Our Storia

One way we have been especially overwhelmed during our build up to Uganda is through God's use of our friends. Like the Davis family's t-shirt fundraiser project, here is another example…

Some amazing friends of our have started a new company

{Mia Storia}

Their mission is to help families preserve their stories for future generations as well as to use their gifts to support charitable organizations, including our favorite .org, African Children's Mission. Our family was honored (and a little terrified) to be one of their first projects.

I think we can all agree that movie stars everywhere can breathe a collective sigh of relief that Wes & I will not be stealing their jobs any time soon!

Our kids & dog however…wow, the camera loves them! :)

Click here to watch The Wilbanks Storia!

Red Dirt

Photo Credit Heidi Angel

It's amazing what little things can impact you when you've been to another country or another culture in what seems like {another life}.

{FEET} can be pretty gross. As much as I love

getting pedicures, I don't think I could handle that job…touching strangers' dirty, icky feet hour after hour, all day long. My sisters all have crazy foot aversion syndrome (I just made that particular syndrome up but it adequately describes how they feel about feet!) and can't stand to look at, touch or talk about feet. As a matter of fact, if any of them are reading this they are probably already cringing and hoping I change the subject real soon!

Sorry Ks, but hang with me…

The Bible talks a lot about feet…there are verses "How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!" Roman 10:15B, stories of Mary washing Jesus' feet in the book of John chapter 12, Jesus washing his disciples' feet and tons of other references, Jesus telling the disciples to "shake off the dust from your feet" when they aren't received in a village (Luke 9:5, Matthew 10:14, Mark 6:11, Luke 10:11), Ruth laying at Boaz's feet wishing for him to redeem her (Ruth 3:14), I could list tons…{feet}, and their parts, are mentioned more than 300 times in the bible.

What is it with feet?

In the verses above it isn't difficult to see how the feet symbolize people, our souls and our true selves as God sees us.

{But feet are dirty, dusty, sometimes ugly looking things…

yet God calls them beautiful, clean, swift, well lit, secure, He sets them upon a rock.}

But feet are also one of our most unprotected & at risk body parts. The U.S. military places a great deal of importance on taking care of your feet. The Marine's Officer Candidate School even has foot care spelled out in their daily schedules.

In Ephesians, Paul tells Christians to put on the "armor of God" and that our feet should be clothed in the gospel Ephesians 16:5. Prepared in this way, we are charged to use our feet to take the gospel "to all creation". Mark 16:15

{Without shoes we open our bodies to all kinds of infection, disease, foreign bodies & injuries that could lead to illness and even death.}

Photo Credit (and Mzungu foot!) Heidi Angel

Before we left for Uganda in January I spent a lot of time researching & finding the perfect shoes for this trip. I knew I didn't want to be clomping around in heavy tennis shoes & socks in the African heat, but I also knew it was important to wear closed toe shoes to protect my feet from injury so flip flops were out. I finally found the perfect shoes, a pair of Mary Jane style slingback Keen's that were even 50% off (being that it was Christmas time & all) & I quickly bought them, excited about my

perfect Uganda shoes!

There's a quote in a well known movie about the color of the dirt coming from all of the blood that has been spilled in Africa.

I believe it.

In Uganda the dirt is {red}, like RED red.

As I walked and biked and rode and walked and walked miles and miles and miles in my new shoes over the next two weeks, they quickly changed from a goldenrod yellow color to a pinkish red. At the end of every day I actually thought I had tan lines from my shoes until I would shower and realize that my tan lines washed away.

My feet were just colored by the red dirt!

When I got home I developed a love/hate relationship with those shoes.

They still had that red Ugandan dirt clinging to them and every time I'd wear them I would sadly watch a little more of the dirt fall away…but every time I wore them a little of the dirt would be on me and would remind me that I still carried Uganda with me.

I guess it's like those people that take little glass bottles to the beach to scoop up some sand…or buy the bottles in the little knick knacky shops found in every touristy beach locale…or give the perfect gift of a little glass vase of Alabama dirt to a sweet sister moving to Florida.

Even my friend at Ekubo Ministries in Uganda wrote about the red dirt coming off of her shoes when she first came back from Uganda & how heartbreaking it was for her.

{We love the idea of taking a little piece of a special place back with us.}

When you are in a place with such heartbreak, poverty & lostness as we see in Uganda, it is difficult to come home and reconcile

what you have seen & what you have experienced & who you are there

to what you see, experience and are home in the states.

