Streams of living water

"Is there a balm… in Gilead or anywhere? 

Is there medicine for what ails us? 

Is there healthcare with you, so absent everywhere else? 

Is there a drug to deal with our infection? 

Is there a heavy dose for our pathology?"

 

~Walter Brueggemann on reading Jeremiah 8

Katie had the week off from school because of the presidential and mayoral elections. I have continued teaching the refugees at the center - its a wonderful opportunity and I really enjoy teaching first aid and CPR! Museveni won the elections - of course. I even received a text on my phone that said, "The old man in the yellow hat thanks you for making him president of Uganda." I thought that was funny. On the way back from Good Shephard Home we were stopped by a huge crowd of people that had gathered to watch the Presidential motorcade enter Kampala. We waved at President Museveni! The elections were mostly peaceful, a few riots broke out on thursday and friday when it was revealed that the mayoral elections were being rigged. figures. :-)

On Friday we went to Good Shepherd Home, a Catholic Mission that serves people with disabilities ranging from birth deformities to a children with cerebral malaria whose heads had swelled to the size of a basketball. The kids were dying for attention and love. Katie helped to feed some of the children and then did physical therapy with several of them. She told me about one child who didn't have arms past the elbow. By balancing the spoon on his elbow and manipulating it with his chin, he was able to feed himself. I watched a child draw pictures with a pencil between his toes because he was born without arms. He was such a good artist! Good Shepherd has a clinic there that helps the residents and community, I was able to help them during the afternoon treat children with head fungus. The things one experiences here are crushing, wearying. 

Yesterday, as Katie and I were boarding a matatu to leave the city center, we encountered several children on the street. They just sat there, dirty, in rags, holding out a hand. You can't give them money because it doesn't go to them but rather to the men who "control" the begging industry in Kampala. Katie and I went child by child handing out small pieces of candy, but each time it seemed they didn't even know what to do with it. they would silently look at it and then back at us.  They didn't open it, didn't smile, they just stared. it seemed their innocence had been taken from them. i have seen many street kids, but something about this altercation drained us, we felt weary, fatigued. i prayed for those kids a long time last night - its not the way its supposed to be.

In the last chapter of Amos, God tells Israel that He is going to send a famine on the land - not a famine of hunger or thirst, but of His word. People will "stagger from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east; They will go to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, but they will not find it." His words are life - did not Christ say that streams of living water would flow from us? I wonder how much i believe that. When i am squeezed, is it Christ that comes out? What is the quality of my faith? What is the righteous response to encountering injustice or suffering? "Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has not the health of the daughter of my people been restored?" Jeremiah 8:22

Your words are life O Lord.

                                                                      Boda-Boda Driver with 7 kids!!!! CRAZY!!!!