"God Cares. This I am sure"

We were robbed.

Yes that is right. There we were, walking three of us girls-Kelsey, AmyRose and Stacie all walking along in the middle of Kampala headed to the taxi park. I don't think we have elaborated on what it's like at the taxi park. You see, There is a big dip in the ground in the middle of the city that is crammed with hundreds upon hundreds of taxis all sitting and waiting for people...as a taxi is filled, then it will attempt to make its way out of the crammed taxi chaos out onto the crowded streets of even more taxis and people dodging the taxis not to get smashed. Thankfully, we have not witnessed that. However we have witnessed a bicycle flying down the main highway road which was sloped, allowing the bike to glide freely down hill. The courageous gentleman on the bike was even leaned down to make himself go quicker. As the traffic backed up, we bagan to slow, but the bicyclist was in no hurry to put on his breaks, so he slams right into the back of a vehicle...possibly not seeing the bright red car parked right in his way. We weren't sure. We think he made it up okay, but the traffic began to pick back up so we were not able to check.

Back to the robbery. There we were walking towards the taxi park when all of a sudden this gigantic semi comes down our road forcing us to get off the road due to the monsterous size. A man on the side of the road notices a)we were in danger and needed a very kind man to assist us in our trouble or b)there are three white girls that I can pick-pocket and they will be so concerned with getting off the road that I will have plenty of time to check all of their bags. If you thought a...that is what we obviously thought as well...however this kind man who swooped us up from the road to get us out of the way of the semi darting right at us had b in mind and was able to reach inside both AmyRose's and I's purses and take both of our phones. We both felt sick all day. To make things even worse, we were not able to find a taxi that would take us back to Entebbe to our homes...And the sun began going down and we did not want to be stuck in Kampala by ourselves after dark. So after we walked about ten miles all over the city we finally found a taxi that agreed to taking us to Entebbe. I could not think of anything else other than what I could have done differently that day to make all the terrible events that happened, not happen. It was consuming me and making me feel even more nauseated. As soon as I got on the taxi I saw that an adorable little girl-probably 2-was sitting in the lap of a couple people over from me and was excited to see that she could cheer me up. But as soon as I smiled at her, she began bawling and thought to myself, the one thing that could keep me from crying is now crying and that was when the tears began streaming down my cheeks into puddles on my shirt. She was afraid of white people. The guy next to me looked at me and said how was your day. I just wanted to say to him, "Obviously by river of tears flowing down, I have had a rough day and would appreciate it if you wouldn't ask such obvious statements and not continue this conversation." But instead I half smiled at him and said, "Well, sir, I have actually had better days than this one." He just smiled at me and said," God cares. This I am sure." OF COURSE HE DOES. He cares. Even of the stupid little things that we care about. No he does not care about cell phones. But because we care about them, he cares. He cares because he loves us. He cares because he created us and wants to see us happy and wants to see that we are well taken care of and this man who was sitting next to me had no idea what a difference he made in my life with those six simple words.

Then I began thinking about the situation a little more clearly and not so emotionally disturbed by the loss of our precious communication to the rest of the world. I began to think about the man that stole the phone and how awful it must be to be a theif. How he probably has a family just like we do. He probably has a wife and some kids and hungry stomachs to feed when he got home that evening. His kids birthdays are probably coming up and he just needed money to buy the kids a nice meal of rice and beans to celebrate. If you want to know the greatest need in Uganda after being here for four months...I would have to pinpoint the lack of jobs. That is why kids are not schooling. Because they know that even if they do get the opportunity to attend school, they will still not have much of a future unless they want to become corrupt and steal and cheat to get anywhere. This man was just taking his opportunity when he saw white people. In his mind, he was thinking,"They may have something worth some kind of value and whatever they have I am sure they will be able to get again without much of a problem." Which, in a weird twisted way, I believe that we would do the same thing for the sake of our children. We would do anything to find a way to make a little money to feed the hungry...especially if the hungry are those you bore and see every day. Now I am not in any way justifying stealing. That is wrong. I just got a different picture of the man who stole our phones and my heart was changed from bitterness to brokeness. Thank you Jesus, for opening the eyes of the blind.