Taking the gospel and more
A mixed team visits Ugandan orphanages
By JOHN BUTTERWORTH
Obeying God’s direction has gotten Bill Smith into plenty of interesting situations as he’s traveled throughout Latin American and African nations. As president and evangelist for Worldwide Crusades, he’s found himself laying on the floor while bullets crashed through walls, speaking face to face with former dictators who had been bent on destroying the testimony of the power of Jesus Christ, casting demons from people from all walks of life, seeing miraculous healings – all part of his life since he’d chosen to obey God’s call to the mission field.
None of that prepared him for one of his latest adventures: Chaperone for four women on their first journey into the mission field. Part of that journey included delivering 800 pairs of underwear to children living in three Ugandan orphanages. The children had never owned underwear before.
“This was totally different than anything I had done before,” Smith says. “I’d been to these orphanages before, but not with a group like this.”
Despite the difference, Smith says the journey was relaxing for him. He enjoyed watching the women learn together about the life and needs of so many people in the world who live in poverty.
This may have been only the first of such trips, according to Smith.
“I do see more of these in the future,” he said. “I’ve always said they are life-changing experiences. In fact, for Isabel, this trip proved to be crucial in her life, and I’m thankful for that.”
Isabel Wu
Isabel Wu traveled from China to meet the WWC team in Uganda. She had never been on such a journey before, but her boss, Sterling Smith (son of Bill Smith), felt she needed to go and encouraged her.
“I was in pain and struggling with faith,” she wrote in an email after her return to China. “I couldn’t feel Him (God) no matter how hard I tried. I was giving up hope and almost ready to believe that He did not care nor exist.
“When I was asked if I would like to make a trip like this, surprisingly I heard myself answering yes, while my heart was wondering at the same time. Me? Uganda? What am I doing?”
Mustering her courage, she made her decision.
“Is that You, God?” she asked. “I decided to give Him and myself one more chance.”
The journey paid big dividends. When answering the question of the journey’s impact on her life, Wu wrote, “How He leads each one of us in our walk with Him.”
Looking back a month after returning to China, Wu says she often reflects on the children’s faces and their tears. The songs the children sang and Smith’s encouragement and stories are her favorite memories of the journey.
Cathy Crawford
When Cathy Crawford stepped on the airliner ready to whisk them off to Amsterdam and then Uganda, she had only been Mrs. Crawford for two weeks.
“When I got back, I had been roommates with Naomi Shadwick for as long as I had been with my husband,” she says with a laugh.
Her journey to Uganda started while taking a class at a local community college. As her class delved into the AIDS epidemic, the topic of Africa came up, and when she mentioned her interest in Africa to one of the men attending Alsea Christian Fellowship, that was all it took.
“The next thing I knew I was going to Africa,” she says. “I really see God’s hand in that.”
She too remembers the children affectionately.
“They just throng you at first. They treat you like you were a rock star,” Crawford says. “If they only knew I’m just a dorky housewife.”
She did notice that after all the excitement died down at each orphanage, it seemed like a few of the children would settle into being a “sidekick” for each of the visitors.
“There were many I wanted to stuff into my little suitcase and bring home with me,” she said. She admitted she had to steel herself to keep from breaking down at seeing the children living in such a poor yet loving environment. She had seen the scenes on TV depicting the deplorable plight of some children in Africa, but here she saw first hand real poverty, yet the children were well taken care of.
“Overall in the whole experience I had to so many things to get used to. It took almost a week to slow down my mind to make it all fit,” she said. “All the preconceived ideas had to be thrown out in order to fit it all in.”
Crawford has a lot of respect and admiration for the pastors, “aunties” and “uncles” who care for the children. Seeing then work so earnestly and sincerely while having so little to give impressed her
“It just amazed me how they can be under such pressure and not have enough and stay with it,” she said. “Steven (Pastor Bwesige) says it’s hard because everyday he sees hungry kids. But when God calls … It is such a big responsibility, it really moved me. This is not an easy job emotionally. I really admire them.”
Crawford said she was ready to come home when it was time to leave, but now she is ready to return. “It definitely pulls you back. I hope next time to be able to do more hands on. I had to observe this time, but I want to go back.”
Planes, canoes and motorcycles got the Worldwide Crusades team to one orphanage on an island in Lake Victoria.
Naomi Shadwick
Naomi Shadwick is a woman known to be outspoken and blunt. The journey to Uganda and the orphanages definitely impacted her.
“For the first time in my life I’m speechless,” she says with just a hint of humor. “That’s a change. Humbling might be the word. I was crying when I left. At the airport I went back and hugged Pastor Joshua (Murefu) twice. I was crying so hard. It was just such a blessing, an overwhelming feeling.”
Shadwick, who had dreamed as a young girl of going to Africa, has long been a hands-on advocate for the homeless in whatever area she lived. After her time in Uganda, the energy level has picked up and refocused some.
