Elections...

I wanted to write to you with a large and important request:
Today is Monday, the 20th and Uganda is in full-scale preparation for the presidential elections on Wenesday, Feb 23rd. Recently there has been no intense increase in violence or threat to peace (minor clashes during campaigning aside) here. My prayer is that this will continue.
The details are not so important (and the time on my computer is running short)- Pres. Museveni and his former primary doctor, Besigye are the opposing front-runners in this election and much criticism has been made about both. Please click into Ugandan News on this site if you are interested in tracing archives or staying current with the campaign/elections.
There is a heavy cloud of anticipation in Uganda as citizens prepare to vote on Wednesday. Opinions are pretty well divided as to who is the better man for the job, etc. And beyond that, thoughts are polarized as to what “might happen if…”
I don’t have the answer… and with all my fascination with and classes in political science I have hardly a strong argument for either man or the outcome that might follow.
But I have a request.
Being out here… with these people my heart has enlarged to love and identify with them. For right now this is my country, these are my people. And as this time of anticipation for these elections builds my heart carries their burden of fear, concern, uncertainty and nervousness. It is too much for me to carry. It is too much for all who read this to carry. The only one that can carry it all is the One who promises he will sustain us if we cast our cares on him (Ps 55:22). IPeter 5:6 says that if we humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God he will lift us up in due time… because he cares for us. We can cast our anxiety on him because he cares for us. These are promises I am holding on to.And again and again I am continuing to be sustained as I come before God and ask him to carry my burdens and the burdens of these people.
Paul writes in Galatians that to carry each other’s burdens fulfills the law of Christ. To be burdened by the cries of and worries and anxieties of one another is the law of love. That burden, though, is not to remain on our shoulders. In humility we are to bring it before God in faith that he will take our burden and sustain us.
SO, here is my request.
Will you shoulder their burdens? I am in the thick of it and can tell you that there are many here who are carrying heavy anxiety and worry and uncertainty. Will you intercede on their behalf?
I, with my hut-mates, will be setting this week apart to come before God in behalf of these people. We are praying for Uganda, the elections and the people of this country.
Will you stand with us before God this week to carry the burdens of the Uganda people?

Fatherhood...

It is a hot Sunday morning in Uganda and I am happy to be taking the time to say hello to you!
I'm not going to lie... there have been some tough days over here. At the beginning of this time I really began to pray constantly that God would use the time here to break and make me for HIS glory. I knew there were things that I was holding on to that I needed to die to. The second week here I was in envisioning- basically like church for eight hours every day- God spoke to me clearly and directly. I saw some of the dark parts of my heart and God just revealed how those pieces of me had affected the way I view and draw near to God.
Earthly fathers have a heavy and fragile role in how they represent the concept of Fatherhood... and a lot of our relationship with them translates into our view of God as Father. I have always struggled with seeing God as Father. I am awed by him as Creator, humbled to him as King of Kings, love and cherish him as Savior, desire him as Spirit... but Father is a tough one for me to long for. I am still praying that God will break me and remake me, specifically in this area.
But man, it has been awesome here!!! There is something about getting beyond your comfort zone that allows you to see what you were so comfortable in anyway. I felt so led to Northern Uganda... physically led to be a missionary here... but now that I am so physically close I feel heavily burdened to pray for the North. The initial leading I felt so strongly to go there physically has really been replaced with the burden to pray for the area and the people. I am reading "Let the Nations be Glad" and Piper just went on a rage about the supremacy of prayer in missions and while reading it I was on fire inside. Before reading that I was reading "The Praying Hyde" about a guy that devoted his life to prayer and really lived in constant prayer- interceding, thanksgiving, mourning... he was passionately committed to God through prayer. Though his example was truly a gift of God it still resonated a longing inside me to ask God to fill me with a passionate and devoted spirit of prayer. I was also reading Bonhoeffer's "Psalms, The Prayer Book of the Bible" and was convicted even again about the power of prayer and the glory God desires through it. So all that to say that I am pressed hard right now to pray. Especially to continually lift the North to God in prayer. My heart and burden for that area has not decreased, rather it is stoked by prayer. But, even more surprisingly, my heart is swelling with prayer and burden for America- specifically the church of America. Getting outside has allowed me to see America differently.
I am asking God that he would send workers into the harvest. To Northern Uganda. To America. I am willing to go if he calls me, wherever it may be... but now I am led to the place of kneeling in prayer and waiting there. He will be faithful to hear and I am trusting that he will call me if it glorifies him. I am willing and waiting. I want God to call me and use me, but I am not going to begin walking until he goes before me. And I know that I would be leading if I began to plan the next step right now.
The kids out here are amazing. We had intake (where we take in new students for the school and adopt new kids into families here at New Hope) and the staff and Institute students (me) got to go up to the front of the assembly where all the little ones were standing and put our arms around them, our hands on them and pray for there new beginning and their "new hope". These kids were taken off the streets, from parents that horridly abused them, from witch doctors, from the pit... they were the ones that no one wanted. And here I got to be a part of picking them up and standing alongside them on a new and solid foundation. After all of New Hope prayed for the new little members we looked each child in the eyes to say, "you are welcome" and just hugged them. WOW. I was so overwhelmed with emotion. By the third or fourth little dirty, barefooted, pot-bellied, scabby child I couldn't look in their eyes anymore. I think I would have broken. What an experience. These fatherless kids that were rejected by so many are, by God's grace, going to have an opportunity to become a child of God. God is able to redeem Fatherhood and Father these fatherless. That's powerful.

