Mwesigwa

A couple of weeks ago I was given the privilege to travel to Jinja with my good friend John. It was a great time of bonding, adventure and healing. I never quite realized what the Lord had in store for me, but because of my willingness to follow him, despite my feelings, he did a great work that weekend.

The week prior I had just finished my project trip in Mityana. This trip was in many ways a short term mission trip. During this trip everyone bonded closely and a lot of work was done. I personally got a lot of time to hang out with John, who is the Ugandan executive director of Father to the Fatherless. Near the end of the trip he asked if I wanted to go to his hometown of Jinja the next weekend.  I was not quite expecting such an invitation from him, but I said yes anyways. I was hesitant to exchange phone numbers at first, but I had committed to going so it would not make any sense to hold back my number from him.

At this point I remembered an incident that occurred to me about four years ago. I was in Haiti on a two week trip and I gave my phone number to the translator I had been working with that week. His name was Johnny. He was expecting me to send him some “help” once I got back to the US. A week or so after I arrived back in the States he starts calling me. Somehow a miscommunication had happened and he was expecting me to send him $200 via Western Union. There was no way I could do this, and I decide to ignore his calls. That day he called me 40 times. I never quite realized, but that event ruined the way I was willing to open myself to relationships cross culturally. This scar needed to be healed, and so the Lord decided to get to work.

I spent a week fretting about whether I should go to Jinja or not. I had no idea where I was going, or even where I would be sleeping Saturday night. There was not a single person I knew going to be there, except for John who I had only met the week before. My gut feeling was telling me to just call John, and tell him I was busy or something. At this point I decided to pray, and the Lord reminded me of something. The very reason I wanted to go to Uganda with Engineering Ministries International (eMi) was because I wanted to build relationships with people form a culture different from my own. Up to this point I had grown close to my fellow interns and co-workers at the office, but I had not really sought a friendship with any Ugandans. The Lord convicted me to go, despite my desire to be comfortable. So that Saturday morning I woke up before sunrise, and took a taxi to downtown Kampala where I was supposed to meet John.

My weekend in Jinja was amazing. I saw the source of the Nile, rode boda-boda’s, had goat for lunch and slept at the Jinja scouting campsite. All this time I did not talk to a single white person. I really was immersed in Ugandan culture, and was able to spend a lot of time talking with my new friend John. We visited his mother (who lives in a mud hut) and attended an awesome church service that was pretty much 3 hours of worship and dancing. These are some of my favorite pictures from Jinja.

Tea fields and sugar cane stretched across the landscape as we traveled to Jinja.

There were many of these guys roaming the campsite where we slept.

I'm glad John got to take some pictures too, or else there would be none of me.

Mr. John himself.

The mighty "Eye of Eagle" on the banks of the Nile.

A local passing by fields of sugar cane in rural Uganda.

During our many conversations that weekend, John decided that I needed a Luganda name. His Luganda name is Michibi, which is what I would often call him. I tell him that I want a good Luganda name, and that I want him to think about it. So at the end of trip he turns to me and says:

“Mwesigwa.”

“What?” I respond

“Mwesigwa, that’s your Luganda name.”

“What does that mean?”

“Trustworthy.”

I could not believe it. The one thing I was having so much trouble with that week was trust. I was so hesitant to go with him, and I had so much trouble being open about myself and really loving him like Jesus. I think of Paul in his letter to the Thessalonians, in which when he says he shared not only the Gospel with them, but his life as well. The Lord restored in me the ability to be trusting towards others that weekend, and he told it to me in the most blatant way possible. Through Johnny the trust was hurt, but through John it was restored.