Joanne Norton’s “The Soroti Project”

In 1987, a man named Joseph Kony emerged in northern Uganda as the head of a rebel group called the Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA. While fighting and rebel armies in Africa are nothing new, Kony brought a new level of barbarity to warfare – killing adults and capturing children for both soldiers and sexual slaves.

The LRA’s activities went on until 2006, when a truce was worked out with the Ugandan government and the LRA seemingly disappeared toward the Congo or (some say) Sudan. In between, an estimated 100,000 people were killed, 20,000 children abducted and 1.5 million citizens forced to flee, many ending up in what were called “IDP camps,” or the refugee sites of “Internally Displaced Persons.”

The statistics contain sufficient horror. The individual stories describe the horror in human terms that bring the statistics home. But while there was the horror, there was also hope. And that is the story told by Joanne Norton in The Soroti Project: A Heart-Filled and Heartless Story in Uganda.

Norton had worked as a missionary in Uganda previously, and she eventually found herself called back to a place to which she thought she’d never return. She found the horror and the tragedy, and she found the hope.

Just as she did in her book The Annie Project, Norton writes her story as fiction, combining both her own real experiences (and some actual photos) with a fictional technique. But the stories are real.

The story focuses on one IDP camp, located northeast of the capital of Kampala near the town of Soroti. Norton and fellow missionaries live there for a time, working with the people, local churches, and friends. She leaves little to the imagination about the living conditions the missionaries experienced – ongoing worries about the food and water; mosquitoes and malaria; threats to personal safety; and the conditions of latrines.

An IDP camp

But these pale in comparison to the stories she tells.

Children who were enslaved but managed to escape. A man who the LRA thought it killed three times, until the soldiers threatened to kill their captain if he tried again. The teenage boy Boniface, who died in the arms of his sister. The pastors who risked their lives to serve the refugees and victims. The good humor and laughter of the people in spite of what they’ve endured. And the growth and spread of Christian faith.

The Soroti Project is a deeply moving account, not only for making the experience of millions of people real but also for the hope that’s always there.

Related: My review of The Annie Project.

Image of Soroti Rock (top) via Wikipedia, used with permission under Creative Commons license. Map of Uganda via InfoPlease. Public domain photograph of an IDP camp via USAID.

Joanne Norton’s “The Annie Project”

Many novels contain events, scenes and people taken from the author’s life. “Write what you know” is a familiar dictum from editors and critics, and most writers, even those who write fantasy and science fiction, take that advice to heart.

But it’s not often that one reads an introduction to a novel an admission that the author is two of the main characters of the story. Right at the beginning of The Annie Project, Joanne Norton makes that statement: “I am two of the main characters. My official name is Carolyn Joanne, although I’ve been only called Joanne since birth. So, in the book, I am ‘Cary’ and ‘Annie.’”

What that statement does, of course, is tell the reader that while this is a novel, it is also something of a memoir, something of an autobiography, and, in Norton’s hands, something of a testimony.

But most of all, The Annie Project is a story, a big story, the story of how an elderly woman’s concern about a young girl next door leads to the redemption of a family.

Cary Nolan is a recent widow, a former missionary, a mother and a grandmother. After her husband’s death, she moves to a small town called Newton to be closer to her children. And next door is a mother who drinks herself in an alcoholic stupor, a teenaged boy constantly in trouble with the law, and a 12-year-old girl named Annie who’s angry at the world. They’ve been abandoned by the father.

Norton on a mission trip in Uganda

Cary looks at Annie, and Cary sees a lot of herself. Perhaps too much of herself.

So Cary decides to do something. She has enough wisdom to know that reaching out to Annie won’t be an all-or-nothing proposition, but more of a little bit here and a little bit there. And it won’t be all victories.

Things happen in The Annie Project. Lots of things. Annie’s mother disappears. The father returns. Annie’s brother gets into more trouble. Cary goes on a short-term mission trip to Uganda (and, I suspect, an event in the novel that is clearly autobiographical).

