waiting for the boy to die. I was outraged when I first saw this picture. How could the photographer just snap the photo and then leave the boy. No one knows what happened to the boy, including the photographer. The photographer used that boys' pain and turned it into his profit. It would have been so easy for the photographer to give the boy a ride to the well or help him or something.

But now that I think about it, I am just like the photographer. If I go home and do nothing for these kids then I will have done exactly what the photographer did. I know that I can't just go home and let everything be the same. I have become aware of the struggles that these children face, and it is my job to do something about it.

Also, if anyone feels led to do something for these children that you've been reading and praying about please let me know. There are about 20 kids that could really use to be sponsored to go to school, because the school that I teach at only goes to 2nd grade, but some of the kids are much older than that and really need to be in a different school now, but they can't afford to go to a school that charges fees. If the children do not get sponsored they will probably just end up extremely poor like their parents and will not really be able to do much but sell food that they dig or wash clothes for people. Also, their chances of contracting HIV or other diseases will be increased without further education. Please email me if you are interested at all and I can let you know more about it. It will cost about $250 a year to change a kids life forever. And I'm not just trying to sound convicting like a commercial that you see on tv. I know what these kids' lives are like and I see how badly they want to go to school and how much it really does give them a future and hope.

Becoming Real

What a miracle. Absolutely none of the kids tested positive for HIV! That is amazing considering that many of their parents tested positive.

I keep thinking about how to make the situations that these kids live in real to everyone back home, because I don't think that I had a real understanding or grasp until I came here and experienced it for myself. I remember reading articles about extreme poverty and statistics and being shocked by them, but it was still unreal to me; it didn't affect me personally. Most people are not aware of the extreme poverty that a majority of the rest of the world lives in, and even if they are aware of it maybe it is just another statistic to them. The people that I have encountered here are people that will die namelessly in many circumstances. Their stories are rarely told even though man of them work harder, experience more pain, live each day fuller, face more challenges, sweat more, and endure more than many of us could imagine in a lifetime. I just hope that the stories that I share help to make this all more real and more urgent.

Today at school there was a little girl named Sharon and she had huge cuts on her feet that had become infected and were pussing and swelling. We treated her wounds and cleaned them up but we could not take her to the hospital because the doctor leaves at noon and there is only one doctor, so we will have to wait till tomorrow so I can take her to get injections. Sharon lives with her grandmother. I asked one of the teachers why Sharon's grandmother did not do anything about the wounds. The teachers said that Sharon's grandmother may not have noticed, or she may not have known what to do and since they do not have money to take Sharon to the doctor the grandmother may have just decided to ignore the wounds. If Sharon had not been given the opportunity to come to our school, which is free for the children, unlike the other schools that charge fees, then her wounds may not have ever been treated and only gotten worse. Who knows what effects the wounds would eventually have on her health.

Please pray for Sharon's feet that they will heal and not get even more infected. Pray for how we should keep helping these children and that we could come up with some creative ideas for supporting them.

Also, African children love dancing, so if you haven't danced in a while maybe you should try it, because they seem to think that it is the greatest thing ever and African children smile a lot.

Hopefully I can post pictures of the traditional dances and of the children when I get back in a week so that you can see all the beautiful faces that I get to see every day.

hold strong have faith believe in love

Northern light

Tomorrow is the AIDS testing day! The kids who haven't been tested for AIDS yet will be tested with a guardian tomorrow at the school. There will be about 80-100 people being tested; this will be a big day since a lot of planning has gone into it and it will take all day from 5am till 7pm. Please pray that not a lot of kids or none of them will test positive, or that if they do that God can use the opportunity to really reach the kids and their families and give them hope. Pray that if the kids test positive that their guardians will take care of them and give the treatment as necessary, and if any of the guardians test positive pray that their family will support them and not abandon them.

Sorry for the lack of pictures. My camera battery is dead, but I've been borrowing a friend's camera so hopefully I can get some pictures up here some time soon. Everything's been busy since this is the last two and half weeks now.