“All the people we met are constantly in my mind now,” she says. “They’re the last thing I think about before I go to sleep and the first thing I think about when I wake up. I just want to do things to make a difference in their lives, but I want to do what God wants me to do and not be doing my own thing.”
Her hands-on approach took effect immediately after leaving Uganda. While on the flight home she asked one of the attendants what they do with the small blankets after they have been used by passengers. After receiving a vague reply, she told him she wondered because she had just returned from orphanages where they could be used. When she was told she could go ahead and keep the blanket she had, she then told the rest of the WWC team to giver her their blankets.
“The next thing I know it was raining blankets,” Shadwick says with a laugh. Other passengers had heard the conversation and they wanted to help. “We took as many as we felt comfortable with, thinking about the customs inspectors. Pastor Joshua needs these blankets at the orphanage.”
Since returning, she has discovered many networks of people exist with the heart to help the poor in Africa. Already she’s enlisted others to help her send money to one orphanage to buy cooking pots to replace the ones that have holes burnt through them from continual cooking on an open fire.
While seeing poverty seldom encountered in the States, Shadwick came away inspired by the people she saw and met in Uganda. “While there is poverty, at the same time there is enterprise, energetic people surviving, doing what they have to do to survive. They’re not looking for a handout because there is no handout. It totally changed my perspective on that.”
She wants to return to Africa to do more to help those she met in Uganda, yet she has some misgivings.
“I want to go back, yet I know the money I spend for travel would be better spent by sending it to them.”
Ann Woods and Cathy Crawford lead children in a game at an orphanage near the Ugandan capital city of Kampala.
Ann Woods
For Ann Woods, office secretary for Worldwide Crusades, the trip to Uganda was the fulfillment of a vision she had shortly after she turned her life over to Christ Jesus. In a flash of a vision, she had seen herself paddling a canoe in the dark off the shores of Africa. She still doesn’t know exactly what that vision meant, but she caught a glimpse.
Often in her work as WWC secretary she finds herself in the role of support for others. The trip to Uganda was no different.
“I felt like my job on this trip was supposed to be support for Isabel, Cathy and Naomi,” says Woods. Several years prior to this trip she had been part of a WWC team working in Honduras.
“It also came into place where I got to be a conduit of Jesus to play with these kids. I did that in Central America. The kids know you have a ‘yes face’ and that you are into playing with them.”
Woods and the others taught the children several games, including “red light, green light,” But first they had to explain what traffic lights are. They also did a number of circle dances.
“That was my happiest time,” said Woods. “I was in my element.”
As the designated photographer and videographer, she found her biggest challenge was to keep organized. “I had five bags and had to keep track of everything. It was that versus getting sidetracked and wanting to play with the kids.”
Woods is ready to return.
“I learned there is a cry from the children’s hearts concerning Africa about AIDS and all that,” she concluded. “This voice wants to get out and share what they are going through.”
A 10-year-old preacher of the gospel leads the way when the Worldwide Crusades team visited a second island on Lake Victoria.
Bill Smith
Bill Smith has said more trips of this nature may become part of the Worldwide Crusades outreach, but it’s unlikely any will start off as precariously as this one.
After making plans to travel, Naomi Shadwick ended up having major hip surgery and it looked as though she might not be able to make it. Cathy Crawford, a widow when she signed up to go ended up marrying two weeks before departure time. Ann Woods found it extremely difficult to finance the trip. Isabel Wu was facing a list of personal struggles. However, as the Scripture says in several place, “But God …”
“I’m thankful they all went,” says Smith. “The size of the group was just right. The logistics were good.” Had they spent more than two days at each orphanage, he figures he would have ended up leaving the ladies behind because they would have become too attached to the kids.
“I think they were amazed at how affectionate and close the kids were,” he said.
Smith has his own list of outstanding experiences and memories of the journey. He remembers watching a 10-year-old boy preach with the same fervor and zeal he has. Recalling the WWC team’s travel together in leaky boats, canoes and motorcycles to reach their destinations brings a smile to his face.
One of his favorite memories was watching the children receive new underwear. The team brought 800 donated pair with them, hoping to give two pair each to the 400 orphans that had been a part of the three orphanages on his visit in January. By the time they arrived the population had grown to 600.
Returning to the States, Smith sees two major challenges for the orphanages: steady funding and clean water.
WWC sponsors have already helped put a well and hand pump in at one of the orphanages, but the other two are in desperate need of clean water. The orphanage on an island must use the water from Lake Victoria where the sewage and waste of millions flow. The orphanage near a slum area is built on a lowland whereby all pollutants and open sewage settle into the groundwater and contaminate it.
It takes $1,500 a month to run each orphanage where they can feed the kids, pay the mamas who teach and take care of the them, and keep the kids and staff in clothes. All they have right now is the funds that come in from the church where each of the three pastors lead.
And that comes at a cost to the pastor.
“Churches in Africa pay pastors according to what comes in the offering,” he explained. “So the pastors are sacrificing their wages to feed these kids.”