Light to the nations....

So I am in Uganda. Came out with Grant to scout out the land for our plans to build a secondary school in a village called Jandira as well as teach at a pastor’s conference on Wednesday and Thursday.

We arrived on Sunday night and it is great to be back in Africa. I love the smell of this place…you sense it as you walk of the plane. I love it….it really is home from home here….I always find myself more chilled here, more true to myself, more aware of God and it is here I find my deepest insights to myself and life.

Of course though it is bittersweet. It is my first time back in Africa without Lins. It was the home of both our souls and at times I am so aware of her absence. Today I went back to Source of light Primary School where we spent a month in July 06 and made many friends. It was amazing, strange, beautiful and sad all in one being there today. The children sang for us and told us of their love for us.

It is hard not to think from time to time she should be here. And it is easy for the questions to start rising again…all the questions that suggest there is no sense in what has happened…I could start to tell you what those questions are but I will not. There is no need and I have learned that coming through (if this is even the right phrase) grief is all about choice. It is about choosing to believe that in the midst of the brokenness of life there is a God who weeps with us and in His power and mercy redeems the most hopeless of cases.

As the questions stir within me again, I realise here in Africa, that I have actually found a deeper place. A place I can go to in my soul that is beneath the questions that want to rise to the surface….in the midst of the sadness I have found a place that is deeper than the place of confusion and questions. It is the deepest part of me..a place that is scarred with pain but a place I am learning that is full and satisfied and alive…alive again. It is hard to explain but I think it has something to do with the idea that because I have truly loved, I feel I have truly lived. I am realising that I have experienced something that was a deep and holy privilege. So I choose to try and live from this place…a place where I realise the deep privilege it was to have loved Lindsay, to have won her heart, to have shared life with her, to have come to Africa with her, to have realised dreams together, to be blown by the Wind of God with her, to love her through her sickness and to have experienced grace and true beauty through her in how she handled her suffering.

And I choose to believe, as difficult as it is and even though my emotions are telling me the opposite, that God has not finished with me yet….that my story is not over and that new chapters have to be written…that nothing will be the same but there is hope of a future. One of those chapters includes joining my friends (and Lins’ friends) in building a secondary school in her memory. Many of the kids here don’t have a chance of secondary school education and Lins was passionate about ways of developing people and communities in the poorer regions of the world.

Grant and I visited the site today. It sits on the top of a hill and overlooks the whole region. It is a brilliant and beautiful view. When Lins was sick my Mum felt God say that Lins life would be a ‘light to the nations.’ Obviously Mum, like us all, hoped and prayed this meant something other than what has transpired. Through the hell of these past months Mum has held onto that verse though and today I was reminded about it as I stood on that hill and looked all around me praying and believing that Lins life, which has inspired us to build this school, will be a light to the nations. That the young people here she was passionate about will be not just be well educated at the school but will come to know Jesus and His message for the world and that through them many will be drawn to the Great Light of the World.

I dream of a day when this place is established as a Christ-centred school, committed to training and developing young people who will effect society at all different levels, influencing the country of Uganda, the region of East Africa, the whole of this beautiful continent and the rest of the world with the Jesus-message….the message of the kingdom of heaven which comes to earth….

Pastor Richard, who will be the headmaster wants to call this school, ‘Light to the Nations Secondary School’ and no matter what, we are going to build this thing!!

Oh and by the way, I am speaking at a Pastors conference the next two days…if you are doing any praying and could include me…that would be amazing…