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.

Uganda Update

I have been really bad at updating my blog, mostly because I never can get a good internet connection long enough to write, but today I am going to try and update well enough that I can paint a good picture of some of my great experiences here. First of, one of the most dramatic parts of my experiences here has been a little health scare we had. I can write about it now because it is pretty much over and so I know it's going to be OK. I had been sick for about ten days and so finally my country director Melissa made me go see Dr. Nyombi. He is the man who we rent our house from. Right before I went two others from the group went and tested positive for malaria. They made a total of three cases of malaria in the group, thus our decision to finally go to the doctor. We went and he said we needed to do a blood test but that my vitals were all very good, not the numbers of someone sick, so at least I had a strong heart. We got the test results back and were shocked to find out that I had not only malaria but typhoid as well. He promptly gave me the medicine we needed and we went home. I went back and forth between wanting to cry and wanting to laugh because this is classic me, I can't just get malaria, I had to get typhoid too. But I have finished the malaria pills and the malaria is all gone. The typhoid has been a cause for debate in our house because after I was tested we decided that everyone in the house should be tested for either disease and after testing almost everyone we had 13 or so cases of typhoid. Then we learned that if you get tested for typhoid within 6 months of typhoid immunizations your test will come out positive. So most people stopped their typhoid pills but I talked to my doctor in America and he said I had all the symptoms of typhoid but it would be very hard to test for and so I should continue taking the medicine because if it isn't typhoid it is something else that this medicine would cure and I can't risk going off the medicine. I am doing much better now, I am able to go out on projects and actually able to get up and walk to the gate surrounding our house without getting exhausted. I actually feel really good other than pains in my stomach which still could be a problem but we are looking into it.
Other than health problems life has been awesome here. I couldn't ask to be in a better place this summer. I am working on a huge project which will be the largest festival that Lugazi has ever had and it will be an Aids awareness festival as well as combining small and large scale agricultural projects that we have been working on all summer that we have been teaching the people and also having the womens groups I have been working with and they will be able to sell their crafts there at the festival. It will be amazing and so far the Minister of Health is coming, the Prime Minister and hopefully the Ambassador. This is a huge event and I can't wait to head it up.
So much is going on but I don't have a lot of time to write more about it. I will try and post again soon. To sum it up, I love Uganda and the people here. This is the best summer of my life and I am the happiest I have ever been. I miss my family very much but I couldn't ask to be doing a better work or to be serving a better people.