This past weekend I had the chance to travel up north to Gulu. That was my first time stepping foot in an official war zone. While the LRA is currently in peace talks with the government, there is still a lot of chaos and even if the agreement is signed, the effects of the war are enormous. Read up on the history of the LRA and the war in the north, it is all interesting. We visited the biggest IDP camp in all of Africa. There are over 40,000 displaced persons in that camp. This part of Uganda is where the neediest and the greediest people live. At the camp there were only two small hospitals for all of the people and after talkign with the staff at the hospitals I learned that their medical supplies and support is always inadequate, not surprisingly. But what made me outraged was when they explained to me that money was coming into the government for the hospitals, but then just diappearing before it actually reached the hospitals. That is definitely one of Uganda's problems, corruption.

But again, whenever I step into some of the darkest places that I have ever encountered, I do not leave without seeing the light. I met a woman from Gulu who was kidnapped from her high school by the LRA and forced to become a sex slave. She lived with the LRA for a little over a year until her and twleve other girls escaped. On the long trek back to Gulu from Kitgum, two of the twelve died. The woman was very distraught and emotionally and mentally unstable, of course after this experience, but she received counseling at a church and says that she is always happy now, everyday. And it is true, whenever I see her or talk to her she is always laughing and smiling. She says that she smiles because she knows that her Lord is truly the Savior of the poor and the opressed and the widowed and fatherless. I heard many stories like hers while I was here and am again just blown away by the hope and the beauty that has come out of such a horrible situation.

There was so much that I saw in Gulu and so many people that I spoke with. Pray that I can sort out and uncover truths from my experience up north. I am still thinking about it all.

Mukwano means my friend in Lugandan, so, Mukwanos hold strong, have faith, and believe in love.

Serious thoughts from Hannah:

We have porridge every day at school. But today when the porridge was being served one of the students, Kato Isa, was just laying down and not getting porridge. Kato is one of many of the students that have AIDS and he wasn't feeling good today. Sometimes the other kids are mean to him and hit, punch, and kick him because he doesn't play with them. The kids think that Kato doesn't play because he doesn't like the other kids, but really it is because he is too weak and tired all of the time. I saw Kato not taking porridge, which is very rare for a Ugandan child to turn down food, so I went over to sit down next to him. As I sat next to him I just felt so bad for him and his circumstance become real to me in that moment.

I told Kato that someday he would not be in pain anymore; Someday he would feel alright and he would wake up every morning and feel strong and have energy. Of course, he didn't understand what I was saying in English, but he nodded his head anyway.

This reminds me of the Alli Rodgers song "Tanzania," which is right next to Uganda and it says: "Someday I will wake where the earth is clean and safe and where my children have a place to play, not here in Tanzania. And someday I will live in a house that's built by hands that hold the world...Someday I will wake in a body that won't break on ground that doesn't shake, not here. And someday I will live in a house that's built by hands that hold the world."

Pray that I will survive on the faith that my kids will one day live in a place like that. Also, pray that they will follow Christ so that they can have that opportunity.

I find it so interesting how evil is not bound to one continent or geographical place. The evil that plagues my childrens' lives also lives in America, but in a different way. My sisters go to high school where they face all these pressures to look a certain way or be a certain size and kids can be so mean to one another. Thankfully, though, the same goodness and love that exists in Africa exists in America too and love is not bound to only one location. And someday my sisters too will live in a place where they can live without pressure and "live in a house that's built by hands that hold the world."

This past weekend I traveled to Rwanda to see the genocide memorials. It was weird because the genocide only happened 13 years ago, so most of the people that I saw had either been a killer or faced death and lost people very close to them. And yet, these two groups now coexist. Many people say that the Hutus basically succeeded in wiping out the Tutsis, but I would disagree. They may have successfully killed a majority of the Tutsi people, but the spirit of those remaining has not been conquered. The Tutsi people took the situation and turned it into a testimony of God's unfailing love and forgiveness. The Tutsis chose to forgive instead of retaliate. If you dont know the history of the genocide in Rwanda, you should read about it, it is very interesting.

