Acts Church in Africa...TODAY (March 30, 2007)

This is a story told by a Ugandan who works for Invisible Children (www.invisiblechildren.com). To me it illustrates the mentaility of the Acts church. In America we could never understand such devestation and poverty...or the beauty that comes out of it in spite of the pain.

What if the government kicked you out of your home? And what if they forced you into a neighborhood where all the houses were in shambles and told you to fix up a single room and move your family into it? And what if a fire started in the neighborhood and all the houses on your side of the street burned down because the government had turned the water off? How would you feel?

That's what has been happening to residents of northern Uganda's IDP camps for the last 10 years. The camps are filled with thatched roof huts, the only housing affordable for displaced families. Many huts are packed so tightly together that their roofs touch. Come dry season, a single spark can set any one of dry grass roofs ablaze and the flames will bound from hut to hut, destroying all the belongings of thousands of people with startling efficiency.

Just last week it happened to my workers in Koro-Abili IDP camp. Fire swept through a portion of the camp, destroying over 400 huts. Ten families that worked for me lost their homes and most of their belongings. When I heard I was crushed for them. Forced into a long and torturous displacement, left to die by the thousands for lack of basic care, and then as a deadly side effect of this offense fire comes ripping through their lives, consuming what little they could call their own. My head shook itself.

The next day I organized a meeting of the leaders of the Bracelet Campaign – the chairpersons who are themselves from the camps and make bracelets alongside the rest. I asked them if their bracelet makers would be willing to contribute to the rebuilding of the homes and lives of the fire victims. They said that they thought so and would ask.

As of now the bracelet makers of Invisible Children, giving out of their relative poverty, have contributed over 400,000 shillings to their fellow workers, though some have never met each other. Though by American standards this is not much, for them it is sacrifice. Many gave more than they would spend on food for their family for a week, or two weeks.

Invisible Children has agreed to match that sum, and many Invisible Children employees, moved by the generosity of those workers, have offered to give from their meager salaries to see that these families are restored to some vestige of normalcy, or what normalcy is possible in an IDP camp.

So remember when you are faced with need that sometimes needs are greater, and are met by those who have less to spare. Let it be known that poverty won't stop grace, that hope doesn't kneel to oppression, that love overcomes war.

PS - Today I found out that when the fire started, all of the bracelet makers ran to the homes of their fellow bracelet makers that were in danger and saved what they could from the flames. That's community.