I hate the word missionary. I'm not sure why, but ever since my 6 week trip in the spring I have. I absolutely do not mind when somebody uses it, but I cannot bring myself to say it without cringing.   

  

Maybe it's all the "cliques" of missionary girls nowadays.  The kind of girls who stroll through to take a few posed pictures of kissing babies and then leave and spend hundreds on rafting and bungee jumping.  They don't stop and see that as they enjoy themselves and fill themselves with pride of posting pictures to their Facebook walls of village children and children in the orphanages, that those are people on the other side of the lens.  They haves souls.  They don't need their picture taken, they need a kind word or a simple "how are you?". Those babies don't need fake kisses, they need to be held, to be important, to be sincerely loved. 

Maybe I hate the word missionary because most days I absolutely do not feel like one.  How can changing a child, kissing their soft cheeks, reading a story, or feeding a baby be a missionary? I'm trying to love like Him, but they already know He loves them.   How can painting walls, scrubbing beds to be painted or scraping door frames be a missionary- nobody's being told of Christ unless the spiders need to know.  

Maybe I hate the word missionary because there is so much need and I alone will never change it.  Missionary makes me sound like I'm changing something. But I'm not.  If I had never come life would go on in Uganda.  The need is so great, and most days I change nothing. 

I am just a girl who loves living life in Uganda, among orphaned and abandoned children. Among people who have more hope and faith in God than I do. Among so much need. It is not I who will ever change anything.  Nothing will change by my strength.  I am weak. I am prideful. I am afraid.  I am small.  But He is glorious. I am hopeful that God will fill Uganda with Himself, that these people will be overwhelmed at who He is and what He has done, despite poverty and illness.  

Christ has called me to this place not to glory in my own accomplishments, but to glorify Him in all He's done and is doing- He is good!