Missions
Way back in 2011 (my freshmen year), God started remolding my heart to look like the shape of Africa. My life since has been a pursuit of something I didn’t realize how much I desired. I knew there was something in Africa, particularly Eastern Africa, that was something my soul really needed, but I couldn’t tell you what that was.
I worked towards this for a long time. I worked for Exile International for 8 months as an intern. I stayed up to date on different organizations, campaigns, and current events in relation to Eastern Africa. There was a specific call on my heart: trauma rehabilitation with war effected people in Eastern Africa. I spent a lot of time in tears, praying that God would send me, because I was so ready to do His work there.
I found out last September that I could go to Uganda. My prayers were the heaviest then. I spent so much crying and praying over children I had never met, but had so deeply impacted my life already. Discovering I could, actually, finally go reminded me of God’s providence, and that His timeline is greater than ours. So I submitted the nine months I knew stood before then and actually going to Africa as a season of God’s preparation. I didn’t know preparation looked like heartbreak. I didn’t know preparation looked like the finish line. I didn’t know that season of preparation would make me empty out everything of myself.
So I went to Uganda like that. I went broken, held together by a community that reminded me of Love, filled only with more prayers than I could ever offer for myself. I flew halfway across the world with a team I had never met in person, to a place I had only dreamed about, with nothing really left inside. But God works in that, you know? He comes in when you have nothing left, with all the things that were better than you could ever hope for. Because seeing Uganda, my long lost friend, for the first time was what my pitiful heart needed to heal. I needed to see God in the eyes of two missionary families that gave up everything to follow the call of Christ to Uganda. I needed to see God in the African dirt that clung to my skin, and the wind that rustled my hair, and every meal that felt like family with my team. I needed to see God in the fierce hearts of those recovering from a war I can only imagine. I needed to see how big Redemption really was, by seeing it in the eyes of those that had been truly lost and broken and hopeless. I needed to feel God with me every day in a grassland village, under a mango tree, in the stories of the Gospel I was presenting to a group of refugees. I needed to feel God in the Acholi dances I learned in the presence of my African sisters in a dusty office, with a language barrier that God was bigger than, and prayers I could lift to heal their heavy hearts and aching bodies. I needed to feel God bring me to the knees of my heart by leading me to a Ugandan hospital on my 21st birthday, so I could hold the sweaty hands of the new mothers and bless babies I’ll always have a one-day connection to. I needed to feel God’s presence in the peace of the Nile, and the rest I was fortunate to find there.
But I suppose what I really want you to know is that servanthood feels like healing. It feels like redemption. Because it forces you to remember there are bigger things than you, and heartaches heavier than your own, and it heals your heart because you’re holding too many other hearts to focus on the breaking of your own.
So yeah, Uganda changed my life. Uganda healed my heart, released my shame, brought me joy, and showed me the face of God.
By Katelyn Collison