Beauty of redemption

Last week i sat down with jimmy and Christopher on the steps to their room. We talked for approximately 30 minutes about life. My favorite part of being at the UJV is sitting down with my kids and chatting about their pasts, their future, and life as they see it now. I feel priviledged to get to hear their stories, and to be able to speak into their life. Discipleship has always been about doing life with one another, and I get to teach 62 beautiful acholi children how to deal with and handle real life issues in the likeness of Jesus. On more than one occasion, I have felt completely inadequate for this task, especially when the hard questions come. Christopher once asked me, if your leader falls into sin how can their be hope for the rest of us? i responded in the best way i knew how, in that everyone is responsible for their own decisions, and everyone has their own journey with God. Our hope is Jesus living in us, and influencing us to make the best possible decision for our own lives. Our leader's decisions and actions shouldn't take our eyes off of Jesus. This was a few months ago, but here i was sitting with Christopher and Jimmy once again chatting about life issues. For the first time since i've been here, i've noticed a change in their hearts. Something is different. Some of them have received major miraculous healing because they are now beginning to trust and to open up. They are beginning to share their stories without tears or trembling. It's been 2 1/2 years since they have been rescued and its taken that long for their stories to come out. The last time i heard Jimmy share his story was in front of the Fresh Fire team in 2007, and he was in tears as he told us how his parents died. It took him a while to get the story out and it was difficult to hear him with his quiet voice. But now, he tells that story from a healed heart, still sorry for his loss, but no longer a victim. So as i sat with Jimmy and Christopher on these steps, they started to tell me a little bit more about Gulu and what they had been through. Jimmy told me he was captured by the rebels and had to walk for many many days. He lost count of the days but was forced to carry a 52kg sack of beans with his friend the whole way. He said he was fortunate because the group that captured him was not as violent as some of the other groups and he personally escaped some of the beating because his friend was friends with one of the soldiers. Jimmy explained that the rebel groups around Awer Camp (where they are from in Amoru district) were not as violent as other areas. He also said that most of the rebels in the group were older. There were few children with weapons although there were some. He said he escaped when they were cooking. Some of the rebels were cooking when the government soldiers started coming up the road. Everyone scattered to get their weapons and fight so a group of captured acholis, including Jimmy, took off running. I was also informed that the soldiers in the camps that were fighting for Uganda would sometimes be just as bad as the rebels themselves. If there was no food in the camp, the soldiers would ravage the houses and gardens threatening lives, sometimes killing for food. jimmy said one of the worst things he saw was a soldier cut off a woman's breasts. He also witnessed someone's arms cut off. Sleeping in the bush was safer than sleeping in their houses in the camps lots of times. Stephen told us a story of one time sleeping in the bush and his friend woke up him because the rebels were near and stephen was snoring. He laughs about it now, but even Kenneth can testify of how scary it was to be the one making noise while hiding from the rebels in the bush. Kenneth's earliest memory was when he was maybe 3 or 4. His mother carried him into the bush as the rebels were close by. Kenneth was screaming and crying while his mother held her hand over his mouth to silence him in fear of being found and killed.
Sometimes its hard for me to believe that these kids have been through so much. They look and act so different than when they were in Gulu. They truly have been saved and transformed, so much that even their legal guardians and families don't recognize them. Everytime i get to hear their stories and talk about life, the power of redemption and justice rises up within me. I get excited as i get to peer into their hearts for a moment glimpsing the reality of an experience i will never understand, yet knowing that because they have gone through it, they will be and have already started transforming lives and carrying justice back to a hopeless generation. I caught a piece of revelation today as sought the heart of God. There will be war to enter every promiseland. but God fights for us, so how much more powerful is it when we defeat what looks like the impossible army and become victors to take hold of what God has said and ordained over our lives. When everything goes wrong, where there is a hopeless situation, and dieing surrounds us, we know that the power of redemption lies in the resurrection. God will not abandon us. He steps into the war, brings hope, changes the outcome, fulfills his promise and uses the victims and casualties for His glory. The promise land awaits us. I want to be wreckless enough to listen and obey, to fight the battle that keeps me from it. In as much as i feel honored to teach these kids about life issues, i feel they could teach me more than i could ever teach them. theyve been through the war, and they've been redeemed in it. The beauty of God is turning mourning into dancing, despair into hope, brokenness into gold, rags into robes, poverty into riches, sickness into health, darkness into light, and death into life. the beauty of God is transformation and these kids are gonna transform the world just as they've been. I see beauty in every single one of them, and i continue to love them and pray for them to receive the fullness of Christ in them. Christopher wants to be an evangelist and jimmy wants to be the future president of Uganda.