Why Uganda?

People ask me all the time, why Africa? Why Uganda? Why would you go so far to a place like that to help those people when you could do plenty of helpful things right here? This is what I want to tell you...

It's because I've met those people. Because I know those people. I know their stories. I've shared life with them. We've eaten meals together, We've run together. We've swam together. We've read books and drawn pictures. We've laughed. We've danced. They are part of me and I am part of them.

People always say that Africa gets in your blood. That once you've been, it changes you. They're right.

When I think about Uganda, I don't just think about a place. I see faces. I see these faces, and I can't walk away from them.

The reality of their world doesn't just go away because I do. Diana still wakes up every morning and has HIV. Lokute's mom still is without her son because there was nobody there to take care of him. And I can't live in my comfy house with my nice things and know their reality at the same time. The two cannot exist side by side.

As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. "Good teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" "Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good—except God alone. You know the commandments: 'Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, do not defraud, honor your father and mother.'" "Teacher," he declared, "all these I have kept since I was a boy." Jesus looked at him and loved him. "One thing you lack," he said. "Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me...."

"I tell you the truth," Jesus replied, "no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first." -Matthew 10:17-21,29-30