To the Ends of the Earth

I’ll never forget the day when I realized my life was not going to be normal. It was July of 2010. I was a junior in college, halfway through nursing school, and smack-dab in the middle of Kenya. I had spent two months there and was exposed for the first time to visions of hope in the midst of raw, desperate poverty. I looked at my life and realized that if I was going to claim to truly follow Jesus, then I had to be about the things that he was about: serving the poor, caring for the orphans and widows, feeding the hungry, caring for the sick and imprisoned, and dying to my vision of the American dream. It was in the middle of Kenya that God shattered my comfortable ignorance and selfish heart. It was there that He made it abundantly clear to me that the path He was calling me to was no longer going to be one of normalcy. This realization hurt deeply, but it sparked a fire in my heart that changed my life forever.

I began to talk openly with Austin about my heart for East Africa and my desire to pursue long-term mission work in February of this year. I was shocked that he was even willing to take me seriously with all of my big, crazy, ridiculous plans! We had lots of long heart to hearts and came to the conclusion that it was time for me to go back to Africa and for Austin to go for the first time. A few days later, my sister Lara called me and told me about her upcoming trip to Uganda with Sixty Feet. It seemed like the perfect option for us. We would tag along with her, explore Uganda and the ministry of Sixty Feet, and see if this crazy, long-term mission work idea was something we were even interested in pursuing.

We had an absolutely amazing week working with Sixty Feet in Uganda, which you can read about here. Austin and I fell in love with the work and the people almost immediately. Within 48 hours of arriving and working with the children in the remand homes, Austin and I decided that it was time to talk to our trip leader, Shelly (who just so happens to be the wife of the CEO of Sixty Feet!) We sat down with her the next day over dinner and explained our heart for serving the poor in East Africa and our desire to be obedient to what we knew God was calling us to do. We explained what we could offer to the ministry—my obvious skill being nursing and Austin’s being a hodge-podge of potentially useful experience, including several years in management, a computer degree, and some construction experience in high school. It was an awesome opportunity to share our hearts and our desire to be a part of the amazing work that Sixty Feet is doing in Uganda. Shelly seemed excited to hear all this from us. She told us that if we were still interested after we returned to the States, she would love to fly us out to Atlanta to meet with the Board of Directors of the ministry.

We came home at the end of our trip and tried our best to go back to our daily lives. All along, we knew our hearts were still in Africa. We counted down the days until we could fly to Atlanta and meet the people responsible for starting the ministry we had fallen in love with. The couples we met in Georgia were some of the kindest people ever and their heart for living out the Gospel was contagious. We laughed together and had some wonderful discussions. Two weeks after we returned home, we finally got the email we had been waiting for: we are officially going to Uganda to work as full time staff with Sixty Feet!

Our decision to go to Uganda is one of both passion and obedience. God has made it undeniably clear to us that moving to Uganda is His plan for us at this stage in our lives. I feel so passionate about caring for and advocating for these imprisoned children in Uganda, and the fact that my husband feels the same way reassures me that we are making the right decision. Jesus reminds us in Matthew 25 that whatever we do for the least of these, we do for Him. The imprisoned children of Uganda truly are the least of these. We choose to go to them out of obedience, out of joy, and out of a true desire to follow Jesus.

I know everyone is curious about the logistics of how this move is going to work. Our goal is to leave for Uganda sometime this November. We will be making a commitment of at least one year with Sixty Feet, though we could realistically see ourselves living in Uganda for several years beyond that if that is what is required of us. I will still be working primarily as a nurse, though it won’t be in an in-patient hospital setting. I will be spending the majority of my time working with the Ugandan nurses to provide direct care to the children in the prisons. Austin’s role will be to come alongside the interns already in Uganda by working to develop the child sponsorship program, by visiting and ministering to the children, and by dealing with the Ugandan government as the need arises. We are fully prepared for the fact that our roles and job descriptions may change daily in Africa, so we are training ourselves to be flexible and to do whatever we need to do to make the in-country day to day operations run smoothly. As full-time interns with Sixty Feet, the ministry will pay for most of our major living expenses. We will, however, still need to fundraise a bit for other parts of our cost of living. But we’ll save that for a later post!

We are unbelievably excited about the opportunity ahead of us. The next few months will be spent planning and preparing for what God has in store for us in Africa. We appreciate your love, your prayers, and your support as we seek to be His hands and feet. This is the start of a great adventure!

“And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the ends of the earth…” - Acts 1:8