NGM Update 193 Rare Privilege

Enormous Opportunity!
December 15, 2010

Can you imagine how many 10 year old girls from Uganda, East Africa, have had the privilege of living in the United States for 6 months!?!  Not many.  But, you wouldn’t be able to say not any.

Sarah Kalawa is the ten year old daughter of Abdu and Betty Wasswa of Jinja, Uganda.  Betty and Abdu are good friends of ours.  Together we shared a house for four years in Jinja.  We have watched them add Moses and Hannah to their family after we met Sarah when she was half the age she is now.

As God would have it, relationships are His mechanism for thresholds of opportunity and doors of privilege.  It was a relationship with friends from Yakima, Washington, that lead Pam and me to Uganda for the first time in 2001.  It was a relationship that opened a door for us to know and fall in love with Abdu and Betty.  It was relationships with short term missionaries who stayed in our compound that allowed people to fall in love with Sarah.  And it is relationships that explain why a ten year old girl from Africa has enjoyed the privilege of sharing the home of Keri and Randy Fowler of Pocatello, Idaho.

The Fowler’s were empty nesters until Sarah arrived last summer.  These two amazing people have helped Sarah develop her second language of English, commute to and from one of the best schools in Idaho, have the privilege of playing on soccer and basketball teams, and enjoy all the social and spiritual experiences the Fowler family lives day after day.

Saturday, December 1, Keri and Randy will put Sarah on a flight to Portland International Airport.  Pam and I, and our granddaughter Alaina, will meet her there.  She will spend the holidays with us until she returns to Pocatello on January 2^nd.

This makes my heart sing.  God has made me a connector.  I love to connect people to people so that each will move closer to becoming all that God has destined them to be.  I want to see relationships, and the experiences they afford, increase the capacity of people to carry the grace and mercy of God to all those with whom they come into contact.

Sarah will never be the same when she returns to Uganda with Pam and me to Jinja on March 8^th.  She will have the responsibility to carrying her privilege with humility and gratitude.  She will have the responsibility to turn her experience into benefit for her family and the people of her developing nation.  She will need to believe that it was the goodness of God who enlarged her borders that she might daily testify to this miracle of love and grace.  And I trust she will do all she can to give away what God has given her … the privileges, the resources, the skills … through this rare and blessed experience.