Pressing On: A year in Review

“I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 3: 10-14

The year 2011 started amidst cries of joy and excitement. Last January, the widows and I stood outside St. Peter’s Church in Nakawa singing and dancing…laughing at how much God had done for his brides. All the widows that started 2010 were now beginning 2011…we had beaten death. Those deeply ill had been pulled back from the grave. The ladies had begun a mushroom business and were starting to see a small profit from the business. Our land was fertile and growing food for the women. Life was in no way perfect or completely just, but it was better…we were moving toward abundance…a feeling of blessing swept through the women. Ruth pulled me aside and told me that 2011 would be the year of jubilee…the year of answered prayer.

In fact Ruth and Joyce both told me that God would bring my husband this year. They told me that my years of deep loneliness were soon to be over and that it was a year for rejoicing. When I heard them say this to me, I smiled and nodded my head, but inside my heart was just too afraid to believe that after 20 years of waiting it could finally be over. Ruth looked deep into my eyes and said, “You don’t believe me do you? Well, you go out and buy a man’s coat and hang it in your closet so you can physically see the promise the Lord has made to you.” You see for these last few years I have stood with Ruth and Joyce and Mary and Agnes and all the rest in their pain and sorrow and they have stood with me in mine. God does not just call us to love others, but to learn to receive love from others too. I am not in a ministry to widows…I am in relationship with women who happen to be widows. Thus the stern warning from my auntie Ruth about believing that 2011 would in fact be our Jubilee year.

To my great astonishment a short time later, a coworker of mine at the International School of Uganda confessed he had feelings for me. I was shocked as we had been friends for some time, but delighted as he was a handsome Godly man. Every day I pinched myself to see if this was really happening. I was falling in love. Then in late June, Isaac proposed and we got engaged. Idah, one of my widow friends, walked up to Isaac at church and said, “Do you know how long we have prayed for you?? We are trusting you to take good care of our daughter.” I think I had a permanent grin on my face for the whole month of June. We rejoiced together and I cried tears of happiness…Ruth and Joyce were right…God had resurrected a dead place in my heart and given me an abundance of love for one of his sons. The widows and I decided to host a big celebration to honor what God had done for their growing mushroom business and for my tender heart. We decided to have it shortly after my parents arrived for a visit. As we planned the party women were laughing and we all had tremendous confidence that blessing was just around the corner.

Then in the blink of an eye tragedy struck…early one morning I got a call that Agnes had passed away. She was in constant pain from the stomach ulcers she had and AIDS had eaten away at her body until almost nothing remained. After a year of regained health, death had come like a thief in the night and taken Agnes. Our ministry grieved the loss of Agnes and were comforted that she was now in the presence of Jesus and living in a new healthy body. At the time, we felt so dejected wondering why God had taken her so abruptly.

Early in the morning of July 4, large bulldozers came into the Nakawa slum area and demolished the widows’ small homes without warning and with heavy police deployment. It was then I saw how merciful God is…Agnes could have never endured what came next. As the large graders came through they moved with no mercy breaking down homes irregardless of who was inside or what was inside. Many of the widows lost all their belongings and watched helplessly as their homes were run over. I stood with them and watched. We cried and screamed…it was unbelievable…how could this be happening? In the course of one day, over half of the widows lost everything. Even our newly founded mushroom business was in shambles…it was destroyed beyond repair. I held Grace as she cried and wailed, “What will I do? What will I do?” I had no immediate answers, but I stood with her, cried with her and held her.

Somehow I pulled myself together enough to formulate a plan to help these women. Together with many of our donors we gave each evicted woman enough money to rent a small house somewhere else in Kampala. It was enough to keep them in this new house for 3 months. We then gave out food supplies to each family. Then we gave women money to replace some of the essentials they lost in the eviction. Suzan, our social worker, was working around the clock…taking calls in the middle of night…visiting women at all hours. The women were scattered all over town and felt not only the loss of their belongings, but the deep loss of community as well.

