It took five weeks, after arriving in Uganda, Africa, that I could say I was semi settled. I had found my feet at Jordan House, relationships were being built quickly and extended upon daily. We had bought a car in this time, thank you to everyone who was praying. We got a good deal with only a few things that we had to get fixed, which we found out later. We were able to get from A to B without the assistance from others and without getting lost. We had learnt the basic greetings in Luganda (Will learnt a lot faster than myself and I think I’m still pronouncing them wrong, as sometimes the locals still laugh at me) I had gained two extra names since being here, “Muzungu” (white man) which gets shouted at you with great excitement several times throughout the day and “Emmanuel” (The nickname for Emmanuel here in Uganda is Emma, so when I introduced myself as Emma they responded with “Emmanuel”) it has stuck with some people ever since, and others just call me Emmanuel as a joke. Within the five weeks we had also sat and prayed with many people, asking God for healing, protection, provision, peace and for His love to saturate their situation and family. God gave me words for some of these people, which brought me to tears, I was continuing to feel just a fraction of how much God loves them, I still can’t comprehend the magnitude of His love.
But amongst all this I’m ashamed to say, I was frustrated at God! Why you may ask? To be honest it was for a selfish reason, God hadn’t spoke to me, He hadn’t revealed anything great and amazing in the five weeks of being here. This was really hard for me to get my head around, Will and I had obeyed God, we were here in Uganda, I was spending time with Him and NOW I was becoming really impatient!!!
We celebrated our second wedding anniversary, with a weekend away in a small town, called Jinja, about an hour and a half outside of Kampala. It was Sunday night, our last night in Jinja, before we headed back to crazy Kampala, so we decided to have dinner at a local cafe. We left at 4.30pm, for an early dinner as we didn’t have lunch, we didn’t get far!!! We drove for about 10mins before realising that the car was overheating, BAD! We pulled into the closest petrol station (Shell, yes they have Shell petrol stations here in Uganda), open the hood to try and find the problem, we found it alright, a nice big crack in the radiator. I don’t know much about cars but I knew that if you drive a car with a cracked radiator, you will have even bigger problems. We knew we had to get it fixed but how? It was a sunday afternoon in a small, stalls and shops were closed. We tried bottles and bottles of radiator coolant to see if it would just tie us over to get back to where we were staying, FAIL! We tried soap to fill the hole, YES SOAP, a TOTAL FAIL of an idea from one of the “mechanics”, we knew it wouldn’t work but he was insisting that it would. I just had to laugh, Uganda…. After an half and hour another guy finally come along and suggested we take it across the road to a different petrol station, brilliant idea in the end! We drove the car across the road to the other petrol station and had another lot of mechanics look at it. They defiantly had more of an idea of what they were doing. They said they could fix it, we agreed, four and a half hours later it was complete and we able to then go fill our very hungry bellies.
What has this got to with my journey here in Africa? Everything!!! Normally when something goes wrong like that, I get so cranky, I swear (I’m just being honest) and make the situation worse for myself and everyone around me. This was different, not once did I get cranky, swear, or take my frustration of the inconvenience out on anybody. Yes, it was extremely inconvenient for what we had planned, but extremely conveniant for God to get my attention.
You see as they were repairing the radiator in the dark, with only a small hand held touch and the light from mobile phones, which were completely hopeless, God was ripping my heart apart. Tears rolled down my face which matched perfectly how I was feeling on the inside. I had put a worship CD on and just hang out with my creator, the best hang out time I had had in a long time. God reminded me what it means to “Be Still”, it’s not putting a time limit on God, it’s not demanding things from Him, it’s not compromising with Him, it’s not trying to make things work in my favour. In fact it’s the complete opposite! It’s being in tune with His small voice, it’s letting him take control of the situation, it’s shutting my mouth long enough and letting God talk, it’s simply hanging out in His presence and waiting on Him.
Why get frustrated at God that He hadn’t spoke to me the way I wanted Him to, when I wasn’t giving Him the time He deserved, silencing myself and merely waiting on Him. It’s in these quite times with God that He has the time to do what He’s been wanting to do in a long time. It’s a simple thing that God longs from us but it can be a hard thing to do at times, and I’m still learning.