Norton writes with passion. She is passionate about Annie’s story, because she is passionate about her own story. She knows the meaning of grace, both receiving and giving it. She’s passionate about sharing the grace she’s been given.

And she knows that while this may be Annie’s/Cary’s/Joanne’s story, it is also our story. 

An Old Woman, Dying of AIDS

You find an old woman who’s dying of AIDS. She has tuberculosis, her body no longer able to fend off disease. Her husband and four children are dead of AIDS. She’s too weak to stand up, and lies in a filthy hut near a trash dump.

What do you do? You already have 14 adopted children to cake for and a burgeoning ministry to lead and maintain.

What do you do?

Here’s how Katie Davis answered that question: She took care of the dying woman. She loved her. She got medical help to ease her final months, and she filled the woman’s last days with love and joy. She was there when the woman died.

I don’t know what I would do. It’s easy – too easy – to say I would do the same thing. The temptation to do nothing would be great, with every justification coming to mind as I walked away.

Katie Davis didn’t walk away, even as she was plagued with doubts. And because of what she did, people who watched and understood became Christians. If that’s what your God does, then I want your God, too.

This is the kind of loving action that set the early church apart from its pagan environment – the Christians cared for widows and orphans. No one did in Roman society. Widows could become beggars or starve; orphan children could be enslaved and abused. No objections would be raised because it was standard operating procedure in the Roman world.

The Christians, however, were different. They took care of widows and orphans. And people noticed. People responded because we are made to respond to human needs. In taking care of widows and orphans, the Christians lived a Sunday sermon seven days a week. And it was one reason why, through more than 250 years of on-again, off-again, regional, local and national persecutions, some awful and severe, the church continued to grow.

Because it took care of those widows and orphans.

Because Katie Davis took care of an old woman dying of AIDs. An old woman named Grace.

Led by Jason Stayszsen and Sarah Salter, we’ve been discussing Kisses from Katie: A Story of Relentless Love and Redemption by Katie Davis and Beth Clark. To see more posts on this chapter, “A Jja Ja for Us,” please visit Sarah at Living Between the Lines. 

There's always a cost

This is the chapter in Kisses from Katie: A Story of Relentless Love and Redemption that I’ve been expecting. This is the chapter about the cost, the cost of doing the work Katie Davis has been doing in Africa.

There’s always a cost.

She’s alluded to it, and dropped some hints now and then. She’s talked openly about the discouragement and challenges she faces every day. Those aren’t the cost, however. No one expects missions work in any country to be easy, and especially in a developing country like Uganda.

The cost is personal.

She begins the chapter with a story about three-year-old Grace, who develops a phobia for taking baths. Once she’s in the tub, she remembers how much fun it is, enjoys herself, and doesn’t want to get out.

Katie likens Grace’s phobia to obedience, to the things we don’t want to do even though they’re good for us, but once we do them, we might even come to understand and enjoy them.

For Katie, though, obedience is not about taking a bath. It’s about giving up the young man she loves.

He supported her, helped her, visited her in Uganda – but he didn’t share the same vision she had. That difference eventually becomes a gap that can’t be bridged.

She knows that the personal pain is trivial and momentary in the grand scheme of things, and she takes some comfort in that. I suspect the personal pain is worse than she lets on. And I suspect the pain isn’t just personal, because more than only Katie is involved here.

Does that mean you don’t continue simply to avoid the pain? No. But it does mean that there is usually a personal cost. “Responding to God’s call” doesn’t mean you will have a life without pain, turmoil, struggle and conflict. In fact, one might argue – I would argue – that responding to God’s call virtually guarantees a life of pain, turmoil, struggle and conflict.

This is where I have no patience with the prosperity gospel crowd – that if just believe hard enough, good material things will happen to you. It was my major issue with the popular The Prayer of Jabez a few years back – that it swung far too closely to articulating a “more acceptable” version of the prosperity gospel.

No, responding to God’s call, trying to live the gospel is hard, hard, work, whether it’s in Uganda or Nashville. It’s the life Katie is living, and it often means pain and loss.

