kind acts and words of wisdom...

friday, may 21st, emily and i went to the sweet sleep office to turn in some paperwork and to talk to stuart, the man who knows all. on the way, i called a dear friend, suzanne, to tell her happy birthday and to tell her thank you. she had sent a little something in the mail to go towards our trip. she has been a big supporter of our mission and is planning on going on a sweet sleep trip in the near future (right, sam?). i only hope that i can go with her and experience a life changing trip with a life long friend! over the weekend i received an email from someone else explaining that she also wanted to help with expenses. she wanted me to not pay her back but to pay it forward. i see how God is working through others to allow me and my girls to go on this trip. it is truly humbling. deut 4:9 "be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live. teach them to your children and to their children after them."


one day (about a month ago) i was having a day of uncertainty. this was before we had even sent off for our passports or even really thought of the shots and the prescriptions or the mosquitos or the diseases, etc. i had just about decided not to go. i was pushing or forcing this. or was i? later that afternoon my next door neighbor, linda, walked over to give us a check in support of our mission. she began to tell me about a family she knew who went to uganda to work. they were a young couple (scott and emily) with 4 small children (6, 4, 2 and 2 months) who felt led to go. they came home 6 years later with 6 children! they adopted two while they were there. they had recently moved back to "this continent" (per their oldest son) and would be in nashville until june. i felt the need to meet this family and talk to them. i thought it would help the girls, too, to listen and ask questions. so i called them on their cell and we talked for a little while. we arranged for the entire family of 8 to visit. all 8 of them and 6 of us and my mother. mason was working. i asked them to just tell us their story. scott brought in his computer and showed pictures of their time in uganda. he showed us a plate of "normal" food and explained each item on the plate. it was cute as when that picture popped up on the screen one of the glisson girls said "yum" and my girls were probably thinking "huh?". it looked like a plate of different colored piles of mush with a couple of colored vegetables (pumpklin and sweet potato). there was also millet, a corn dish, smashed bananas, rice, beans, goat stomach. goat stomach? a few of us were questioning what we would be eating during our time there as we were not going to be eating goat stomach. the same little girl said, "well you need to try it." we were also told about "g nut butter". "g" is for ground nuts. it is supposedly very good. i am sure g nut butter will be a staple of ours. they were cute, well educated kids who had been raised in uganda. they really knew no different. we talked about that after they left. america to them was "grandma's and disney world". they didn't really know every day living here. what was normal to them was very strange and questionable to us. we asked about clothing customs and it was interesting to hear that our skirts should cover our knees. it was funny hearing the oldest (12) tell us how men working in the fields would take off their shirts but so would the women...but they would never show their knees. if you get my drift, knees to them are like breasts here. i asked them what the locals thought of people like us entering their country. did they see us as friendly or as a threat? they expressed that the african people see us as hope. funny they said that because my friend julie, who travelled to sierra leone, said the same thing, "our faces give them hope". i am going to try to remember these words of wisdom as we travel to this far and away land. they encouraged us to try everything: not only in food but in experience. don't be afraid, be smart but take in what is going on around us. whether it is letting the locals touch our skin and our hair (which they will want to do), white water rafting the nile (class 5 rapids) on our one fun day, getting our de-worming (ugh) medicine at a local pharmacy while there or just taking it all in as we will spend lots of time in traffic (there are no stop signs or traffic lights or road rules...or at least none that are enforced). they said it's crazy but just take it all in. our kids all began to talk and play outside (picture above of all of the kids together) and just bond a bit as we all wanted to hold brooks (the baby) while the others played basketball or skateboarded. it was a good time. thank you glisson family!