Greetings from Uganda
I send greetings to you with a heavy and ungrateful heart. You may be shocked by that first sentence and I don’t mean to concern you. I have been having a few difficult days. My heart really wasn’t in the mindset of typing this letter, which by the way is going to have to be short. I want to give you a quick quiz to start...
Please read through the following vocabulary list...
Umeme (oo-may-may) = electricity
Load Shedding = the turning off of electricity because of whatever reason
Drought = the lack of enough rain
Prayer = the act of laying our petitions at the feet of the Lord for Him to take control
Did you read all those vocabulary words? Well now let me tell you why my recent days have been difficult. Until yesterday, Saturday, February 4, 2006, we had been without electricity for 66 hours. When we would call the power company they would tell us only what we wanted to hear and not the truth. They say they will send someone out to fix a problem and then it is days before someone comes. They tell us that our electricity will be back on at a certain time and then it never comes back on. They tell us “that’s the way it is”. I am frustrated. We have been having “load shedding” for months and months now, but lately it has been really bad! Of course we are not load shedded at night when it doesn’t matter; it matters during the day in order to do all that needs to be done. Our area is not the only place being load shedded, but we are one of the areas which gets it most often and for the long hours. We are told that one reason for the load shedding it because of the lack of rain. Lake Victoria is lower than it has ever been right now, which is one way electricity is generated here. So drought is a big problem at this point; not only for the electricity but people’s crops are not growing and people are going to be starving and dying a slow and sad death. So all this and more is why my heart is heavy and am struggling to type a joyful letter (it also has to be short because our computer is running on batteries and we have no idea when the electricity will come back on). Beginning Monday morning, February 6th, our electricity will be off from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day. We are told, load shedding will last for months.
Now, after I said all that, I must quote something I read on an e-mail recently. It is a passage taken from Romans 12 from a translation called The Message. It made me see things in a different light.
1 So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life - your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life - and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. 2 Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.
Well, there it is, written down just for me. I am to place my ‘everything’ before God. I think I was becoming too adjusted to the culture and getting too comfortable in my day to day living. Living in the city is nothing like living in the village. I normally don’t have to do a lot of preparation work to feed my family like I did in Tanzania. I don’t always have to be careful of how much water I am using. I can usually wash clothes in my nice big, electric, washing machine any time I want. My fridge is running most of the time and I can listen to CD’s and not have to worry about the electricity going off. Well not lately! This has been a wake up call for me. I needed to be reminded to fix my attention on God and be thankful for what He does for me each day. To be thankful for what He has provided (a generator is one of the first things on my thankful list). God wants to mature me in my walk with Him. So here it is, I am placing this electricity problem in the Lord’s hands and if and when it gets fixed it will be a good thing, but I will not let my day or my walk with Jesus be hindered by it. Please pray with us for this problem to be fixed. Pray that rains will come; good ground-soaking and lake-rising rains. Pray that we will be joyful in all things and not let disruptions in our daily routine get us so out of focus on WHO we are serving.
We are doing well and very thankful for your prayers and support. It is at times like these that we feel your prayers so very much. Thank you for standing by us and for the many cards that people have sent our way. You are an encouragement to us. The Lord has supplied a wonderful body of people to partner with us, together we serve Jesus in Uganda. Blessings to you all!
Because He is our power source,
Delight, Kenneth, Kaleb, Austin and Emilee Hopson
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