HOPE

I am so tired. 

Exhausted.

Spent. 

It's been a month of long bus rides for visa renewal, different visitors, surviving malaria, spending lots of time with our team, celebrating passover, hard goodbyes, packing, loading and then finally the 10 hour drive to Jinja, when I'll be until I fly out in May. 

And this is the moment that I'm supposed to be passed out in this comfy bed, but instead I lay wide awake. 

My brain has finally decided to slow down and process all the changes that have been happening and there's nothing I can do about it. 

First of all, I think about what I'm going to tell you all when I get home and you ask me how my time in Africa was. 

I don't really know what to tell you because I didn't start a school or any cool organization that fights world hunger. I didn't do much of anything spectacular. So I don't really have those answers yet. 

Then I lay here and think about my sweet friend Nacuk. I love her as if she were my own niece. 

We had a wonderful "last visit" yesterday with my friend Florence translating. I told her I was leaving but I would miss her so much and would check on her through my hutmate Elise. 

We hugged and took pictures. We also gave many things like coloring books, old towels, shirts, lotion and  containers to Nacuk and her family so they were very happy! 

I thought it would be so hard and sad telling her goodbye. Surprisingly it wasn't. She was smiling as she walked away with Florence and a load of goodies that she was carrying on her head. 

Yet I lay here and think of her, sleeping on the dirt floor of her hut, probably without a blanket, wearing the same clothes she has had on for days and days and most likely her family have gone to bed hungry once again. 

I grieve for her.

Then immediately this verse comes to mind:

"...that you may not grieve as others who have no hope..."

1 Thessalonians 4:13

I realize Paul is talking about the 2nd coming and getting caught up in the sky stuff, but the Lord used these words to remind me of 1 thing. 

HOPE. 

We have hope. 

I think of that day that I brought Nacuk home and Florence was sitting outside with her family and they were singing Christian songs and talking about the bible. 

HOPE. 

In the midst of hunger, sickness, poverty and hardship...there is hope.

I do not grieve as others who do not have hope. 

I have hope. 

I knew walking into this that I could not save Africa. 

But I have hope. 

Because I know the One who can.