Getting a Clue

So how did it come to be that six people, each representing a different decade, are getting all drugged up (with vaccines), carefully packing their carry-ons, and plan to spend more 38 hours on airplanes to the other side of the planet on January 30?

If it was to escape this brutal Iowa winter for warmer temps at the equator, a trip to Phoenix would’ve been easier.  And cheaper.

As it turns out, Arlene Fjellman, a self-employed seamstress and veteran of long flights, inspired the group with tales of her experiences helping to set up the Amagara School of Fashion and Drapery Design in Uganda in 2005, giving young orphan women themselves the opportunity to be self-employed seamstresses.

After hitting the tarmac in the dark of night near the capital city of Kampala at Entebbe Airport (of Raid of Entebbe fame) they will pile into a van for the hour drive to the guest house of Ben and Lillian Tumuheirwe, founders of Juna Amagara Ministries.

The next morning, with weeks of detailed planning and scheduling under their metaphorical belts, a highly productive and thoroughly efficient American culture-ized Team Uganda will step into a world much different than the hurried one they've just left.

'Hurry, you missed it, it's too late’, have no good translations in Swahili. In Africa, the sun comes up – and the sun goes down…that’s time. Thankfully, a slower pace translates nicely into awareness.  Come sun-up, a host of opportunities for a new way of seeing may include:

• food preparation over a fire
• working up a sweat in worship
• the tender sadness of holding an orphan baby
• building stuff without a Home Depot across town
• making bricks of mud
• travel minus traffic laws (Uganda has no discernable ones)
• poverty and joy in the same place

Although Uganda may be a fertile environment for being the face of Christ to each person encountered, these six adventurers are fairly certain they will be getting w-a-a-a-a-y more than they give.

One of those things will be... a clue.