Jinja!

I had a sort of crisis in my head this weekend. Rewind. Ok this past weekend I went to Jinja with the other mission's emphasis students. We visited with some missionaries and locals in missions. We also stayed in a beautiful place that had a pool and showers, but that is an exciting side note. So as part of our visits we heard from people who do prison ministry, youth ministry, church planting, development, pastor training, run a café… and so on. At one point we visited a maternity ward very briefly to pray for a woman who had just had a c section. I have a lot of opinions about the weekend. It is strange to visit missionaries when you are in the midst of studying missions. It makes you very critical... which is good and bad. Its like when you start exegeting the bible for yourself and then you suddenly become horribly critical of every sermon you hear. OR you start studying the whole concept of sermons and preaching and the organization of the church (Thank you KB) and you question the entire church service. Anyway its like that. But that was not the crisis in my head. That was just a struggle to remain non critical.

The crisis was that when I was hearing from the girl doing youth ministry here, I was bored. Incredibly bored. Something felt wrong about her talk, the way she described the youth ministry. But it was nothing I could pinpoint. Anyway then later we were in the maternity ward and I was thrilled to be there. I could have stayed all day and visited the moms and babies, heard their birth stories, listened to heart beats…. But later I was thinking about it and I was sort of disturbed that I was SO much more excited to be in the maternity ward than I was to learn about youth ministry (my major).

I feel like I have had a crash course in the culture here. Obviously it would take me a long time to really understand this worldview (or maybe I really never would) but without fully comprehending a culture how can you (I) interpret the bible in the context of the culture? I mean obviously there is a time and place for that. The gospel has to be spread and that will involve interpretation and contextualization from outsiders. But in Uganda that happened like over 100 years ago. God has always been in Africa. Why do westerners think that we need to bring God here? I just feel like the Christians here do not need any help from outsiders in terms of doctrine and theology and all that stuff. I do feel like America needs help from Uganda. I would love to see a shift in missions. Instead of Westerners coming to "spread the gospel" in Africa it should be reversed. I am not romanticizing Christianity here. There are a lot of beliefs that I do not agree with. Lots of prosperity gospel. Tons. But the way Christianity manifests itself in Africa isn't "better" or "worse" than in America. It is so different and incredibly beneficial to witness and participate in.

I don't know if my future will involve youth ministry. I could see it involving facilitating some sort of learning experience for American youth to come to developing countires and learn from the people here. Like a short term mission trip but without the guise of going to "help or teach". Just going to learn and partner. What if rather than a "mission trip" youth went on "pilgrimages" like Muslims do to Mecca. Maybe I will start that.

As fun as it is to ponder my future… it is much more enjoyable to just live and be present here. Life is adventurous and challenging, high and low, rarely dull, often contemplative, BEAUTIFUL, new, and better every day. The past couple weeks have been that kind of happy that makes you want to skip through fields of flowers. I am about due for a wave of homesickness (or homesickness for Haiti… what do you call that?). To balance out all that happy… I am struggling with changing my views/attitudes/practices on community and sharing and sacrifice. So if you are a person that prays, pray for God to guide me in that struggle. But life is good. There will be more "Things I love about Ug" coming soon. I have discovered that sitting around naming the things you love about this country cures everyone's culture frustrations. J Chicaste Yesu!