As I watched my shoes get cleaner and cleaner, I felt myself slipping further and further back into my old life…my life B.U. {Before Uganda}.

The problem is that I don't want that old life. I don't want to forget the amazing friends I made there, or the amount of need that I know exists. I don't want to lose the memory of the hopelessness that is evident on the faces of those that are lost, or the joy in the eyes of those that are not.

I want to live over and over again, every single day, the lessons that God taught me in those two weeks, even if it makes my heart hurt to do so.

Unlike the Jewish tradition of shaking the tainted Gentile dust out of their cloaks, or even the beautiful picture of Jesus washing the road dust off of the disciples' feet, I want to gather all of the red Ugandan dust I can and hold onto its real, tangible, physical presence.

But it's so easy to slip back into comfort-land…so easy to forget that there are mothers ignoring their expanding bellies because the infant mortality rate is so high, and they don't want to get too attached in case they should lose their little babies…to forget there are women, men and children fighting for their lives due to a disease whose cure costs a measly $7….to forget there are seven little bits of my heart waiting to cry out "hallo Malicia!" as I come to hug them & play with them & learn Luganda from them…to forget

there are people in this world who have never heard

of the saving love of Jesus Christ,

that they have been set free from sin through

His death and resurrection and that

THE God of the universe is working

now and in the future for their good and His glory.

A little red dirt helps me to remember the gospel.

{Without the gospel our souls are left vulnerable to infection, sin and death.}

Photo Credit Heidi Angel

"But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ - by grace you have been saved" Ephesians 2:4-5

Fundraising Update!

Fundraising
progress thermometers
to track the success of your fundraising ideas

It is amazing! We have a little more than 10 months until our trip and our amazing friends and family have already helped us raise more than 10% of our goal! Our family has been overwhelmed to see how God has orchestrated people and events in our life to support our goal in glorifying His name! Thank you for being part of our team!

About a month ago, an amazing family came to us wanting to be involved with our mission and offered to help with the idea of fundraising through t-shirts specific to our family and our goals. Within days they found an awesome graphic designer willing to donate his services & knew of a t-shirt wholesaler willing to make a deal on selling us the shirts. Not only did this family step in to make this all happen, they covered the cost of the shirts as their donation to us!! How amazing!! Because of them, 100% of all sales of our family's shirts will go straight to support our mission to Uganda! God is so good!!

Not only was this a team effort in getting the shirts printed, our whole family was involved in the design and planning of these shirts, down to every last detail. Ash came up with the idea of the words inside the continent of Africa, Kat stayed up all night one night looking for the perfect verse (Mark 16:15), Wy chose the heather blue color of the shirts, Alicia worked on the details & Wes added his favorite quote to the back: "If you have come to help me you are wasting your time, but you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us struggle together". We love them and are excited to see people wearing them at church and around our community!

If you are interested in supporting us through the purchase of one of our shirts, you can click on the paypal link on the right or email me at akwilbanks@charter.net! Please make sure you specify quantity & size. They are $20 each and come in Adult S, L, XL & XXL as well as youth XS, S & M (Youth large is the same as adult small. Adult M are sold out).

And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.

(Mark 16:15 ESV)

Come visit our garage sale this Saturday!!
More info HERE

Stories from our trip - Episode 1: The One Where Everyone Cried

I thought I would periodically share some stories from our trip here. I really have no plans or intentions with these except to share whatever stories come to mind so you can share in our experience with us! So here is the first of, hopefully, many…

Mary Daniel's cousin Cheri was part of our team in January. I believe she is from North Carolina but she flew into Atlanta to meet up with Wayne and Mary and came over to Uganda with them and another team member, Beccah.

Cheri is such a sweet woman but was always very quiet and a little reserved. She isn't the type of person to walk up to someone and start a conversation but is very friendly to everyone she meets. Cheri began sponsoring a little girl through ACM some time ago, but because of some mix-up, had not gotten any information about her for a while. After asking around, Mary was told that Cheri's sponsored daughter had moved to a different school and they were having trouble finding her. Cheri was resigned to knowing that her money was going to help her girl get to school, have uniforms, pay for her supplies and books, pay any medical expenses she might have and ensure she has a good meal each day and gave up hope of getting to see her girl. {all with $300, for a YEAR! Crazy, right?!?}