At one of the memorials at a church where over 8,000 people had been massacred in one night I met one of the survivors of that massacre. This man had lost his entire family in the killing. I couldn't believe it when I learned that his neighbors now were the people who killed everyone that the man loved. I asked the man, "How do you do it? How do you live with those people and not hate them?" The man said that he wakes up every morning and asks God to give him the strength to forgive those people, everyday. I am amazed at this ability to forgive, and to think that we hold grudges and refuse to forgive poeple for the silliest things. Also, the massacres show how powerful hate can be. These massacres werent performed by an organized military, they were just husbands killing wifes and children, neighbors killing neighbors, brothers killing brothers. And yet, love has surfaced from all of this. Love is stronger than all of this. There is so much evil in the world, we must combat the evil with the power of our love.

Please pray that the we will exert the power of love over evil everyday of our lives and choose to love and show mercy. Also pray for all of the sick children that I see everyday and the hospitals here that cannot treat them. Prayer is our greatest defense against all of this evil.

I love you all and cannot wait to come back home and love you with the love of God.

gumira mukukireza ne mkwagala

First off, Uganda is amazing. Over this past week I have been making home visits to see where my children live and to find out some things about their family's situations and to also keep records of the children since there are currently none at the school. It is completely different seeing the children at home rather than at school. At school the kids put on their clean clothes and wash their faces, but at home they are dirty and wear rags. All of the homes are the same, 10 people living in one room. It breaks my heart to see the living conditions of my children:

This is a photo of the twins carrying their water jugs. Most of the kids spend a lot of their time at home laboring and carrying water from the water holes which could be miles from their homes:

But I know that despite the initial impression of hopelessness and poverty there lies a richness and beauty to the lives of these people. There are so many opportunities and so many acts of love that I have seen in these past few weeks that it is overwhelming.

There is a Ugandan phrase that I have learned here; it is, "gumira mukukireza ne mkwagala." This means "hold strong, have faith, and believe in love." I was amazed when I heard this phrase because it has been exactly what my heart has been feeling during my time here. Over my first week I was learning how to be strong in the Lord (Joshua 1:9, James 1:2-7. and in the second week I learned how to have faith in God's plan for these children and to take initiative and to act on faith (1 Samuel 14, Hebrews 11) and now I am starting to learn about the power of love and how it can change lives and impact the people here. I have a feeling that I will be learning about how powerful the force of love truly is for the rest of my time here.

Please pray for my children's hearts and that God would really reach them. It is frustrating because my children fight a lot and hurt each other because they do not learn right from wrong and home and their parents or grandparents do not take care of them. God has told me to have faith that he wants to change them and that by the time I leave they will learn how to love one another. Pray for this and for my faith in this matter.

Over this past weekend I got to visit the Nile for some swimming and whitewater rafting. It was amazing to think of all of the biblical associations with the Nile. Also, I have a crazy story to tell everyone when I get back about a size 6 rapid:

I love you all. Hold strong, have faith, and believe in love.

my kids are the best

Today was a really good day with my kids at school. They have been practicing their traditional dances and they wanted to perform them for me. So they sang and played the drums and danced (they are incredible dancers). They were so cute and it made me feel very special that they had practiced so much:

I just realized that I hadn't given anyone proof that I was alive, so here is a picture of my with some of my children. They go crazy every morning when I show up and touch my hair and arms because I have hair on my arms and they don't. They are also fascinated by my blue veins:

I am interested in what the lives of my kids are like at home, since most of them are orphans living with other relatives or with only one parent because the other has died of AIDS, so over the next few weeks I will be making home visits and compiling records of each childs' situation. Also, I just found out that a lot of the children have not been tested for HIV even though most of their parents have it, so I am working on organizing a testing day for the kids and their guardians. This will cost about 100 dollars, but it is worth it for these children. Please pray that this all works out and that God will continue to give me the energy to love these kids as much as I can everyday.

