To Change the World?

Last week, I was deeply inspired when Brittany Merrill came to our Ethnoviolence class. For years I have been told, "you can do something that can change the world," yet, aside from reading about individuals like Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. I had never come across a "real life" example of someone who had done just that on a global scale.

Perhaps what is so unique about Brittany's story is how it all started. She was an admittedly "selfish" college student who grew up in a wealthy neighborhood in Atlanta, Georgia. She had no innate passion for the African country or its people. The Summer before her junior year, she and a few friends traveled to Uganda to teach in a school for a few weeks. While she was there, Brittany met an impoverished woman who housed several orphan children. Little did she know, this woman would forever change her life.

Several months later, Brittany felt an urgent twinge in her heart to send money to the women she had met in her summer in Africa. As it turned out, her inquiry about helping was an answer to desperate prayer, as the woman and her many children were in dire need of assistance...but not just monetary assistance. Before she knew it, Brittany had bought land in northern Uganda and was set to start an orphanage for the woman and her children... and more children... and more.

Today, the UAPO supports 2 orphanages, is involved in water well initiatives, and employs dozens of women through the Akola project, where the women sell jewelry to make money for their families. You can read more about this amazing ministry and operation here: http://www.theuapo.org/projects/

Back to being encouraged.... though I haven't started a nonprofit organization in Africa (or the U.S. for that matter), it is my hope that the 3 mission trips that I have served on over the past year have made the countries of Haiti and Peru more open to the gospel of Jesus Christ. With every rock I've carried up a hill, every head of hair I've braided, and every tree I've planted, people's lives have in some way been touched and I am confident that this work is all part of a bigger plan to change the world as we know it... for the better.