Who are we making visible?

As you may catch a glimpse of below, Chris and I began this journey of involvement with Invisible Children (http://www.invisiblechildren.com/) through our students. Year before last, we were both teaching 8th grade at rival middle schools and our students came together to passionately collaborate on an art show to raise money for Invisible Children. It was amazing to witness the fervor and compassion that our young students demonstrated toward youth their own ages who live in another part of the world.

This past school year, I had the honor of moving up with that class of students to Bradley Central High School. As soon as we started school I had many students coming up to me wanting to start an Invisible Children Schools 4 Schools club. So, we started the club- started raising money for the Schools 4 Schools competition- and by the end of a 100 day period, BCHS students won their region by raising $15,404. It was an amazing semester. Through our winning, Invisible Children gave BCHS the opportunity to send one student to Uganda and four students to San Diego this summer to attend an awesome activist conference called the 4th Estate.

Through these experiences we became inspired to apply for Invisible Children's Teacher Exchange Program. We witnessed our students demonstrating great passion to provide a voice for the voiceless in the world. For over 25 years a war has been waged in Central East Africa by a rebel army called the LRA, led by warlord Joseph Kony. During this time over 30,000 kids ages 5-14 have been abducted and forced to fight and kill. Just as our students could not hear this story without being compelled to act, we could not hear this story without being challenged to reach out as well.

Through every travel experience we have had, we are always changed in a great way. Many people have been asking us as we were getting prepared to leave for Uganda, "Is this a mission trip?". Well, that question is a very tricky one. You see, Chris and I believe that our whole lives are called to be a mission for the love and servanthood of Jesus Christ. Therefore, every aspect of our lives is a mission... our classrooms at home, our rafting trips, and our teaching in Uganda this summer. We hope that you will not interpret our blog title as a righteous endeavor to take some sort of special knowledge to a developing country and make their poverty and plight visible to you. Rather, we are travelling to Uganda as educators and as learners, most of all we hope to embody what Christ compels us to be- the servant of all. We hope that we will not only make the beautiful stories of Ugandans known to you, but that they will bring out beautiful things in us as well... that our eyes may be opened to a greater understanding of humanity and of God.

There tends to be a great poverty in Western civilization... a poverty of the spirit in which we believe that there are no needs we can't meet on our own- the goal is to be an island unto ourselves. Few of us believe that we need those on the margins of society as much as they need us. However, God desires to rescue each of us from our own brand of poverty. We need the economically and physically vulnerable to teach us that we are also vulnerable. We need "the least of these"- the Lazuruses of the world- to help us see ourselves, and God's kingdom, differently. It is good to remember that despite our economic security and relative power to affect change in the world, we are as poor in spirit as anyone. We are not anyone's savior; just two more vulnerable human beings. To remember this truth is to be rescued from our own self-sufficiency and from an inflated sense of our own self importance. We know that the experiences that we are about to have teaching and living in Uganda may be painful and beautiful all at once, which is often what it feels like to be ushered a step further into the kingdom of God. (Note : most of the ideas in this paragraph were taken from my recent reading... "Economy of Love" by Shane Claiborne).