Summer 2008 Uganda Trip (report)
Report by team member Lisa Higgins given at the Thornwell Lecture Sunday August 31, 2008 -
Isaiah 26:12 - “O Lord, you will ordain peace for us; you have done for us all our works.”
"Availability. From the time I began praying about this trip which was around March of this year, that one word kept coming to my mind. In April, I spied a sentence in the church bulletin:" Anyone interested in a short term medical mission to Uganda should contact Craig Wilkes" or something like that. Would I be considered for such an assignment? I am not a doctor or a nurse. Actually my vocation is "busy mom" . If any of you know Elisabeth Elliot you will know she often said on her Christian radio broadcast, "Do the next thing." So I "did the next thing," I called Craig Wilkes. One thing followed another and pretty soon I was the most immunized person in Richland County. I had my shots and a passport. I had one week to fill out the application and make a deposit. I just kept doing the "next thing" trusting that the Lord would shut the door if He saw fit. Yes, I did think about who would care for my family and who would do my job. The Lord apparently went before me preparing the hearts of the people who would carry my load while I went to Uganda. All I can say is that everything fell into place in such an orderly fashion that I could not doubt who was the Orchestrator of it all and all I really ever did was make myself available.
"This orderly pattern lasted as long as it was beneficial to God's plan. Then things began to go in a direction that I would have never dictated and that I was helpless to alter. And we were praying too. We prayed in the lobby, we prayed at the gate, we prayed on the plane, we prayed at bagagge claim. Still we missed a connecting flight before we ever breached the borders of the United States. That precipitated the loss of our luggage. When we touched down in Entebbe some 32 hours later, our bags were not with us. We lived out of our carry-on for four days! We had come to dispense medicines and we had none. I had to borrow the clothes of a man on the Birmingham team to get dressed to go the clinic the second day. You may have heard our stories. Still God worked all these things for good. We were put in the position of leaning heavily on God and on the other mission team through whom God was working. They shared with us their clothes, their medicine. Sharing was good for us. It was humbling and reminded us this was the Lord's trip, not ours. My self-sufficiency was not negotiable currency in His economy.
"Waiting on God to work out these details opened my eyes. I was on a mission! I had come to Uganda to help alleviate human suffering and share the Gospel. Now I was being ministered to. Being "in need" is humbling. I see now that in order to serve, you have to be humble. I am not sure that I had connected the two. If I had come in my self sufficiency-based on my good health, my material wealth, my education and my lovely family- I would not have come in Christ. Depending on Him to work out our difficulties, feeling my helplessness, refocused me on Him. Now with eyes on Him, I was able to do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
"Our job was not just medical. We were to shore up the efforts of the UPC to plant a new church in Namulanda, the village where Westminster Theological seminary is being built. The people we went to assist greeted us enthusiastically at the airport in the middle of the night. They worked each day with us interpreting between the team and the patients. Together we prayed over most every patient. The prayers of these men were rich and deep. Every night they would hold a crusade to flame the interest in the new church. They were tireless.
"Probably one of the most touching church services I have ever attended was the first service of this church plant. We took communion with watered down Pepsi and cookies but the preaching and teaching was rock solid. Daniel, who is the pastor, said something to these people that I wrote in the front of my Bible. He was teaching on Psalm 98 "Sing to the Lord a new song". He pointed out that you can not sing a new song unless you are a new man and you can not be a new man unless you are in Christ. He told the congregation that while today everything they have is handed down from America, when Jesus comes there will be no more hand-me-downs. Everything will be new. It was a great day. Again, who is being ministered to here?
"There was plenty of work to do, even for the non-medical. I was a pharmacy tech passing out our medications a couple of days. I was a dental tech, sanitizing the used instruments with bleach and boiling water, brought to a boil over a coal fire, (no electricity, dirt floors, no windows or doors at the first clinic.); preparing the dentist for each new patient and praying with the patients during their procedures. This makes me smile. How would you like someone to hold your hand and pray for you while you were being treated?
"I praise God that I got to go. They say you can't go to Africa and not be changed. I say you can't go to Africa for Christ and not be changed. And you can't go if you aren't available."
