A Humble Christian, #1

On Wednesday night I was speaking at a church in Truby, TX about my mission internship to Uganda this summer. Since I arrived home on July 9th, I have been asked I don’t know how many times, “What did you learn from the trip?” How do you answer a question like that!

I just spent 7 weeks in a place where the people give you an abundance of food you could never eat. (Which also happens to be a Ugandan family’s rations for the week.) I saw starving, dying children. I encountered evil face to face. I saw evil at its highest.

I felt the sting of real humility.

I almost cried while I was speaking. If you know me, I am not much of an openly emotional guy. I like to pretend I’m a thug. I grew up in the hood and sometimes get full of that “Bring it, you don’t scare me” attitude. I get full of myself and think I can take on the world, much less a few punks. (Funny since I have never been close to getting in a fight.) I get proud, pretending I am bigger and tougher than I really am.

Not this time. Not when I talk about what happened 2 months ago in a small village in Uganda.

We arrived in an IDP (Internally Displaced Person) camp early Saturday morning. I will never forget the children there. Some call them the Invisible Children. Invisible to the world, these children endure hideous injustices. Their parents are stripped from them in death, while the children are forced to face the cruelty of the Lord’s Resistance Army.

You see the scars of evil on these innocent, beautiful children. You see it physically. Some bear the scars of burns and cuttings on their faces. Most of them bear the stomach of hunger as a result of the selfish actions of others. Shaped by the actions of selfish humans, you would think these children could not help being selfish. Nothing is farther from the truth.

As we got out of the truck, the children slowly gathered around us in a circle. They wanted us to take their picture. Everywhere we went, they followed us. Everything we did, they mimicked.

Here are some pictures of the children:

There are two things that day which changed my life forever. First, we were invited inside the church to eat food. I remember thinking, “The food I am about to eat is more food than these children will eat in a week.” But to not eat would be to offend my African brothers and sisters.

As you can imagine, the children watched us more closely. Even though they were starving, they were not interested in food. They were interested in us. (Something I still cannot comprehend.)

So I wonder, “What’s so special about me?”