Kampala, Uganda      Misti Shelton      Nov 07

While walking through an area of Kampala we call an ‘urban slum’ area, we greeted an older woman selling a few vegetables from a rickety wooden booth.  We step through the mud and trickling water carrying unmentionables down the path.  The heavy rains and flooding in Uganda have made news headlines, but the personal stories have yet to be heard.

  On this morning, we went to the vegetable seller’s home with her.  She wanted us to see her one room home that is quite nice compared to many in the area.  Soon her grand-daughter came to see the uncommon white couple standing at this doorstep.  Miriam easily spoke fluent English.  She is almost finished with secondary school.  She related the following:  Her family is all Muslim.  She had been attending a school in which a friend of hers took her to a Bible study where she was introduced to the Bible and the story of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.  She wanted to be saved, and went home to tell her parents.  They were furious, so the only option she saw was to ask for forgiveness from her parents, and promise to not talk about it with them again.  Miriam’s father immediately moved her to a Muslim run school.  However, even that school includes Divinity (Christian studies) as part of their curriculum.  She came home and told her father that the Head Master had put her in the Divinity class because she had been taking Divinity at her previous school.  So, now she needed a Bible as her text book for the class.  Her father did not protest while thinking it was not Miriam’s choosing, so took her to buy a Bible.  

  If Miriam chooses to go against her father’s religion while still in his home, she risks loosing everything:  a place to sleep, her school fees being paid (no free education here), her family.  So, she is just waiting.  She will continue reading her Bible as part of her curriculum.  She dreams to go to college and improve her life, and get out of the slum living so many are destined to.  Then, she says, she will be free to choose her own God.

  We had the opportunity to pray with her, in front of her grandmother and neighbors, for Light to penetrate this Darkness.  And for her to keep hold of That which first took hold of her and first loved her.

  There are many other young people in the same situation.  They have a chance ‘out’ and to a better life, and only see the option of keeping quiet until the time is right.