Life is so simple here. Most of the afternoons I just sit around and talk with the other volunteers. I must remember to sit down and just spend time talking with the people around me when I get back.

I love you all and miss you too,

Hannah

life in kampala

So I am starting to get into the daily routine of things. Today I saw my kids that I will be teaching. There are about 60 of them and every single one of them is adorable; I know that I will miss them when I have to leave them. They are learning English but they do not speak it very well since this is a school for kids whose parents have AIDS so they cannot afford to go to regular school.

At first I had a hard time adjusting to life here because they way that we live is similar to the Ugandans. We live in a small flat and use a latrine for the bathroom and buckets to wash in, but our situation is still a lot better than a majority of the Ugandans. But God has really come through for me so thank you for praying for me. Two verses that he has given to me that are going to guide and get me through this are Joshua 1:9 and James 1:2-5.

I have realized that while it may seem that these people are missing a lot in their lives and while they may not have a lot, they definitely have God on their side and there are so many beautiful things that these people are able to be a part of. I am also encouraged that I am at the center of God's work here. It reminds me of a poem in Erwin McManus's book "Seizing your Divine Moment." It is called Epicenter:

Do not stand in the center if you do not wish to be shaken. There is always danger when the movement comes. Its force is most powerful underneath the surface, then breaks through the hardest of ground. Epic change moves from the inside out.

God is doing some epic changes on me. Also I realized how important a role I am being allowed to play in these kids' lives. See, these kids only get to play and be kids and do children things when they come to the Wolicami Center. Because then when they go home they have to take care of their parents or carry water or just do things around the house. They do not really get to play and they do not really get held or loved. So it is my job just to play with them and show them how to be kids and show them that they are loved.

Please pray that I will have creative ideas of things to do with the children and that God will continue to show me where he is at work here. Also, as you pray and think about me remember the power of love. God has shown me how powerful love can be.

There are so many little ways that we can bring love to people. Ways that may seem miniscule but they have massive effects.

Also, call your parents and tell them that you love them because a lot of the kids here dont have parents and they tell me how lucky i am. And parents be sure to love your kids and be thankful for them and thankful that you are here to love them because a lot of kids here dont get loved.

i love you all,

hannah marie

I have finally arrived in Uganda...

I have arrived in Uganda safely. Life here is so different. Pray for me because I am definitely going through culture shock and need your prayers to get through this. Everyone is so nice but this is for sure not western culture. My eyes have already been so open to the real situation here. This is a picture of our living room and fridge:

This is where we throw away trash; it is our deck:This is a picture of my bed, which will have a mosquito net around it tonight:

This is our kitchen, there is a lady named Ester that cooks for us and she is our Ugandan mom, but I have yet to meet her:

The picture above is from the deck of our compound and the building with 5 doors is where we go to the bathroom.

This is a picture of the other houses from my deck:

I am just getting used to everything so please pray for my adjustments and so far I'm not sick!

over 24 hours on a plane coming soon

I leave next Thursday June 14th at 2pm for Uganda. I will arrive in the Entebbe airport at 10:05pm the next day. Since I will be arriving so late I will have to stay at a hotel for the night, then I will be picked up by some people from the Global Volunteer Network in the morning. They will show me around and introduce me to everyone I will need to know.

I asked Amanda, the girl who was working at the same clinic that I will be working at, if she had any advice for me and here was her thoughtful response:

"Empty your plate of all expectations, relax, let it all sink in, walk slow,take your watch off, embrace the culutre in every way you can, talk to Ugandans all day everyday, walk everywhere, you'll never want that red african dirt off your shoes; those are some simple things."

I am so excited about this adventure and experience. But I will not make through these next 6 weeks without everyone's prayers. Please pray for my travel, for my health, and for the people that I will meet - that God will help me to love them and that God will show me how to create more glimpses of Heaven and beauty while I am around those people.