Still, even knowing that, I think my heart broke a bit.

Hosted by Jason Stasyszen and Sarah Salter, we’ve been reading Kisses from Katie. To see more posts on this chapter, “Counting the Cost,” please visit Jason at Connecting to Impact.

Would I? Do I?

On the journey of faith, the questions don’t get easier.

On Monday I wrote about a young man who died from complications after surgery. He was 31. On Tuesday, I heard about a St. Louis reporter who died from pancreatic cancer; I had known him and worked with him since 1984. He was 63.

We are blessed to live in a society with some of the best medical care in the world. Death is something we tend to associate with old age, although we’ve all known young people and children who have died. But still, life expectancies in the United States have been increasing for more than a century, and it is largely due to advances in health care treatment and prevention.

Then there’s a country like Uganda. Life expectancies are not long. Disease is common. Preventable disease is common. The death of a child is not an uncommon thing.

It’s a place where we might all question God about what exactly is going on here.

A mother brings her four-pound, four-month old daughter to Katie Davis for help. Four pounds. They rush to the hospital, and it turns out the little girl has a hole in her heart. Her mother can’t afford the corrective surgery.

The little girl is named Happy. Happy dies. Katie mourns.

Friends and supporters of Katie in the United States decide to adopt Josephine, a little girl that Katie is caring for. Katie’s ecstatic. Everything is going well until it’s discovered that Josephine is HIV-positive. Plans are turned upside down. The adoption may not proceed.

The friends end up adopting Josephine anyway.

I ask myself, would I have that kind of courage? Would I have that kind of faith?

In the midst of all this, 20-something Katie says something that strikes me as very wise. And wise beyond her years. “We aren’t really called to save the world, not even to save one person; Jesus does that. We are just called to love with abandon. We are called to enter into our neighbors’ sufferings and love them right there.”

I ask myself again, do I have that kind of courage? Do I have that kind of faith?

Led by Jason Stasyszen and Sarah Salter, we’ve been reading Kisses from Katie: A Story of Relentless Love and Redemption by Katie Davis and Beth Clark. To see more posts on this chapter, “He Sets the Solitary in Families,” please visit Sarah at Living Between the Lines.

When the Need is Overwhelming

This chapter of Kisses from Katie: A Story of Relentless Love and Redemption, entitled “Just one More, evoked a sense of quiet and reflection, deep thought, and several large intakes of breath.

You help one child, and a dozen more need your help even more.

You care for a child, and then have to send him back into the bad home environment he came from.

You change a baby’s diaper, and find worms, and you know hundreds more have the same problem.

You come face-to-face with your own limitations. You cannot meet the need that exists. If you try with too many, you will fail with all. You know intellectually that God could provide if He so chose.

But He doesn’t. Or the help doesn’t materialize.

And the little boy goes back to the home where he’s unloved.

The baby’s health is restored, and you keep her.

In Uganda, Katie Davis is living in the extremes. She experiences extreme joy when a child is helped. And extreme desolation and anguish when all the other children aren’t.

She does two things. She prays. And she clings to God even more.

If her faith was shallow, if the seed fell among the rocky wayside, she would burn out and leave. But that’s not what happens. The seed has fallen on good soil.

It’s the eternal question – why does God allow such suffering? And why does God allow such suffering to fall so hard on children, always so hard on children?

Katie keeps the little baby, whom she names Patricia, and then proceeds to describe her personalities and unique attributes, which Katie does with every child she adopts into her family.

As a single woman, she can only adopt girls under Ugandan law, and little Michael, who weighs less at six years old than my grandson weighs at two, must return to the family where he was so terribly neglected. But a prayer is answered for Michael.

Katie realizes that God is no stranger to this awfulness that happens to children.

The suffering, and the awfulness, fell hardest on His own child.

We’ve been discussing Kisses from Katie, led by Jason Stasyszen and Sarah Salter. To see more posts on this chapter, please visit Jason at Connecting to Impact.

