Mbale

I've been down in Mbale, Uganda's 3rd largest city, with the Wrights for a couple days now, and I'm enjoying city life, electricity, warm showers, shopping in the markets with Mary and Kipsy, and amazing food.


 I asked the Wrights what they miss most about living in Mbale, and they said they miss the people. Karamoja is quite isolated. However, I'm learning that being a mzungu (foreigner) here in the city can also be extremely isolating and discouraging. No matter what we wazungu do, we will always stand out in a crowd. You could live in Mbale for ten years and taxi drivers would still try to charge you double. Young mzungu women shouldn't go out into town alone. So both rural and urban missions have their ups and downs.

Yesterday I was blessed to be able to go with Martha to a Bible study of expat/missionary women here in Mbale. A couple of them I'd met before -- Julie and her husband Derek run Cure Children's Hospital, and Dianna Tuininga and her Missionary Associate teacher, Tess, are the new OPC missionaries in Mbale. Nada Eid and MJ McCollum are lovely women who are married to local businessmen, and Lexi and Natalie are young women who do adoption work/orphan care. Three others are women who are visiting short term while they and their husbands do ministry work in Mbale for a while. It is really encouraging to meet all these women who love the Lord and love the work they've been called to do here. 

Unfortunately Martha and I probably won't be going to that study

again for a long time, but at least I met lots of new friends. 

At one point in the conversation we started talking about Karamoja, and the whole room was determined that they could never handle life up there. Truth is, I love Karamoja, and I've never lived anywhere else in Africa, so I guess I don't really know what I'm missing. I don't know if I'd want to live in an African city. It's wonderful to visit occasionally, but I really like the quiet, slow pace of Karamoja. Of course, ask me again at the end of my trip and I may think differently!

 The topic of the Bible study is building up a commitment to daily devotional time with the Lord. Let me dispel any rumors right now that being here makes you feel spiritually "on fire." It's simply not true. I remember last year soon after I arrived, I shared with the other missionary ladies that I felt completely spiritually deflated and dead. I thought that being surrounded by Christians, on the mission field, going to Bible studies and teaching the Bible to Karimojong kids all the time would make me feel more intensely devoted to God.

 It would be an overstatement to say that the opposite is true, but honestly, this is a battlefield. The surest way that Satan can cause our work to fail is if each of us missionaries individually "fall off the wagon" and stop spending time alone with the Lord. It's easy to make excuses not to read the Bible, especially when we are going to Bible studies and teaching Bible stories almost every day. So please pray for me, and for everyone on the mission, that we would not neglect our prayers and time in the Word. It's a FIGHT every day... but communion with God is something worth fighting for. Pray that we would have the strength for the fight, not in ourselves, but in Christ and the promises of the Word.