Let It Be Glory: #TBT

Showing posts with label #TBT. Show all posts

Thursday, August 13, 2015

The Day I Met Namanya Daphine

In honor of {Throw Back Thursday}, this Thursday I am posting from our blog The Hutcheson Headline that we used while living in Uganda from 2012-2013. The post below was originally published by me on January 25, 2013. You can view it here if you'd like to see the original version.

For many years I have been sponsoring a little Ugandan girl named Daphine through Compassion International. Let me take you back to that wonderful day when I got to meet her for the very. first. time after years of letter writing.....

Last week we had the amazing privilege of meeting the little girl we sponsor through Compassion! I've been sponsoring Namanya Daphine since August of 2008, before Drew and I even got married. And since we've gotten married we've been sponsoring her together.

Daphine will be 12 years old in February and lives in a small town called Maziba, about 6-7 hours away from where we live in Kampala. Compassion gave us the option of either traveling to visit her for the day or paying for her and a companion to come to us for the day. With two small kids, 14 hours in the car didn't sound very appealing so we decided to have Daphine come to us!

She arrived early Monday morning and my first thought was "She is SO beautiful!!" It was an incredible thing to meet her for the first time after 4 1/2 years of writing to her and only seeing/sending pictures. We were so excited! Daphine does not speak a lick of English so thankfully she had a translator with her. The translator told us that Daphine had never been out of her village and was shocked by the big city of Kampala!

Meeting her for the first time!!

Isaiah was so excited about showing her all his toys, especially his magnetic cars.

Daphine brought us a sweet gift of fruit and a basket.

After some tea and cake at our house we took Daphine to the big mall downtown and took her to see a movie in the theater! We also had Isaiah with us and it was his first time seeing a movie in the theater too. He and Daphine were both completely glued to the screen the whole time. It was awesome to see their faces!!! =)

We had some gifts for her as well.

Opening up her gift bag!

She was so excited!

She loved her new shirt, a hand-me-down from my sister, Adelynn.

We got her a handwriting book to help her practice writing her letters.

She said her favorite gift was her English dictionary!

When we returned from the mall we enjoyed an African style meal that our house help prepared. Daphine had no idea how to use a fork so she used her hands! All too soon it was time to say goodbye. We really enjoyed our visit with Daphine and feel so blessed to have had the opportunity to meet her! She is a beautiful girl inside and out and we look forward to our continued communication with her now that we know her more personally!!

Here I was telling her translator to tell her how proud I was of her for being such a helpful, studious girl who loves Jesus!

Saying goodbye after a wonderful day!

If you are interested in sponsoring a child through Compassion click here to locate waiting children. Your tax-deductible contribution of just $38 a month connects a child living in poverty with a loving, church-based Child Sponsorship Program.

Your support provides:

Medical checkups, which often save lives
Nutritious food
Health and hygiene training
Educational assistance
Access to special services like surgeries and disaster relief
Mentoring to help children discover their incredible value as God’s children
Most important of all, your sponsored child will hear about Jesus Christ and be encouraged to develop a lifelong relationship with God.

When you sponsor a child, you'll receive your child's photo, personal story and a child sponsorship packet by mail in approximately 10 days.

When children find out they've been sponsored, the joy they feel is indescribable. Just knowing that someone across the globe cares means more than you can imagine. Sponsoring a child in need will profoundly change the future for your child, and will change your own life as well.

Thursday, June 18, 2015

Hey Dads: A Man of Sayings for the Man of Sorrows

Below is my collection thus far of some quotes, one-liners, and their explanation (if need be) I have collected from others over the years and or have created from something I've learned. I want to instill these into my children.

"Envy is the seed of discontentment; it gives birth to chaos!" - From James 3:16

"Teach-ability is the posture of humility."

"You can have the best jam in town, but if you spread it on too thin, the toast is no good." - Stewart Hamrick, on spreading yourself too thin in life.

"God will not protect you from anything he will perfect you through." - Bill Muntz on losing his toddler son to a drowning accident.

"Per-se-vere is a three syllable word. Just as 'life'." Referring to life being birth, living, and dying and that trials will come. But we're to persevere well through all 3 eras.

"Unresolved anger is like bad coffee." Referring to unresolved anger or bitterness being like coffee on the burner for too long. If you drink pop over coffee, then it's like pop that's gone flat.

