wed., oct. 17

I am going to be sad to leave the New Life Center. I am going to miss the girls and staff very much. Much of the staff is my own age, which is fun. There are also older people to offer wisdom and knowledge.

I wish I could know the girls better. Today, I overheard Terry saying that many of the girls are afraid to go back home because their homes are violent and abusive. They beg the NLC staff to go talk to their husbands before they have to return home…. What do you say to that? Do you allow them to live in the Center forever? What can you do? I suppose you can just hope they remember what they were taught at the Center…the value of their lives, the security they have in Christ, and the peace that comes with that.

I also will be sad to leave the children, because they are too young to have tasted a solid faith in Christ while at the Center. I can just hope their mothers will pass on what they’ve learned. One little girl, Alimo, generally seems unhappy and afraid. She must be about 4 or 5 years old, and I am told she doesn’t sleep at night…she has terrible nightmares every night. I always try and sit near her and put my arm around her. She doesn’t talk to me, but she stays with me. When I must leave, I wave and smile to say goodbye, but she just stares and doesn’t smile back. I wonder what will happen to Alimo. She has a very hard life ahead of her.

Tomorrow, we are visiting an IDP camp. I feel like I am about to visit hell. I don’t want to see what I am going to see. I know it is there, but I prefer ignorance. I have to push aside this tendency. It will be a shock to go from such a safe, constructive, healing, love-saturated environment to one swimming in decay and hopelessness.

Thankfully, I don’t have to live in the camp. I don’t have to be there any longer than I wish. Any time I please, I can go back to that ‘heavenly’ place called America…the place where nearly anything I want, I can have.

But I will remember those still struggling every day, every minute to keep living. For them, to live is to toil. There is nothing else. I will remember my beautiful sisters in northern Uganda.