FRONT LINES...

I spent this afternoon at the home of the head director/pastor of New Hope. It was amazing to listen to this thoughtful and wise man explain in more depth the situation in Northern Uganda. Incredible perspectives that in all my research I had not seen before today. There is such a need for prayer for the church of Northern Uganda... tribal warfare and prideful stubbornness (works of Satan) threaten to allow the atrocities that have been taking place for more than 18 years to continue. The spiritual vein in this mess is at the root of it all. Come humanitarians and adventure seekers and western idealists... you will never reach the place where true redemption and healing resides. At the Cross.

So many have asked me what they can do to help this situation. Let me tell you how exciting it is to confidently say that thousands of miles away the church in America can be the front lines of an offensive attack against the principalities of darkness. Because this physical war in Uganda is sustained by Satan and his demons, we- the body of Christ all over the world- have such an opportunity to be on the front lines in Uganda… and we will prevail against him. The call is now. It is unacceptable for us to shrug our shoulders and sigh that we despair over the situation in Uganda and “just can’t do anything.” We are the ones who hold the answer! The front lines are waiting for us to step up. The church in America can do so much for there sister church here! Prayer is so powerful. God works here in ways that America refuses to allow. He still answers prayers!!!

There is a pretty big reconciliation movement here to begin the work of repentance and forgiveness. New Hope is at the head of this process and has been since sometime around 2004. Of the handful of tribes inextricably tied to all this, there are two tribes that have dug there heals in the ground and are refusing to repent of the blood (literally) on their hands and have stalled the full reconciliation that this place thirsts for. This is where prayer is so needed. Once the tribes have been reconciled to God and through him to one another, Pastor Jay (and I) believe the spiritual darkness here will be confronted with the Light. And here lies the solution to the abductions and slaughters and all the other awful things taking place in Northern Uganda. The answer is the unity of the church against the unity of evil. An unbroken body of Christ. How can we ever expect to stand divided against such darkness? Only in unity of Christ’s blood can this evil be overcome. If the body of Christ would only be reconciled to God and through that be reconciled to one another as one body.

2 COR 5:18ff

“All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.”

Please, please, please pray for the tribes here to be reconciled to God and through him to one another. Pray that God would glorify himself here in Uganda. Pray that the leaders of the church here will rise up to lead their people to repentance and forgiveness. This is the answer to the problem. Please pray, tell the family to commit to pray for these divided tribes, ask your friends to pray in Jesus' name for reconciliation, ask your Bible study groups to pray for God to be glorified in Jesus’ name. I can't tell you HOW needed prayer is... and there are so few praying.

Thousands of miles away the front lines are beckoning...

May God be glorified.

Praying with you in Uganda,

Brittany