adembe, sing it louder

It was the Sunday before we left, our last Sunday at Watoto Church, when the aha moment hit. That Sunday, Watoto was hosting a performance of the Restore Tour: Child Soldier No More event. Click here to see the trailer of what we were able to see live. The Restore Tour, associated with Watoto Church, travels around the world and is a combination of skits, dances, testimonies, and songs performed by approximately 25 men, women, and children who had once been child soldiers or sex slaves (child mothers) in the war in northern Uganda against the LRA (Lord's Resistance Army). This performance vividly described the peace before the war, conflict, capture, escape, and forgiveness and healing after the war.

Let me first briefly explain the war in northern Uganda if you have never read about it or heard of it. Starting in 1987, the LRA rebel group led by Joseph Kony, who claimed himself to be a "spokesperson" of God, launched their campaign in northern Uganda to overthrow the government and turn it into a theocratic state. The LRA and the government each tried to get the community to join with them, thus creating an internal conflict. In 1994, the LRA introduced a terrible war tactic that had never been used in the history of warfare: child soldiers. The LRA began to abduct boys to turn them into killers and girls to turn them into sex slaves. This warfare continued on until 2008 when peace talks began to be initiated. Although peace was never technically agreed on, violence has decreased with the occasional outburst in the north or in southern Sudan.

Never before had I seen anything like it. I had read up on the LRA and heard about the war, but never had my eyes been opened to what it truly was. Mass killings, children abducted and turned into killers, girls turned into child mothers, children orphaned after watching their parents and relatives get shot, raped, and/or mutilated, going for days without food and water and then being told by their captors that their food was dead corpses, not being allowed to cry for fear of being killed, endure severe beatings, and escaping their captors but being shunned by their villages for what they had been forced to do. They had to bear physical and emotional pain and the struggle to forgive themselves and their captors. Here is a link to a testimony of one of the men, David.

A bit of background on our preparations for Uganda: we had spent the entire year meditating on the lyrics "And if our God is for us, then who can ever stop us?" from Chris Tomlin's song "Our God," which is also found in Romans 8. We spent the entire year praying and meditating over this truth and even put those lyrics on the tshirts that we sold for the trip. Well, during the Restore Tour performance while they were transitioning from captivity to escape and freedom, one of the songs that they sang was "Our God!" This song and biblical truth that we had been meditating on all year is the central message to the healing and restoration of Uganda. Now when someone wears one of our Uganda shirts, they are wearing the words of healing and restoration of Uganda! To hear 25 previous child soldiers and child mothers sing "our God is greater, our God is stronger, God You are higher than any other" and to hear them proclaim freedom with joy on their faces...it does something strange to the heart. To hear them proclaim freedom (adembe in Lugandan) and to hear their testimonies about what they've been through and how they have forgiven not only themselves but their captors and Joseph Kony completely changed my perspective on many things. We were all in utter shock about it all. If they can sing and proclaim freedom and forgiveness and sing it louder and louder, then why can't I?