Step 1: Planning - The developing of 'ART-CARE'

As Chris, Rachael and I began planning for our trip months ago, we had been in touch with Constance, our contact from New Hope Uganda whose home we had stayed in last trip and who was doing the planning and coordinating on their end for our time there. She sent us emails and even a phone call to try and explain what our time there might look like. "We're going to be doing something very new and very different from the last time you were here," she would tell us. "We want you to facilitate art projects that will help us get to know the children better".

Truth is, none of us really had any idea how this would all come together, what exactly it would look like, and how it would work. We learned from our last trip to come in with ideas, but be ready to change directions; be flexible; to have an open mind and to trust that God will work through us no matter what projects we end up doing. The first lesson I learned on this trip, is that I am so inadequate, but God's plan is so far above and beyond what I can even imagine.

So, after Constance picked us up at the airport and we got a good nights sleep, we met the Peterson family in Kampala and traveled with them to Jinja. We spent two nights in Jinja to recover from jetlag and do the planning for our time in Kobwin. As Constance and Tim explained to us their vision for what we'd be doing at Kobwin and how art would be used, we realized we needed to rethink our project ideas and adjust our mindset of how we'd be teaching art. This trip, we weren't just going to be teaching art for arts sake. Learning art was not the objective. Opening up stories from the heart as a place to receive 'care' was the objective; art was the tool we used to get there.

Their vision was to train staff to care more deeply for each other and for the children. And to train them to train others. To foster relationships with openness and trust, to present challenges and problems, reach to the roots and open understanding, and to bring the light of Christ to the deep, dark, wounded places of the heart, through his love. 

Jinja