Wednesday, August 24, 2011

We pray that we do not let our experience fade.........................

Greetings! It has been nearly four days since our return from our ACF summer mission trip. In these last four days, we have definitely returned to our normal rhythms of life, full of family, relationships, jobs, school, etc., requiring significant attention. Yet, we pray that we do not let our experience fade too far into the past and that we remain permanently changed by our involvement in this mission trip. Our hope is to frequently reflect on our time in Uganda, not superficially, but with the intentionality of pondering our encounters and situations; to consider with awareness God’s work in each of us, the missionary community in Africa, and the people and country of Uganda and to contemplate how that translates back into our normal rhythms of life, here in America.
We treated and God is healed.
Kategaya met his sponsor. It was all hugs and smiles.
With a dedicated team of medical stuff, we were able to treat 1,850 throughout our missions.

The people of Africa are in great need. Everywhere heads turned, gazes held, and people stopped to look. Expressions often looked strained, maybe disgruntled or even occasionally downright hostile. I learned, however, that my perceptions can be wrong. For sometimes when I smiled, they smiled back. And I learned that this too is a gift from God – whenever a frown transforms into a sincere smile.

So, as so often happens in short term mission trips, I went away from this experience receiving far more than I ever contributed: gifts of beauty, gifts of nature, gifts of community and the ever precious gift of being made more aware of, and participating a little more in, God’s true kingdom.

Again, we are deeply grateful for your prayers and interest as you took this journey with us. Looking back on our specific prayer requests as we prepared over the weeks preceding our trip, it is unmistakably clear that God took care of those particular requests, among so many other things. God is good!

ACF missionary based in USA.

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