The End

Our time in Uganda has come to an end and it is bitter sweet really. We have spent the last 8 months of our lives building wonderful relationships, serving God, serving others, learning, stretching and growing. Our time in Uganda has been an experience and an adventure of a lifetime. We have come to love so many people, experienced many crazy and wonderful things and have had our view of Uganda, Africa and the world changed forever. It will most certainly be difficult to leave.

Leaving will also be an exciting time as we will be reunited with family and friends, return home and begin a new chapter in our story. I suppose, technically we will be jumping back into a chapter already started. I think it will be like picking up a book that you stopped reading long ago, having no idea where you were. But, after backtracking and catching up, you continue on. Only this time we will be changed people, with new experiences, who will perceive the old story and what is to come much differently. Going home will be very exciting and also very interesting.

So, as we pack our bags, say goodbye and board the plane back to Canada, Uganda and the people we have met will be coming along with us. Not literally of course, although it would be wonderful to have any one of our newfound friends come and experience Canadian life. Whom we have met and what we have learned and experienced has changed us. Our story is a little richer, our view of the world has been broadened and our belief that God is doing amazing things has been confirmed. As Donald Miller, in A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, says,

“If the point of life is the same as the point of a story, the point of life is character transformation. If I got any comfort as I set out on my first story, it was that in nearly every story, the protagonist is transformed. He's a jerk at the beginning and nice at the end, or a coward at the beginning and brave at the end. If the character doesn't change, the story hasn't happened yet. And if story is derived from real life, if story is just condensed version of life then life itself may be designed to change us so that we evolve from one kind of person to another. "