#fromwhereIstand

Greetings from Jinja, Uganda! My name is Shelby Briley, and I am a pre-medical student. As we enter our last "work week" in Uganda, I look back over our time here reflect on all I've seen and learned. As part of the medical team, I feel that our purpose here has been less defined than the education team or the family and human team, in that as pre-medical students we are not yet qualified to practice medicine. Indeed, there is very little we are permitted to do. Some of us have experience from home as certified nursing assistants, but even this only really equips us for the most basic of all health care. That being said, I think it would be fair to say that we have all felt rather helpless during much of our time in the hospitals. The conditions there, to say the least, are extraordinarily poor, and it is difficult to accept that there is very little we can do to help. Unlike the other two teams, our role has panned out to be one consisting mostly of observation rather than service. Personally, I have struggled greatly with this because the greatest fulfillment I have ever known has been found in helping those who are in desperate need. However, I found comfort in this verse which one of our team members (Lisa) shared with us. 1 Peter 1:12 says, "It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look." This verse reminded me that I have never really served those in need; I have served God, who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or think, and who for some reason, has chosen to work through people to accomplish His means. Although I may not be serving in the more tangible way I had imagined prior to coming to Uganda, God has a definite purpose for my being here.
All that being said, I would like to share a quick vignette from this weekend. On Sunday we visited a malnutrition rehabilitation center called Serving His Children, who's mission in Uganda is to break the cycle of malnutrition one life at a time. They do this through three programs: inpatient rehabilitation, outpatient early intervention clinic, and community health and nutrition classes. The third program is particularly crucial because they do not merely rehabilitate the patients, but rather educate them and their families/caregivers to break the cycle of malnutrition. After being in the Ugandan hospitals for two weeks and seeing the level of care provided there, Serving His Children was a breath of fresh air! It was clean, there were heart and blood pressure monitors, and there was oxygen available. This may sound basic, but it was more than I had seen in the entirety of my experience here. Most impressive was the founder and manager of the center who set up the entire operation when she was 19. She is now 24 and is celebrating her fifth anniversary here. Serving His Children reminded me that God can and will do great and mighty things with a willing heart and pair of hands.
So in summary, although our time here has been trying, it has also been rewarding. I suppose you could say my personal verse for this trip has been Romans 5:3-5 which I will close with. It says, "...but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us."
God Bless,
Shelby Briley