"Discipline is doing what needs to be done, how it needs to be done, when it needs to be done, regardless of how you feel." - Ron Sauer, Greek Prof at Moody Bible Institute

"Cheer for the team, even in defeat." - On loyalty

"Do > Say." - On James 1, being a person of action makes for more influence than merely a person of words.

"Be offensive towards defensiveness." - Referring to being a person who takes ownership of mistakes.

"Who cares if God doesn't?" - On learning in life what matters to the Lord.

Leaving a legacy our children will be proud to carry on is a more difficult feat to conquer than ever. Amidst so many distractions our world promotes today, it is more of a sheer fight to focus on what really matters most.

You can easily look at one's Twitter or Facebook page and easily see where their priorities are. No, I'm not trying to play the role of judge nor cirtic. I just often find many disclosing things virally which are a tad weightless and vain. Do you agree? (And I myself have been victim of this.)

Having said this, one thing I have come to want to be known for by Isaiah and future children, as well as friends and family, is to be a man of sayings for the Man of sorrows. Simply meaning, I want to have several expressions, phrases, figure of speech which I collect or create which teach a life-lesson, a principal, or a token of character. They don't have to be from the Bible or even from a Christian. But, I would love for the greater portion of them to help me and those who hear me say them live life well, and in turn, reflect the work God has done in me through his cultivating grace.

Trying to conquer fixing the sink together.

As I am a young father, I write this post with other young dads, older dads, and future ones in mind. As we're all terminal, and as life is such a blink, seemingly smoke on a mirror, it will be what we did and were known for which lives on following our passing. What is so awesome is that even our words are seeds which give birth to action in the lives of others. Hence, what we say and how we say it hold great potential in leading others in how they may live. Therefore, I want to be known not merely for the things I do, but for what I say.

If you have any that you could add to the list or you say often, I'd like to know - so please share!

Thursday, June 11, 2015

Madness at Mandela Stadium: Happy Birthday Drew!

Since today's Throw Back Thursday also happens to be my sweet husband's birthday, I thought it'd be fitting to post one of his old posts for today. Drew wrote this post after going to his first soccer game in Uganda almost exactly 3 years ago (June 10, 2012).

I know Drew wishes he could be at a sporting event in Uganda for this birthday too. We all miss Uganda so much! But we'll celebrate here in Florida and hopefully have just as much fun.

Happy Birthday, Drew!! I'm so thankful for the blessing you are in my life and look forward to celebrating many more birthdays with you!

Madness At Mandela Stadium!

This past Saturday, my father-in-law (dad), and Janae (one of Amber's little sisters) had an incredible experience: We went to a 2014 World Cup qualifier match at Mandela Stadium and watch the Uganda Cranes battle against the Senegal Lions! Some of my IJM colleagues joined us and we had an unforgettable time as it would be quite hard to forget an atmosphere as loud and electric as the below videos portray.

Jump Mzungu, jump!

*This is the penalty kick from dad's view*

This was the video taken by dad (my father-in-law), Mark. Feel free to laugh as much as I do each time I watch this video.

*This is the same penalty kick, but from my view*

I get a kick (pun, pun) out of this video each time I watch it.

One ticket was 25,000 UGX, which is a little less than $10 USD. Wow, a professional sports event where the seating is first come, first served and tickets are $10 - can't beat that!

IJM Colleagues

Colleagues and loyal Cranes fans reacting to a bad call.

At first I thought this was the team and I came to watch radical rugby.

Final score! A draw is always better than a loss.

Thursday, June 4, 2015

Throw Back Thursday: Pictures from Uganda

From 2012-2013 our family live in Kampala, Uganda where Drew served as a Church and Community Relations fellow with International Justice Mission. During this time, Drew got to experience first hand the life I grew up living as a missionary kid in Africa! The pictures below give you a little glimpse into our life while we lived in Uganda and what Drew's day to day work with was like with IJM (pictures are narrated by Drew). We miss Uganda so much and can't wait to go back overseas again if God should so lead us!

Perhaps this is not the most appealing photo to begin with, but this is what a bathroom out in the village looks like. Make sure to bring your own toilet tissue!

We were at a field function on this particular day. As I was heading to wash my hands after eating, I could see this black line in the distance. As I approached it, I could see it was moving! It was a herd of ants crossing the path.

We didn't finish our work in the field until late this particular evening. On our way back, I was driving us down all of these village dirt and bumpy roads. Along the way I was trying to snap some pictures of the village nightlife and this boda guy made one of the photos.

