In the summer of 2017, I was given the opportunity to travel to God Gares School and Orphanage with the mission team at the Met Church and was equally blessed to be doing it with my mom by my side. Preparing for this trip was a tedious process that required lots of time, commitment, and money, but I knew, in the end, it would all be worth it because I was going to do the Lord’s work and change some lives…but little did I know that it would be me whose life would be changed instead. When we arrived at the orphanage on the first day, the squeals of the kids accurately reflected my feelings of excitement, as the trip of my dreams was finally beginning! During my time in Uganda, I met a handful of children and lifelong friends (no matter how far apart we may be) who left a lasting impact on my heart and my life. I prepared to show each of these people the unconditional love of

Jesus and teach them His righteous ways, but miraculously they managed to show me a side of Him I never knew. As the days evolved, I quickly realized that all some of these children had was Jesus and each other. That’s it. Some of them had deceased or terminally ill parents, nowhere to call home outside of the orphanage, or were abandoned because their parents couldn’t handle the burden of caring for a child. This broke my heart when I heard some of their stories and personal experiences, but in a strangely beautiful way, none of that seemed to matter to them because they had Jesus in their hearts and therefore they had everything they could ever need and from THAT is where their joy stemmed. The moment I realized that is when I knew that nothing would be the same when I returned home, where I had everything and more that I simply take for granted. My lifestyle would be shifted in such a way that I stopped putting my happiness in the hands of material objects or people and started putting it in the hands of my Creator, Jesus Christ, where I would find an everlasting joy I’ve never known before. Furthermore, God was calling us to sponsor a young lady, and He placed Waldah in our path.  This was our opportunity to continue His work and give back each month as a constant reminder of where our joy comes and to keep shining our light wherever we go.

It was 1984, and shortly after Pastor Dongo had lost his fingers in the confrontation with the soldiers of Idi Amin. Jerry tells the story that the newlywed couple, Bethuel and Florence Dongo, were in their home one night in Katwe when the soldiers barged in during the night and demanded all of their belongings. This violence had been going on in the area for some time, and the Dongos and other neighbors in the village around them knew it might one day come to their home.

The soldiers took everything…their dishes, their clothes, and even the bed sheets out from under them. They were terrified. While Florence, who was pregnant, sat weeping on the floor, the soldiers asked Dongo to step outside. When they were ready to leave, they told him to go back inside and shut the door. It was then that the Holy Spirit spoke to Bethuel, telling him to stand away from the back of the door and to shut it to the side. This positioning saved his life, as Bethuel reached from the

side to close the door from the inside, the bullets rattled through the door, shooting off two of his fingers. God had spared their lives as Dongo followed the leading of the Spirit.

The shattering of that hand became one of Pastor Dongo’s signatures later on in his life, as he was asked over and over to tell the story, from the littlest ones to the older people, both in Uganda and America. As Jerry used to say, “What other person would God have allowed his hand to be ‘reshaped’ into the sign language symbol for love?” And love is what Bethuel continued to do on both sides of the globe. His trust in following the lead of the Spirit in every situation would prove to be a faithful foundation in trusting God, both for himself and others.