He's Home.

Because children belong in families, not orphanages. 

Wednesday, Jason went home. Home to his aunt, his sister, and his brother. He is nine years old, and he has spent nine years in an orphanage.

Jason is our first resettlement case. This has been a long process and a long time coming. Things came up. Things got in the way. Things took more time than anticipated. But he’s home with his family. And this is what we are striving for, and ultimately why we are doing what we do.

This summer has been a lot of ups and downs with lots of things surrounding moving forward with our adoptions, but this is a high! A high of highs, and such an incredible blessing!

Thank you all who have been praying for us and with us in this journey. We still have a long way to go with a lot of our kids, but this is a step forward and we are grateful!

Connecting with the Local Church

“Joseph, how did you think today went?” [Pause. Big smile.] “Amazing!”

This was the one word that Joseph was able to say for a couple of minutes Friday afternoon once we got back the office.

Friday morning we put on a conference for local pastors to reach out to them about the possibility of domestic adoption and the role that the local church can play in the orphan movement. To put it in Joseph’s words, it was pretty amazing! To add my description, I would say it was so incredibly encouraging, awesome to be a part of, and a great start to something we would love to get off the ground.

There were twelve pastors from churches in the surrounding Jinja area who attended. I primarily put the resources together, and Joseph, our social worker, did an awesome job presenting, with Sam, our counselor, translating in Luganda. In the presentation we explained a bit about Ekisa’s ministry: our heart in working with kids with disabilities and trying to find them each a forever family. We then talked about our desire to reach out to the local church, examples of other African countries pushing for deinstitutionalization of orphans, such as Rwanda and Ethiopia, and then connected it back to ways that these pastors could be encouraging and teaching their congregations here in Uganda. Afterwards we had about an hour Q&A, and lots of good questions were asked in regards to adoptions, as well as Ekisa and helping children with disabilities in their communities already.

It’s hard to say what impact this conference had specifically on the people who attended, but I think it was a good start and a great platform established for us to continue to follow up with these pastors. Please pray for them as they have gone home, that God may continue to bring to light ways that people here can care for the orphaned, the abandoned, and the least of these. And pray for us at Ekisa, that we are able to continue reaching out to the community here in Uganda, and trust in His plan for each and every one of our kids!

"Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow's cause."   Isaiah 1:17

What A Week

Thank you all for your prayers for Walter. Last Monday he came home, and his homecoming was something else. Erika and I were walking home and got a call that him and one of our mamas had reached the bus stop; we walked in the house to get the keys and the kids were getting ready for bed and were all in their pajamas. I told Sam to get excited because we were going to pick up Walter, and he immediately ran to the shoe rack, grabbed his shoes, and ran out to the car jumping and dancing around. At that point we couldn’t say no, so he rode with us. He sat on my lap in the front seat and was bouncing the whole three-minute drive it took to get there – it was precious! Sam wasn’t our only excited one, pretty much all of the kids were waiting by the door, and all started screaming as soon as we pulled in the driveway. I feel like these kids daily teach me what it truly means to love.

He is recovering, but not as well as we would like. Both of the skin grafts on his face have fallen off, and still causing him some pain – not sure what our next step will be, but prayers for continued healing would be appreciated.

Then Tuesday, last week, marked the one-year since Jojo, one of Ekisa’s kids, passed away very unexpectedly. I didn’t get a chance to meet this little one, but it was a somber day around the house remembering what a hard day it had been a year previously. Emily wrote a great piece on the Ekisa blog, so check that out if you haven’t already!

Wednesday was a bit of a nostalgic day for me. It had been a year since I first left for Uganda. It really does seem crazy to think that the last year, I have spent six months in Uganda, and in the next year, I will have spent almost eight. It’s a bit scary how my heart is falling for this place!

On Friday, Grace (a good friend of mine here) and I went to Kenya for the weekend. She has a friend who is working at a ministry in Kitale and wanted to go visit, and I tagged along as a travel buddy! The travelling experiences were much less eventful than my last trip to Kenya, but we definitely got our laughs. It was only supposed to be about a five or six hour drive, but we took all public transportation, so in reality it took us about 8½-9 hours both there and back.

After we had crossed into Kenya and got a matatu (their taxi-buses that seat 14, but carry on average probably 20), we sat next to this sweet, older, Kenyan man and while we were talking to him he applauded us for riding public transport, and told us, “You know what they say, ‘when in Rome, do as the Romans do,’” and then he assured us that at least we would have some good stories! It wasn’t ten minutes after he said that, and when we were about 10 minutes outside the town where we had to catch another matatu, the sliding door fell backwards off the hinges. We had just stopped to let some people out and the conductor went to shut the door as we had begun to pull out onto the road again, and BAM! there went the door. I think the entire van was in shock and quiet, but I immediately started laughing, unable to even think about if it was really be appropriate or not. Their next move was to put it on top of the matatu, and since they didn’t have any rope, the conductor held his hand out the window to hold it on top – and my only thought was, like that’s going to help if it starts to fall off. But off we went, without a door, and Patrick leaned over to us and said, “Well, here is your story.”

We reached finally reached Kitale and our weekend was great! Grace’s friend, Anna, had asked some friends of hers if we could stay with them, and they were wonderful. Their house was beautiful and it was a very relaxing, rejuvenating trip. It rained every day, so we didn’t get to see a ton, but saw a lot of the aspects of the ministry that Anna works with and just got to enjoy down time. We left Monday morning to get back to Jinja, and it was really nice to get back home.

The kids are on holiday this week and next, so Emily H. and I have been spending a lot of time this week planning, writing reports, and mapping out school for this next term and the rest of the school year. Tomorrow we have a fun event happening, but I’ll wait and fill you in on that afterwards!