because someone asked why uganda of all places

that is what the new leaves are doing- celebrating.  it's this gorgeous, perfect, dry, blue sky, crisp and windy day. a day to be celebrated.  but, we needed to do the stuff we've been doing every saturday for the past 4 months- clean and work on the house.  my mom and dad took the kids to their house for a few hours for us to finish up and we did and then mike and i went out for a long walk.  our house is sandwiched between two parks that both have festivals today, so there were lots of people out celebrating this day.  we just walked and walked and i felt very quiet.  i was thinking about how we just can't seem to sit still, he and i.  how our shared spirit animal is less organized than the migratory bird, we are some nomadic animal, an animal that goes where the food is, carrying it's young on it's back, monogamous, not rooted to it's surroundings. i was thinking about how all the movement, the lack of static, forces you to either draw closer together or to push apart- and i am thankful for our being drawn close. 

someone asked why uganda of all places to move and teach and work.  to start with, i believe God speaks to us by stirring things in our hearts, and before i met mike and before he met me, our hearts had been stirred with the same sticks.

when mike was 18, his family went to kenya to visit with family friends who were missionaries there.  his heart stirred.  sometimes you don't know why you feel connected to one place and not as much to another, even if you love to travel as we both do.  he felt something during that month- a stirring- that made him want to return.

when i was 17 i traveled to kenya with my dad and had the same stirring.  i remember the dusty streets and the tea fields and the great rift valley and the sun setting and the scents of carved wood animals and the richness of the people in their smiles and their skin- the toughness of their often bare feet and the bumpy road- and i knew i wanted to return- to be there- to know it.

mike and i had met a few times before we fell in love, but i knew when i was 18 that he was who i wanted to spend all my years with.   we got together when he had just lost his best friend in a car accident - our mutual friend- and our world was weighted. we spent our time trying to understand a God who would allow such an inspirational,vivacious person as matt to die so young.  there was an intensity to our love that needed to counter act all the sadness we'd felt.  those heavy months drew us close like magnets.  he had very few things in his little apartment in western massachusetts, but the two things i remember were an african tapestry and two carved african ebony book ends.  i had similar artifacts.  of the things that were meaningful to us - somehow east africa was in there for both of us.

we married young, in our early 20s and began our crazy decade of studying architecture and medicine.  but we didn't go back to africa together until we'd been married for 10 years, had our degrees and one child, zoe.  and we went to uganda.  we worked there for a month and began building relationships with people who are still there- people we've known now for 7 years.  we have returned several times alone and together, with the same sense of not questioning 'where' but questioning 'when'.

the fact that we've both been stirred in the same way- even in different professions- speaks to us. the fact that both of us feel - despite being in our now 40s, despite having 3 little kids, despite the appearance of being 'settled' - that we are meant to return to uganda, means something- it's not random- and it's rare. it is where we feel led to go.  all those other places mentioned in the comment sound fabulous- to visit- to see, but i don't feel drawn there, we don't feel drawn there- not now anyway. 

i think we'd both like to 'be' there for a while.  to stay a bit.  to not pack up.  to celebrate the response to that stirring we've both felt for over 20 years. and to allow the new challenges to draw us nearer again, in a new season, in a new home.