Visiting the village...by guest blogger, Kayla Cervenka

I promised you a guest post and here it is!!  I love the idea of sharing our thoughts and fears with each other and adore this woman and her heart.  She has been in Uganda for about two weeks now and will be staying for about 4 and a half months doing an internship with Sole Hope.  This post is from the day we did resettlement and it was quite an experience!  Can't wait for you to enjoy it from her perspective...

It was my first time ever visiting a village in Uganda. I was really excited for this new experience but also a little unsure as people kept telling me it would be a long trip there.  I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. All I knew was that I was so excited that these children who had been living at the Outreach house were finally able to be resettled with their families! These children who came to Sole Hope, severely affected by jiggers, are now jigger free and full of hope! It is a beautiful transformation to see and it is why resettlement is such an exciting part of what Sole Hope does.

We loaded up the van and headed out towards the village.  There were 21 adults and children, and three babies in the van so it was quite a tight fit. I‘ve come to realize that this is quite typical for Uganda, so I just went along with it as a tiny one-month-old baby slept in my lap.

Eventually we went from pavement to red dirt roads and the ride got a little bumpier. We headed into Kamuli and along the way we dropped some people off while others hopped into the car. I was quite confused as random people kept coming in the car and at one point there were 25 of us all crammed into the van. Once again, I didn’t ask questions but just went along with it because hey, this is normal (I think)! As we headed further into the different villages children would wave and yell “Muzungu!” There was lots of smiling and waving out the van window and we passed the children. When it came time to drop off a few of the kids being resettled, we would pull over to the side and they would hop out. Before the children could even get out of the van there was already a crowd of children from the village gathered together outside our van. They would all just stare at us, eyes wide full of wonder. Many of them would wave and smile, occasionally saying something in Lusoga. It’s funny to me. There is often a language barrier, which can be hard, but I find it so beautiful that people can still radiate joy and love to one another without even a single word.  There was so much staring, smiling and giggling between one another as we passed through the villages. My mouth hurt from smiling so much but my heart was filled with so much joy!

We kept on bouncing along the bumpy red dirt roads, dropping children off along the way to their respective villages.  As we dropped of one of the children for resettlement, I got out of the van and there was a little girl staring at me. Her beautiful brown eyes looked interested yet terrified at the same time. I held my hand out and smiled, reassuring her that I wasn’t going to hurt her. As I slowly walked towards her she sprinted in the other direction and hid behind her mom. She was scared of me. I was foreign to her. She had never seen a white person. I was slightly in shock. What would it be like to never have seen someone that looked so differently than yourself? I realized it must have been like looking at a monster of some sort. Her mom reassured her that I was okay and with the help of her mother, the little girl slowly walked towards me, still looking quite unsure. I kept smiling
with my arm outstretched reassuring her that it was okay, even though she could not understand a word I was saying. She finally grabbed my hand and timidly said hello in Lusoga as she bowed down.  Bowing is a sign of respect around here, and as she knelt to the ground I stopped down beside her. As we knelt there, hand in hand, I couldn’t help but become flooded with emotion. This precious little girl has never seen a world beyond what she already knows. Her village, her people, only her own skin color. But here we were, from seemingly two different worlds, hand in hand, kneeling on the red dirt together speaking our own languages.  Yet even still, there was such a beautiful connection between us in that moment.

I loved my first experience of visiting the villages. It was all new to me and I loved getting to soak it all in. From seeing children return to their families, to experiencing a little girl’s courage overcome her fear, to simply being packed into a van with 25 people, it was an experience I will never forget.

Hurry up and wait

I know, I know, it's been forever.  I'm sorry.  While there are things working together for progress, most of them I cannot share at this time.  My eyes are continually opened to the inner-workings of domestic and international adoption and it is pretty unbelievable sometimes.  We have been in this process for over 18 months and sometimes it feels like we've come so far and other times it seems like we haven't even moved at all!

What I can tell you about this process is how blessed we are with our community!  We have met and established some amazing adoption friends both local and national, some of which help me just get through the day!    In addition to the adoption community, we have been blessed by an amazing church community.  Over a year ago my husband established a guys group that has been so exciting to watch.  These guys have just begun to sharpen each other in ways I could have never imagined!  I am so thankful for these men who have committed themselves to the Lord and their families and I know lives are changing!  There's also our small group(s).  We were able to participate in an adoption small group and we still feel so much a part of the lives of those families who are adopting and fostering to adopt and I love to see how these families are growing.  And now we've got another group of amazing families, young and old, that are facing some immensely tough times in their lives and God has truly blessed us all by being a committed family and helping each other.  I don't know where we'd be without all these people in our lives.  The waiting can be so agonizing but we press on toward the goal!

I have been reading David Platt lately (almost done with Radical, moving on to Follow Me) and it has been a great challenge.  And what I keep hearing God say (in SO may ways) is that we have been following and now we need to stay on the course and stay put.  So many times we see what we're supposed to do and try to make it happen ourselves.  I think "ok God, you've shown me the way, now I'll go ahead and get there of my own accord."  What nonsense!  And yet, my selfish, controlling spirit takes over.  We have known for a long time we are called to adopt from Uganda.  We have done everything we can to move on this calling and now we continue to wait.  Thankfully, we know this is not for nothing!!

Thanks so much to so many of you who continue to pray for us, for the orphans of the world, and for where God will be taking us after our adoption is complete.  Please keep praying in our waiting!

Isaiah 40:30-31 - Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

Psalm 27:14 - Wait for the Lord, be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.

Lam 3:25 - The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks Him.


Micah 7:7 - Therefore I will look to the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation: my God will
hear me.

Hosea 12:6 - So you, by the help of your God, return; observe mercy and justice, and wait on your
God continually.

Thank you, Jesus, for blue

Every morning I take my (almost) 2 year old to his grandfather's ("Ho-Ho") house where he goes for childcare (have I expressed how blessed we are to get to do this?). We have about a 15 minute drive and during this time we usually sing songs and talk to Jesus.  Of course, my son is very young but one of our desires is to show him that God isn't this far away being that has nothing to do with us but that we can have a personal relationship with him and that he loves us very much.  With us, having a relationship means talking like normal people do to each other.

This morning as we're driving to Ho-ho's, I said "do you want to talk to Jesus?" to which he replied "yeah" (don't be impressed, he'd tell you he likes to eat elephant poop if you frame it correctly).  So we start talking with a "Hey God, hope you are well today."  I then went through a few things I was thankful for, prayed for our friend with leukemia, and asked him what he was thankful for, to which he emphatically replied "BLUE!"  I laughed out loud.  But then I stopped and thought about his answer.  My son, my amazing little boy, is thankful for the color blue.  So many times I am overwhelmed with things going on with life...especially right now.  Work is crazy, our adoption feels like it's stagnant, I'm getting ready to travel, going out of town this weekend for a wedding, life is just happening.

And yet, in the midst of it all, my son reminded me of why Jesus loved the little children so much.  Why he chose to be around them any chance he got.  He knew that those little children had a perspective on life that we adults forget quite often.  What if we didn't have the color blue?  What if we didn't have any colors at all?  What would my world look like without it?  My son's beautiful eyes, the sky on a sunny day, my favorite color in the world...everything would be different.  So thank you, Jack, for reminding me that no matter what's going on and how crazy things may seem, I can always find something to be thankful for.  Today, it's the color blue.