Post BYU Life

Well, last post I was wondering what I would be doing after I graduated from BYU. Now I'm sitting in limbo as I am waiting for my new life to begin. I was offered a position with the Washington Seminar but turned it down after long prayers which resulted in a very strong feeling that I should not be going to DC this year. After turning down the position I had no clue what I was supposed to be doing. That changed when I was presenting at an internship fair looking for new interns for Musana. I was placed next to a lady who worked with the Refugee Office in SLC. We began talking and eventually she began telling me about positions available at the Refugee Office and said that I would be a great fit there. I was so excited to even have a prospect of a job or internship! When I looked into it there were no full time job positions but there were full time, paid internship positions through AmeriCorp. I applied and received a position with the Utah Refugee Coalition, which is a branch under the Utah State Department. The founders of the organization both have full time jobs and they run URC on the side so I will be taking over the administration of the organization over the next year. It is intimidating but so exciting! Thus, I am moving to SLC, specifically Millcreek, and will be there for at least the next year. With all the new changes it also became time for me to buy my first car. I have always used my parents car or a car that is shared by my siblings. I was blessed with a miracle in this area and my mechanic had a car left at his shop by a BYU professor who couldn't get the hang of driving a manual. He had blown the clutch 3 times and was getting the transmission replaced for a second time. He finally was sick of it and just left the car with Eric, our mechanic. Eric was fixing the car and said he would sell it to me. He said it is a fantastic car, 2004 Kia Rio with only 33,000 miles on it. He is selling it to me for only the cost of labor and parts. I'm getting it at least 3,500 under blue book value! Such a huge blessing with the tiny income I'll be living off of for the next year. Along with that blessing, that same day I found my house in Millcreek. My friend Hilary, who I went to Uganda with, texted me and asked if I wanted to move in with her and her roommate Rachel. The duplex is great, cheap, and a fantastic location. I went down and saw it and signed that day. It was a very busy day but I am so grateful for the blessings that set my new life path in motion!

Change

Well, a friend of mine told me I need to write more about myself rather than just my experiences in Uganda, and that I should change the title of my blog. How can people be sick of hearing about me in Uganda?? I never talk about it! :P I haven't gotten to changing my blog title, but I'll write more about my own life in this post rather than Ugandan experiences. That should satisfy him. :)

So, it's been a period of life changing decisions for me. This coming fall semester will be my final semester at BYU. So unbelievably exciting seeing as I have never enjoyed school. But now I am experiencing the fear of "what next?!" I think that most girls can agree that growing up in Young Women's we all are subtly, or not so subtly, taught that we will just go to college and find the man of our dreams and get married before we graduate. We'll probably get our degree but won't really need to use it because our husband will provide for us while we raise our family in righteousness. It sounds great, but when reality hits, I'm graduating from BYU unmarried, with a degree and minor that I am going to have to use. It may sound like I am upset about the fact that I did not get married at age 19 or 20 while finishing school at BYU, but when I think about it, I really am not. I just turned 22, I'm graduating from college, and am still barely experiencing life. The experiences that have made me who I am today, I could never have had if I had gotten married young. I am incredibly grateful for the Lord's timing. I have been able to have experiences that have molded and shaped me into the person I am becoming. I'm by no means the person I hope to become in the future, but I'm on the right path and will continue that way through more life experiences.

Not only is there the fact that I'm leaving BYU unmarried, but now I need to find a job...a REAL job! I have always enjoyed working. And I truly love my field of work. I expected that I would be able to stay somewhat close the next few years. My dream job is in Salt Lake City with Church Headquarters working with Church Humanitarian Services. But they have the hiring freeze, thus no job there right now. Starting looking at the job market I had a huge shock realizing that my real job options are actually out in Washington D.C. I had never thought about living out there. I am not a big city person and the idea of living there completely scares me.

Currently I am looking for an internship position after graduation and am hoping to find one either with the Church in SLC or one in D.C. It will be a big life change either way. But I keep telling myself that change is good and everything will work out for the absolute best!
Change is just an opportunity for God to steer our lives in a better direction.

Musana Jewelry

"Musana"-Translated from Luganda means "light" or "sunlight." Musana Jewelry, an organization founded by myself, Kristen Daniels, and Melissa Sevy is an organization which focuses on empowering women in Uganda who are in the grasps of poverty, poor health, and illiteracy. As founders of Musana Jewelry we are on a mission to help others "Be a Light" to these women and help these women "Be a Light" to themselves through self-efficiency. Musana Jewelry has become larger than I expected much faster than I expected.

People often ask me why I am running a nonprofit organization while I'm in my senior year at BYU and working full time. I often wonder that myself. Then I also am asked if it is even making a difference. That question runs through my head at least ten times a day. Then I hear from the women who are employed by Musana and I realize why I work so hard and why it is all worth it.

Before working for Musana, Florence, a now single mother who just gave birth to her fourth child less than a month ago, struggled to provide enough food for her children and pay rent for her home. Recently I received this message from her, “i always thought of simple work that would enable me to look after my orphaned children with out straining and laboring very hard, am glad that am happy here and i can now afford to buy food, pay for my house rent, send my children to school and provide my personal basic needs”

The blessing of being able to see all the hard work paying off in individual lives is priceless. Florence recently was able to afford to give birth to her fourth child in the local hospital. I am happy to report that both she and the baby girl are doing well.