I called Ruth and comforted her…prayed with her. Almost as an aside I said, “Let’s just cancel the party…it doesn’t seem right to celebrate right now.” After a long silence, she said, “No…God is still the same as he was two weeks ago. God has still answered your prayer and ended your emotional suffering. That encourages us to believe that God will end ours too.” I wish I could say that I sighed nodded my head and said, “yes…God is faithful.” But, truthfully, I said, “What?! You all have just lost everything…widows are crying and devastated. How do I celebrate God’s goodness to me? Isn’t that just rubbing in my blessing in their face?” Ruth cut me off, “Kari, I believe God is faithful…he is our husband…he will turn our mourning into dancing.” I cried as I hung up the phone. I was angry at the injustice of it all. How could the government be so ruthless? Why in the midst of the first time our ministry was moving forward did this tragedy happen?

My parents came in July and we held the party. Honestly, I was unsure if the women would come or if it would feel more like a funeral then a party. As I entered I saw Ruth in front organizing the ladies a wide smile on her face. As my parents entered they gave them a welcome so full of love and joy I wondered if these were the same women I held sobbing on my shoulder over the last couple of weeks. We sang, we danced, and then we ate a great feast. At the end my father stood before these dear women and said, “We know the great loss you have endured just a few days ago and our hearts are grieved. We and some other donors from the US want to show you that we are standing with you, so we are giving each woman here 50,000 Ugsh (about $23).” When the last word left my father’s mouth, the women jumped up and ran around screaming. It was as if they had just been told they had won the lottery. Then they came and knelt in front of my father and thanked him. Later that afternoon, Ruth hugged me and said in my ear, “See I told you God does not forget his brides…he will provide for us and turn our mourning into dancing!” I just cried and nodded my head.

In the months that followed, we were able to help the women with 3 more months of rent. This has tremendously helped them keep away from living on the street. But, life has been hard…harder than it was before the eviction. Mary came to the meeting about a month ago and sat down next to me. She stared at her hands and then just began to weep. I rubbed her back and pulled her close. “I don’t know how I am going to make it. The place I was selling vegetables was destroyed in the eviction. I have no work. I am trying but I just can’t manage to feed us.” Then she just sobbed. I held her and then gave her some money to feed her family. A lot of meetings are like that now. Here God has relieved my personal pain and resurrected a cold part of my heart, but at the same time these women I love have been thrown into a pit of despair worse than the one they were in before. I couldn’t help but ask God, “Why…why would you allow this? We were just climbing out of this pit only to be thrown back in?”

Finally, by the end of the year, we had replanted 500 mushroom gardens on our land in Matuga. We hope to harvest them by the end of February. It is our hope that this business can be reborn and that our women can again have hope of income. We also gave the women rice, beans and porsho flour for the Christmas season. As most of the women are now in homes with a poor water supply, the ministry was able (with your help!) to give each woman a Tiva Water purifying system. This will greatly improve their health and the health of their families.

And so 2011 ended. A year that started with such hope, excitement and joy for the women has ended with pain, suffering and heartache. It hurts to watch your friends suffer and cry in despair. We have shed a lot of tears together this year. So now at the end of this year, I asked God, “why…why give me my heart’s desire…why resurrect my heart and leave theirs more broken then they were before?” As I sat in prayer and finally stopped ranting and raving at Jesus, he quietly whispered Philippians 3 in my ear. My dear, if you or the women want to know resurrection, you have to taste death. Have you not known emotional death…heartache so deep words cannot speak of it? It is in that place that resurrection happens, so don’t despair for my brides…my widows…they now taste death, but open your eyes and be ready because resurrection is coming. It is a site too beautiful for words.

Now as we look toward 2012…the woman are forgetting what is behind…the death, the suffering…and straining toward what is ahead…a powerful resurrection of their situation that will be too beautiful to behold. We are beginning to build on our property and I know that will be part of God’s great resurrection. Oh…and we will dance at my wedding too!