... Like Heaven

I’m going to be honest…. I’ve been scared to write about this day. It was a day so full of meaning, so full of significance, so full of God’s presence. I am afraid of not doing it justice, but 6 months is long enough to be scared.

On Monday, we got to sleep in and leave for Bukaleba at 9, which really meant 10. When I came down for breakfast, though, there was a little boy at the table. Pastor Mark introduced him as Moses, and I found out that he was from the orphanage, and he had been brought into town that morning for his treatment because he is HIV positive. He was very quiet and reserved, but he opened up more and more as Pastor Mark shared his pancakes and we all gave him lots of attention and love.

While we waited in the yard, we finally saw a monkey!

The pastors in Uganda have become like awesome uncles to me. They watch over me but they’re not afraid to tease me. They are also very aware of the fact that I am 25 and not married. So while we waited, Pastor Edward told me that I needed to pick a date that I was going to be married. He told me, “Just say ‘By this date, I will be married!’” I just laughed and told him that I was trusting God to bring the right man at the right time. Pastor Omar promptly told me to wait and marry his son. All of the pastors who knew him laughed, and then I found out that his son is 7 or 8 years old.

We drove out to Bukaleba, and first we stopped at the site for the secondary school and walked around. It was a beautiful place! Words just don’t do it justice. It’s exciting to think of all of the children that will soon be filing these buildings!

After this, we drove to the Bukaleba guest house and the site for the primary school. From there, we could see a building about a quarter of a mile away and the sound of children laughing. When we heard that it was the orphanage, we asked if we could walk there, and we set off across a small field to get to it.

As we got closer, we heard the sounds of children laughing and playing. All I could think was “this sounds like heaven.”

We didn’t even make it through the doorway before we had kids swarming our legs to give us hugs. I dropped to the floor a few feet in front of the door.

Before I go further, I have to tell a story. Rewind about 5 years, and I was listening to a sermon as I drove home to Boone from Raleigh while I was just here on an internship. The pastor was talking about rhythms in our lives, and he kept using the word “cadence.” I just rewound him saying the word over and over again and I fell in love with it not just as a word, but as a name. I knew God was telling me something, and I feel sure that on that car ride I knew that someday I was going to have a girl and I was going to name her Cadence, and call her Cadie (say it like “Cay-dee”… I’m not really sure how to spell it).

So when I walked through the door of the orphanage, I immediately had a little boy attached to my legs. I sat on the floor and laughed with him, tickled him, and smiled at him. I asked his name, and I almost cried when I heard them say “Cay-dee.”

 

Really, his name is spelled Cade. He is being adopted by a family in the U.S., and they gave him the name Cade. In Uganda, though, they have been pronouncing it “Cay-Dee.” I don’t believe in accidents. It was a beautiful, surreal moment. Of all the children to greet me, it was this one. I know that was God-designed.

My words are truly failing me… I can’t even explain how beautiful that day was.

For the next long while, I played with Cade, Susan, and Johnny on the floor. I just tickled them, smiled at them, and laughed. It didn’t matter that we had just met, that we couldn’t speak the same language… it just mattered that we were there together. We were on the covered patio where they eat and play, and all around the space our team was playing with babies. I looked around and thought that it was the closest to heaven that I’ve ever been.

 

 

The orphanage is by no means fancy. If it was here in the U.S. we would probably turn up our noses at it. But it’s clean, it’s safe, and it gives them a home. Compared to the squalor that we had seen, it was paradise.It was still heartbreaking to know that these children go to bed at night without a mommy and daddy. It's not the way it should be. But God our God is good, and these children are safe. They are fed, clothed, and cared for. They will be able to go to school. They know that God loves them, and in that day we were able to tell them that we love them too.

 

After a while of playing, it was time for the children’s lunch, so we went to the bus to eat our lunch. When they were done eating, they were taken inside for a nap, and we tried to stay out of the way while the “aunties” there tried to settle them down and get them to sleep.

While the children were sleeping, most of the ladies organized the clothes and started getting the children (one by one) woken up and dressed in new clothes. Those precious babies came out looking so cute!

 

They had it down to a science so they didn’t need my help; I wandered outside to where Kelly and Tasha were working on getting information together on each of the children (questions and pictures), and I loved watching them at work. The children were coming outside for these interviews after they were dressed in their new clothes, but the problem was that they were too sleepy while they were trying to talk to them and take pictures!

So I got the best job in the world -- I was the warm-up act. After the children were dressed, they would come to me, and I would play with while Tasha and Kelly were interviewing one, and then they would take the one that I had played with and I would get another sleepyhead.

The first child that I got was James. I just walked around with him and talked to him. He was still very sleepy so I just gently told him what I could in Lugandan - that I loved him and that Jesus loved him. The only thing I could get out of him was “Mmmm….” But as I held him I felt a special bond.

After James, I got to play with Susan, Sharif, and Ivan. By this time, most of the children were awake and it was no longer a one-on-one situation, so we played soccer as a bigger group, then we did some songs, had a story, and then did coloring. After their coloring, they had their snack of porridge.

While the children drank their porridge, I went to ask Tasha and Kelly which of the children didn’t have sponsors. I'd known I was going to start sponsoring a child, but I really wanted to wait until we were there... I'd just felt God telling me to wait. They told me that James didn’t have a sponsor, and I couldn’t remember which one he was at first (we had learned a LOT of names that day, let alone that week!), but I knew as soon as they said his name that I was supposed to sponsor him. I walked back to the children and realized which one James was. I knew that he was the one that God had picked out for me to sponsor.

Pastor Edward’s older children are in school at Bukaleba, and his adopted son Wycliffe came to see us at the orphanage. It was so amazing to finally meet the children that I had heard about and prayed for! He told me that the next day he hoped I would meet the rest of his children, because we would be back in Bukaleba (the village, not the orphanage), and his children were going to come from school to the church to see him and meet me!

The whole afternoon is hazy to me, like it’s a wonderful dream. We played with the children, loved them, smiled and laughed, danced and sang.

 

I got to hold James… I just held him and didn’t want to let go. I had spent a lot of time with Susan, also, but I noticed that she looked sad. Pastor Nelson told me that it was because she was sad I was paying attention to James and not her. I sat down so that I could hold them both, and thanked God over and over that I was in that place in that moment.

 Now, in a day full of awesome, wonderful things, one thing was the most powerful. I was called “Auntie” several times that day, and one of the pastors had told me earlier in the week that I was a mother to many children.

But that day, October 11, 2010, I was called “Mama.”

After I wrote it in my journal, I just wrote “wow.” That’s all I can say now. Wow.

I have babies in Uganda. When I pray, I pray for my children and my babies. Even if God never lets me bring one back to the United States, I know that in my heart I have babies in Uganda.

“I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” – John 14:18

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” – James 1:27