Sometimes I wonder what I am doing. I am not qualified to be doing this and I don't have all the skills needed to be running this organization. But there is one thing I have learned through all this. The Lord qualifies those whom He has chosen. I felt strongly that I was supposed to start Musana Jewelry along with Kristen and Melissa and now I can see how He has helped support us through other people's help, a great team who volunteer their time freely, and through other means I never thought possible. The Lord truly strengthens those who trust in Him.

www.musanajewelry.org

"All promises are empty here"

When I first arrived in Lugazi, Uganda I traveled to a village called Kawoto. This is possibly one my favorite places on earth. After speaking with the head woman of the village, Rose, I got ready to leave and began speaking with a group of young girls. They spoke English very well and I asked them what they wanted to be when they grew up. One said she wanted to be a secretary, another a doctor, and the last an engineer. These were such beautiful goals. These girls lived in a village who worked as laborers to a man named Mehta who owned almost all of the sugarcane fields of Lugazi. Their families lived on about 75 cents a day. They had a school in the village but no teacher due to a lack of funds to pay them. Without schooling, the dreams of these beautiful girls would never come true. As I said goodbye to these girls with my mind racing with thoughts of what work we could do with this village one asked if I was ever coming back. I said that I would like to very much. She stared into my eyes and boldly stated, "All promises are empty here."

For this young girl promises had been made and promises had been broken. This was a life changing moment for me. I vowed to myself that I would not break my promise to her.

I returned about a week later and began working with her village. By the end of the summer, our team and her village together had implemented a small jewelry making business and a income generating cabbage farm.

The projects were not what changed my life. It was the vow I made on Kawoto Hill. The people I met and came to love more than life itself. After meeting amazing people like the girls from Kawoto Hill I knew my life would never be the same. When I returned to the U.S. Kristen Daniels and Melissa Sevy got together and Co-Founded a nonprofit organization, Musana Jewelry. This has drastically changed my life as I am still a full time student, work as many hours as a student can, and try to run a nonprofit at the same time. People ask me all the time why I am doing this. It may not make sense to them, but they didn't meet the girls on Kawoto Hill, they didn't see the look in her eyes when she said, "All promises are empty here."

My promises can NEVER be empty.

Re-entering the blogging world

I created this blog to write about my adventures in Africa. When I got to Uganda I realized that emailing my family on the very slow internet was more important than trying to get blog posts to upload. Now that I'm back in the states I decided that I would try my hand at blogging again. We'll see how it goes. I've decided I'm not a very good blogger. Why did I come to this conclusion? This is attempt three at this blog post and it's still not very good. But, no one is really going to read this so it doesn't really matter. I basically want to write about what is going on in life, how one experience changed my entire life and how life is 100% different than what I ever though it would be. So, blogging world, here I go...

The Youth Outreach Mission

I wanted to take a few minutes to write about an organization that I strongly believe in and support. It is an organization that was created by a group of individuals about the same age of our HELP team and younger. Wilson and Robert now age 21, best friends since primary school, created the idea of the Youth Outreach Mission and developed it into a large functioning organization which supports the youth of Lugazi, Uganda. The main aims of TYOM are to build the community around them, to raise AIDS awareness and to create an AIDS free generation by educating the youth. They are a team of highly dedicated local members who all participate in the organization while engaging in their own schooling or work at the same time. Many of their current projects are a soccer team for the street children and orphans, a well project to increase sources of clean water, building adobe stoves which increase health and decrease energy use, HIV/AIDS education and support, Health and education outreaches with schools and orphans and many other ongoing projects.
I guess you could say I want to bare my testimony of the Youth Outreach Mission. While I was in Uganda we did a lot of great projects, and we worked very hard. This work became my passion and it changed my life. But many of the projects that we engaged in would not have been possible if it weren't for the members of the Youth Outreach. This organization is a strong, honest, reliable organization that desires to only improve the lives of others in a country where so many seek to only help themselves. My faith in the abilities of the members of the Youth Outreach Mission cannot be expressed on paper or in a speech, but it is real. I look forward to continuing my work with the Outreach Mission and building on the projects that they create. They have the knowledge of the needs of the people that we as Americans could never know, and we have the resources that help answer those needs. Together we make a great team and I pray that we can continue to work as a team in answering the call that has been unheard for so many years.

The Youth Outreach has created a blog to show many of their projects, below is their link:

http://theyouthoutreachmission.blogspot.com/

Life Back in the States

It's been a little over a month since I've been back from Uganda and I still haven't exactly adjusted back. I don't think there are words to explain how much I miss Uganda and the people I met there. I made the best friends I have ever had during my time in Uganda. Working in Uganda was the best experience of my life. It changed who I am and gave me new direction in my life. I have discovered more about who I really am and what I want to be in the future, I learned that from the amazing people I was in daily contact with. I learned to value people more than keeping to a timetable and running from one place to another.
When I first got to Uganda there was no adjustment period for me, I felt more myself than I ever had before in my life. I felt at home. Doing the work I did there I was happiest I have been in my entire life. That is hard thing to leave. I did not mind never having running water, no toilets, low sanitation. I wanted to be with the people I loved, doing the work I loved. I won't deny that I do love taking a shower every day, but every time I take one now I remember the days of not showering or when I did actually get to take a "shower." "Showering" was going out to the manual well in our swimming suits and taking turns pumping while someone else splashed water on themselves and lathered up. It wasn't convenient, but we bonded during showers...we became humbled during those experiences. After showers it was laundry time at the same well. And then after dinner we did dishes at the same location as well. Life wasn't easy but it was simple. It was beautiful. I miss it.