{when someone comes to the ranch that is sponsoring a child through ACM, a great deal of effort is made to try to allow the sponsor to meet their sponsored child in person}

While many people really enjoy going on home visits while in Uganda, Cheri just wasn't feeling comfortable going on them. I'm not sure what specifically made her uncomfortable but it was my understanding that she felt like she had trouble starting conversations with the families we would visit and was worried that she was imposing on them. {the opposite is actually true, the people in Uganda view receiving visitors as an honor and hospitality is a very important aspect of their culture, they also, like most people, love just having someone to talk to and share their day with! Bonus for me, who, now this might be a shock…loves to talk! :) } So for a couple days Cheri decided not to go on the home visits, and instead found other activities to be involved in. After spending some time talking to Mary and better understanding what these home visits mean to the Ugandans, Cheri finally decided to give home visits another try.

This particular day we were going to a village that was farther away from the ranch than any we had visited to this point. It was probably about 10-15 miles away, all uphill on very bad roads. The more remote a village is, the worse the roads are…even the good roads have potholes as big as a car! So you can imagine this road was really rough!! We, thankfully, made this trip in the ACM truck, but the children's ministry staff at ACM that are assigned to this village, Johnstone and Heziron, usually make this trip on bicycles! I'm sure it must take them hours to get to the first home but as we arrived we quickly learned that Johnstone and Heziron know every single ACM child in the village by name, they know their stories and what school they are attending. {I never did really figure out the school districting stuff. I think that there isn't much governmental or organizational control over who goes to which school. It seems that if you can pay your school fees, can get to the school and there is room for you, you can go to any school. We heard many stories of families trying to send their children to better schools only to get there and find out there wasn't room for them.}

One thing about this trip that really made an impact on both Cheri and I was how obvious it was that the ACM children's ministry staff really cared about each and every one of these children. Maybe it was because we are so used to the men in our culture being more emotionally reserved or the fact that we are used to hearing so much about absentee fathers, but the loving way Johnstone and Heziron spoke to the kids, helped them clean their faces and hands, soothed those that cried {the younger children especially sometimes get scared when they see these strange looking white people!} and just listened to them was beautiful and incredibly moving. I cannot say enough about these amazing men!

After visiting several families, we were driving to the next home when Heziron suddenly yelled to stop the truck near the village's common area. He was excitedly yelling in Luganda and Cheri and I had no idea what he was saying or what was going on. Johnstone started translating for us…"She's there! Right there! Your daughter is right there!" Everyone started to pile out of the truck as it dawned on us what they were talking about…Cheri's sponsored daughter had been found!!!

Randomly driving down the road, in a village she wasn't supposed to be in, Heziron spotted her precious face in a crowd of people and immediately called to her. It took only a few seconds of translating to explain to the little girl and her father who Cheri was…I'm pretty sure Cheri and I were already crying but if not, her father's reaction did us all in! He immediately went from confused and hesitant to overwhelmed and overjoyed as he thanked Cheri for sponsoring his little girl, raised his hands to God to thank him for sending Cheri, thanked Heziron for introducing them and even thanked me for…being there I guess? :) Cheri introduced herself to her sweet girl and she said something back in Luganda. Heziron translated that she was asking if she could give Cheri a hug. {The Ugandan people are extremely kind and loving but VERY reserved, the fact that this precious girl spoke up at all amongst adults was surprising, the fact that she asked to physically show her love and gratitude with a hug was shocking!}

At this point none of us could keep from crying. {I can't even write this without crying! ;)}

So there we are randomly standing in the middle of the road all crying and praising God for arranging this meeting! I'm sure from the looks of the locals that were watching us, they all thought we were all crazy!

Then her father started telling us a little bit about her story…

He told us how the girl, probably around 9 or 10 years old, had lost her mother and how hard it was for him to take care of her by himself

{I'm assuming she had brothers and sisters as well, it is very unusual in Uganda to only have one child. Actually the average, AVERAGE, number of children a Ugandan woman has in her lifetime is 7. AVERAGE…SEVEN!} .