You see a lot of cows out in the village, but usually only about one per a family. Cows are very expensive, but are one way people both feed their families and make money. When I saw this guy, only one thing came to mind: A spicy chicken sandwich from Chik-fil-a.

The night life, even in the village, can be pretty vibrant. This was a group of people who were cooking up some fried fish to sell. We couldn't resist, so we stopped to buy some.

This fish was delicious!

Here's part of the team I work with - some of our stellar IJM lawyers - reviewing some notes for the legal education program we were conducting this day.

This was at a church we were asked to speak at. On this Sunday, some of the youth did a dance a drama for the church.

This was at our last WMBR event for the year. Our office has team challenges each month called "WMBR" (We Measure By Results). We're on the same team for the whole year and our last challenge which would determine which team came in first place for 2012 was a couple of rounds of bowling. The team I was on came in second place. Maybe next year we'll take home the #1 ranking.

This is the team I work with everyday - great and amazing people! A couple of them were pregnant at the time and we were having an out-of-office lunch to celebrate their pregnancy.

Some more returning from the field late, more driving on Jinja Road at night. Jinja Road during the day can already make for quite the adventure while driving on. At night, it's nearly outright dangerous.

We are big believers in measuring our performance so we know if our work is making a difference. I see these graphs each day and they motivate us all the more to work hard for our clients and those we're serving. Our end results for 2012 are much higher than what you see here as this graph was made half way through the year. We well exceeded our goals for 2012!

Sometimes you just never know what you'll find around the office. I walked in to the kitchen to make some tea and found our mascot, until he became someone's dinner.

Speaking of chicken for dinner, this is Uganda's best chicken! In our project area, there's a place we sometimes pass by called Namawajallo. They have several workers who cook all kinds of food and sell it for people making the long trip to Jinja. This chicken is always sauteed with salt or some seasoning and then grilled. It makes for some good and inexpensive eating.

Coffee is one of the main crops in Uganda, it's actually their largest export. On our way to the field on this day we passed a coffee harvester who had picked the beans and was now letting them dry out.

Although this photo is not from the field, I couldn't resist posting this amazing checkmate setup. For Christmas I asked Amber for a chess set and board and she found this amazing hand made soap-stone one in the local craft market. Although this was one of Amber's first times playing chess, she fared well. In the end, however, my Knight and Rook conquered her King. For those who know chess notation, Am's King is on G5 (the blue lion facing right).

Thursday, May 28, 2015

House Tour - Our Home When We Lived In Uganda!

In honor of {Throw Back Thursday}, every Thursday I will be posting a post from our blog The Hutcheson Headline that we used while living in Uganda from 2012-2013. The post below was originally published by me on July 18, 2012 just after we had moved to Uganda and into our new apartment! You can view it here if you'd like to see the original version.

And, if you'd like to compare our house in Uganda to our house now you can see the house tour of our current house in Florida here. =)

We are finally moved into our new house and boy does it feel good! After 2 months of living out of a suitcase, it feels incredibly wonderful to unpack and put things in their proper place! I don't think we realized how ready we were to settle until we were actually able to!

The Lord really blessed us in giving us the place that He did! It's a beautiful 4 bedroom home with lots of space for Isaiah. We are the first occupants so everything feels new and clean. It is in a great location- 5 minutes from the grocery store (with traffic), less than 10 minutes to Drew's work, and close by to many other amenities and places we go often. Another bonus is that it is up and away from the main road a bit so we don't get much "African dirt" in through the windows (a problem that many houses here have).

We still have a long way to go as far as "setting up" goes. We only have the bare bones in the furniture department and haven't even begun to think about decorating yet! =) But, little by little we know we'll be able to buy the things we need and begin to make this place feel like "home." For now, we're just thankful to have some place to call our own!

Here are some photos so you can get a visual picture of where we are living.

Our bedroom.

Different angle of our bedroom.

Our bed (We had our bed frame made so that we could get an "American" size queen bed instead of a "Ugandan" size! Hoping to get it next week).

Master bathroom off of our room.

Guest bathroom

Guest bathroom.

Bedroom for our new baby!

New baby's bedroom.

Isaiah's room. We're waiting for his bunk bed/trundle bed to be finished being made and then all these mattresses will be up off the floor (and ready for guests to come sleep in)!)