They feel my beauty, Katie...

Whoa. It is only Tuesday and this week has been crazy! First of all, the RA situation has been resolved, I think, because they accepted my application and hopefully reviewing right now as I write this. God’s grace was in that whole thing and hopefully it works out. I have done everything I can, considering I am in Africa, I leave it in God’s hands now. That has been a stressful part of these past two days, but it has worked out, or so I hope :D.
So, enough about my selfish life in America, now to what you really want to read about. We had our oreintation to for the orphange I will be volunteering at while I am in Uganda. A little history on this story, we got to write down our top three choices on where we wanted to do our service projects and Chain, the orphange, was not my first choice. Salama, which is a blind school, was my first choice because the idea that the children just love you for who you are to them and not what you look like appealed to me. That sounds completely selfish, but being someone that gets stares from people because my face isn’t normal, it made me want to be with them. I figured I could learn a lot from them too on appearance and how much it does not matter. Well that was my plan and knew for sure that was where God wanted me, but we got our assignments and I got Chain, the orphange. Not that I did not want to be at the orphange, but I had built my heart on the blind school. That was just a bad week because nothing was going the way I wanted, but when I saw where I was suppose to volunteer God just said ‘Trust me, Katie’…that was all I could do, so I said ‘Fine’…Ok now back to present.
We went to this orphange and there was a blind school there! God is so amazing…
So we take a tour of the land to get familiar with the area and we meet these amazing kids. These kids are blind, partially or fully, and they live life. My heart is so heavy and I had to hold back from crying right then and there. I want to do so much for these children, but yet feel like I can do nothing to help. I am an all or nothing type and it just really frustrates me that I am in Africa, going to school, paying more money for four months than most of these people see in their life, and complaining about rice and beans. The orphange has an Intergrated school for the blind and sighted, but they cannot provide much food so these kids get a cup of pourage at lunch and that is it. These children mostly stay on campus even after school is out, to play with the other children and mostly because there is no reason to go home until bedtime because there is no food at home either. These are the poorest of the poor in the community. Most of these children do not have families for many reasons, but one main one being AIDS. Some are HIV positive themselves, which just breaks my heart. The blind children are almost like an outcast to society, and either their parents couldn’t provide proper medical care for them or they just didn’t want to because they saw them as a waste of life. Ahhhhhh….my heart just hurts. I want to fix everything for these kids because they deserve it more than anyone. They should get more love but they get less. I am so overwhelmed with emotion right now, I don’t know what else to write about this at the moment.
On the way back from Chain, I was riding in the van with the window open, winding blowing; eyes closed thinking this is how they see life. How do they see your beauties God? I ask, and God replied, “They don’t see life, Katie, they feel it. They feel my beauty.” Oh for all of us to feel His beauty…