.letter.

My Dear Friends and Family,

I wish I could sit with each one of you on a porch with a breeze and see your eyes and listen to your stories as I tell you mine. And spend a quiet and slow afternoon in your presence.

I’m writing to tell you what some of you may already know. I’m headed to Africa this summer. I am going to northern Uganda to work in a medical clinic in a refugee camp with Global Refuge International (www.globalrefuge.org). From July 7 through the 22 I’ll be touching the broken and needy bodies of Ugandan refugees, brining the touch and whisper of hope into their impoverished lives.

Northern Uganda is a war torn area, where for over 20 years the Lord’s Resistance Army has been fighting and rebelling aganst the Ugandan government. Young playful boys trained into killing soldiers, little girls forced into prostitution, babies ripped from their mother’s arms, man’s life destroyed. This ongoing war has resulted in over 2 million people being displaced from their homes and villages, forcing them to live in refugee camps with frightening sanitation, meager food resources, the rampant transmission of HIV/AIDs, inadequate to completely unavailable medical attention and an overall air of hopelessness. Over 80% of the entire population of northern Uganda lives in displaced camps where life is horrific. The medical needs of northern Uganda are overwhelming with a doctor to person ratio of one doctor to every 200,000 people in these camps. (learn more at http://www.monitor.co.ug/, http://www.allafrica.com/, and of course http://www.wikipedia.com/)

Global Refuge is an organization dedicated to demonstrating the love of Christ to victims of disaster, conflict and persecution. GRI humanizes the love of Christ to these destitute people by providing acute medical care, HIV/AIDS education, testing and treatment, community health education, and ministry. They currently have a small team of American workers living in Northern Uganda. These workers go into the camps to bring medicine, education, laughter, Good News, and hope to the Ugandans daily. They are also empowering Ugandans to take over the clinics and ministry once they leave. A part of our trip to Uganda will be to energize, refresh and minister to those who are daily pouring out in the name of our Lord in such physically, emotionally and spiritually demanding ways. These people are serving in the hard places.

I want to ask you to join me in this journey. Join me as I prepare for Uganda and continue walking with me as I return. Learn with me as I discover the atrocities that take place throughout our world leaving people suffering with no signs of hope and as I discover how good and powerful the Gospel truly is. Feel with me as my heart breaks for the overwhelming needs of these people. Pray with me as I ask God to somehow reveal His hope and salvation to those in such appalling life conditions.

When God brought this opportunity for me to go to Africa I felt Him ask me to make sacrifices in order to go. He has taught me what it means so say ‘no’ and to live without (although I think we hardly know what it means to go without here in America). This has been, and continues to be, a beautiful and challenging lesson of discipline, understanding God’s provision in my life, His desire for a simple lifestyle, and the overwhelming abundance in which I live (see Matthew 6:19-21, 25-34). But I also recognize that He has graciously blessed me with a dear and treasured community of family and friends. This community is enriched and deepened by contributing to one another’s live by prayer and giving (see Philippians 4:16-20). I ask that you join me in this trip in prayer. Please pray for the Ugandans, think of them throughout your day and ask that our God will join your heart with our suffering brothers and sisters living in this country, pray for my team that we will be unified in one spirit of service and compelled by love as we prepare and go, pray for me that God will begin a life transforming journey of loving the unloveable and that my heart will be clay in our Gentle Potters hand as He forms me into His servant. I also ask that if the Lord leads you to give, either to my trip or to Global Refuge (see their website for a list of their needs and a way to donate), I ask that you obey His spirit promptly. In obedience, giving and sacrificing there is a beautiful and lasting reward to which no earthly treasure can compare.

I would like to continue to tell you about the trip, but I realize that hardly anybody has time to read a novel length letter, which I could definitely write…(turns out I can be kind of long winded and not at all ‘to the point’ and if you’ve read this far then THANKS!). So I’d like to keep you informed and updated on things such as the needs and work of Global Refuge, the situation in Uganda, prayer requests for my team, Ugandans, and myself, and also what the Lord is teaching me as He leads me on this journey. I’d like to send out e-mails to keep you connected and informed. Please let me know if you’d like to be apart of these updates, you can just e-mail me at katelferguson@gmail.com.

If you have received this letter, please, please know that you are a treasured and invaluable person in my life (unless of course you are reading this on my blog ..I can’t really control who sees that J). My life is rich and full because of you, my story would not be the same without you. Love to you.

Bless and Be Blessed,


Kate


“I do not ask for success, I ask for faithfulness” Mother Teresa