He introduced us to the woman in this village that had agreed to take the girl into her home so that this sweet girl could get to the school that I'm presuming is better than the school she was attending before…or maybe her old school didn't have room for her, I'm not clear on the details but was clear was that this was extremely hard for her father to do. The pain in his face over the uncertainty of their future was evident. He spoke of how he had worked hard to get her to this village to live with this woman {probably a relative of the girl's mother} and how he was trying so hard to get together money to pay for her school, her uniforms and her books when he found out she had been sponsored. I really wish I was a better writer and could better articulate what this meant to him and his daughter. I don't think I will ever in my life forget the looks of joy on their faces, not only of getting the news that she would indeed be able to continue her education, they were definitely excited about that, but the sheer overwhelming joy they had in being able to thank the person that made it possible, face to face. It was a moment I will never forget!

As soon as we jumped out of the truck and understood what was happening, I started taking pictures. The picture I've attached is when Cheri and her sponsored daughter first met. {After snapping a few pics with my camera I grabbed Cheri's and took a ton more!}

I hope you enjoyed getting to know a learn a little about what we experienced on our trip. I will try to do more in the coming weeks and months and hopefully I won't cry through all of them! haha! :)

Much love,

Alicia

Back in the Ham!

Hello everyone,

I pray you are all doing well! I'm happy to say that Alicia and I arrived safely in Birmingham Sunday evening Jan.29.

I want to start this update by thanking you all for your love, prayers, and support. Without it our trip would not have been possible. Alicia and I feel truly blessed to have such an awesome support group willing to come beside of us and to go on mission with us. It has been our honor to represent you in the mission field.

Our trip went GREAT!! God continues to confirm his call on our family to serve with ACM on the ground in Uganda. Because of this, we will faithfully move forward with the next step in this process: committing to a 3 month stay with the whole family. We hope to be back in the field the summer of 2013.

In the coming updates I will be sharing stories from our trip and the impact they had and are having on Alicia and I (we are still processing it all ourselves). I will say this though, in the days leading up to our departure from the ranch Alicia and I both kept saying to each other how we wished we had more time and how we wished we could stay longer.

On this trip God answered a major prayer request by opening our eyes to many possible areas of service. One area we are exploring is teaching some form of introduction to basic electricity & maintenance classes. I will write more about this idea in coming updates.

Also in the coming updates I hope to use this community of believers as a sounding board for ideas. I will be asking for your feedback on the best ways to go about accomplishing the goals that we and the directors of ACM set for our trip and also asking to be held accountable for meeting those goals.

Prayer Request

1. For the protection of all those serving on the ranch

2. For continued confirmation

3. For mission partners

4. For family members' hearts to soften to the idea of our family working with ACM

5. For safe travel home for Heidi Angel (leaving the ranch this weekend) for Wayne and Mary (leaving in March) and for Patrick and Heather day (Also leaving in March)

Thank you once again,

Wes & Alicia Wilbanks

Getting Ready to Fly!

Hey guys,

I hope everyone had a great Christmas and a Happy New Year. I wanted to send out a quick update before Alicia and I leave (this Sat!!!).

Things around the Wilbanks house have been a little hectic, to say the least, these last few days. I thought getting a team ready for a trip to the ranch was stressful, but after planing out the schedules of our three kids to follow while we are gone, I now realize that planning a trip over seas for 14 adults is nothing! The funny thing is I'm not the one doing the planning, Alicia is...and this crazy schedule, that she has documented in "spread sheet form" for my parents & my in-laws who will have the kids while we are gone, is the same schedule that she manages every day flawlessly. I just want to say thanks to my awesome wife, Alicia you are a scheduling house managing mother/wife wizard and I'm in awe of you right now!!

I really don't have a whole lot to update you on. Alicia and I will be departing for Uganda this Saturday at 12:50 P.M. We are both super excited and I can't wait for Alicia to finally see the place that she has only heard about and seen through the pics that other teams have taken.

I read a mini book the other day written by K.P. Yohannan the book was titled "The Beauty Of Christ Through Brokenness". I'm attaching a copy of this book with this email, if you get a chance read it. I promise it is well worth the time.

We appreciate all the prayers you guys have made on our behalf. They have been felt....

Please pray for God to open our eyes to his will for our family.

Please pray that God would continue to humble us so that when we serve we do so with broken hearts hopelessly dependent upon God.

Please pray for the health and safety of our family while we are gone.

Please pray for safe travel for Alicia and I and all that will be joining us on this trip.

Please pray for the missionaries in the field That we will be aiding. Pray that our presence there will not be a burden to them but something God can use to uplift and renew their spirits.

I hope to have much more to write you all when we return on the 29th!

Thank you so much for your love and support!!

God Bless

Wes

The Beauty of Christ Through Brokenness