After many remote trails and paths, we came upon Mama Grace’s home, which consisted of about six huts and housed her family of about forty. It was really tidy and quite beautiful. Grace’s husband was killed by the Rebels a few years ago. She left her kids behind and moved to Jinja to make money for their schooling. When Grace introduced her firstborn son, I asked why she named him Immanuel, which means “God with us?” She explained that she was home alone during his birth and her only help was God. I realized in this moment that love endures deep sacrifice and very, very blind faith.

Upon arrival, we were seated for everyone to stare at us. About thirty minutes later, a meal was served (to only us), which at least permitted a changed focus toward rolling food in our fingers versus a crowd of alien eyes. No clapping, laughing, engaging, or talking. There are over 500 languages in Uganda alone, so any Luugandan we’d picked-up was useless at this point. We watched another beautiful sunset this night. Mama Grace asked if we had a sun in America? I realized in this moment that love doesn’t always speak my language, or find residence in my worldview.

We slept in the hut. I didn’t sleep at all. Six of us, including Ruthie, Anna, Grace, Grace’s sister, her baby and me, spooned on the ground with a sheet (Tyler slept in an accompanying hut with Grace’s dad…her mom and children slept in another). Gnats had a hay-day, rats were crawling over us and Lord knows what was perusing the fields around us. It rained for about an hour and spit on us through the straw roof. I was sweating at one point, but wouldn’t dare undo the sheet—it was my smallest wall of protection. “God, what is this? Where am I? Is this life for them? I can’t do this. This is the pitchest black I’ve ever been in and I want out. Please get me out, Dad. I’m scared.” At about 3am the three Americans were awake and needed to use the “bathroom” (a hole behind a row of crops…all four of these days lacked running water, toilet-paper, electricity, or anything close to civilization). The moon was quiet and the stars were shaded by clouds, so there was no way we’d find it alone. Mama Grace wasn’t sleeping due to concern for us. “I wonder if it is the rats disturbing you?” she whispered. “Maybe you are not used to them where you live?” “No,” we cried/giggled back, as she took our hands and led us to the hole. I realized this night that love moves beyond comfortability and I didn’t like it.

I asked God to please raise the sun earlier than normal the next morning. I don’t think He heard me, but nevertheless, was praising Him at the first sign of light. It was fun, too, to interact with Grace’s mom grinding nuts, retrieving eggs and sweeping the grounds with a tied wad of hay. Her brothers were studying the Bible and in the minimal communication that we shared, I asked if I could join. One of them had an English Bible, so I was able to loosely follow along with them in John 8. This is the story where Jesus is in a Temple, where a room of religious people were accusing an adulteress woman and taunting him to verify her stoning. Jesus kneels to the ground and writes something in the dirt with his finger, saying, “The one without sin among you should be the first to throw a stone at her.” The entire room emptied, except for Jesus and the woman. “Woman, where are they?” he asked. “Has no one condemned you?” “No one, Lord,” she answered. “Neither do I condemn you.” Jesus said. I wanted to ask Grace’s brothers what they thought he might’ve written in the sand. After about thirty minutes of missed understanding, I sought Grace’s help to interpret and realized the problem wasn’t a lack of understanding, but a lack of learning skills. These men didn’t have the education to think critically. They had never known the freedom of reading between the lines, wondering, questioning, or dreaming with God. When we eventually moved toward this point, we had a really special time sharing ideas like “forgiveness,” or “in Me, you are free.” Love must transcend knowledge and understanding. Maybe Jesus was serious when he said the faith of a child, or mustard seed, can move a mountain.

After voicing good-byes (which included a reintroduction of all the birth orders), we trekked to the road and waved down a bus. Once again, I found myself praying on this ride like never before. Fear and closeness to death had never confronted me as they did this weekend. New conversations of death, then, were forced to be traced. “What will it look like? How will it feel? What am I scared of? Am I ready?” Christ followers make light of death as if it’s an easy pass, but this weekend brought me face to face with the uneasiness of this actuality. I became starkly aware of many attachments to my here and now and many places where I ‘said’ I trusted God, but clearly didn’t. “What about my family? What about getting married? What about my rent, schooling, or conversation to be had with x, y, or z?”

Our first few hours were crammed like the first day’s ride, only this time we were standing. The conductor kept pushing us backwards till we were facing forward like a row of dominoes. Grace had taken this route a number of times, but had no concept of how long it would be. “Could be four hours, or could be fourteen. Depends on the driver” (and number of cows, ditches and who knows what, you run into, I guess). It took us ten hours. My iPod tried to sing me into the comforts of worship, but it felt impossible. How could I worship God in this environment? Everyone was sweaty and sick and crammed to a disgusting degree. Babies screamed and the windows only lent a louder scream. Poverty and death enveloped me. Once again I thought we were going to die—the tipping and bumping and crowdedness was unbearable. “I can’t go on, God. I want out. Help me.”