A little goes a long, long way

I read most of this chapter of Kisses from Katie: A Story of Relentless Love and Redemption with tears in my eyes.

Entitled “Three Thousand Friends,” Katie Davis describes what happens when she visits Masese, the sprawling slum outside of her Ugandan town of Jinja. The slum is adjacent to Jinja’s landfill. Most of the people who live there are the Karimojong, a people whose homeland is in northern Uganda near the border with Sudan. A people who were forced to flee their homeland because of war and famine. A people who live in poverty and squalor, who are feared and marginalized, who survive but scavenging the landfill, brewing alcohol and prostitution.

Katie finds a way in. And she writes: “the harsh accents and tribal jewelry of these new people intrigued me, but what grabbed my attention most was the sheer poverty of this place. I had experienced squalor before, but this was unlike anything I had ever seen. Some appeared to be starving to death, literally. Children were covered with deep infected wounds, fungus and other sores, with their bellies round and distended because of worms and their skin pale and peeling because of severe malnutrition.”

We do not know poverty like this in the United States.

She returns with food, and is nearly mobbed by hungry people. She’s eventually able to set up food distribution five days a week through a nearby school. She organizes 20 women into a craft collective, making necklaces that are shipped to the United States for sale. The women make enough to feed their families and put some aside in savings.

In Masese, a little bit of money goes a long, long way. Things happen. Children get fed. Children can go to school. Money can be saved for the future. Women can do honorable work.

For a number of years, my family sponsored a little boy in southwestern Kenya through World Vision. The money we gave was almost insignificant – less than the cost of one meal eaten out – but it was sufficient to provide an education, school clothes, books, meals and other support. From time to time we gave a little extra, and his family bought cows, goats and clothes for the other children.

The project eventually was completed and our sponsorship ended. We’re now sponsoring two little girls through our church missions program, one in India and one in Kenya. For the cost of both my wife and eating out one time in a month, those little girls get clothes, food, an education and a roof over their heads. And they get love.

A little foes a long, long way. Ask Katie Davis.

Led by Jason Stasyszen and Sarah Salter, we’ve been discussing Kisses from Katie. To see more posts on this chapter, please visit Sarah’s site, Living Between the Lines.

When You're in a Hard Place

Katie Davis returns to the United States from her year of mission work in Uganda. She’s returned to attend college, as she promised her parents she would do. She is keeping her promise, and she is miserable, grumpy and feeling disconnected from what her life had become in Uganda.

She knows her 19 girls – her “family” she adopted in Uganda – will be okay.

She trusts God to provide needed funds -- $70,000 of needed funds – for the mission work. Over a period of months, it’s provided, “and then some.”

She finds a few people who really do understand the conflict she’s experiencing.

And she learns one of the hardest and most important lessons of her young life: God is in control, and He is as much involved in her college and family as He is in Uganda.

Katie knows that her heart is in Uganda; she also knows it is the place she’s supposed to be. But for a time, she is “back home,” honoring the commitment to her parents, even if it is making her feel grumpy and at loose ends.

But God is there, too, right at home.

This chapter in Kisses from Katie: A Story of Relentless Love and Redemption by Katie Davis and Beth Clark reminds me of a conversation I had a long time ago I had with a colleague at the place I was then working. We were both Christians; we were both in exactly the same boat – banished to a kind of wilderness where our skills, experience and talents were going largely unused.

“It’s hard,” I said. “Well, it’s more than hard. It’s often miserable. We sit here, doing things that are easy to do, watching others do things badly that we both know we could do far better. But for whatever reason, this is where we are; this is where God has us. David had to live in a cave, too, for a time.”

The words were easier to say than to live, but simply saying them helped. It was as if by saying them aloud, we both could accept what we were dealing with.

I suspect the same was going on with Katie.

Led by Jason Stasyszen and Sarah Salter, we’ve been discussing Kisses from Katie. To see more posts on this chapter, “A Promise to Keep,” please visit Jason at Connecting to Impact.

Keeping a Promise

My admiration for Katie Davis continues to deepen.

In Kisses from Katie: A Story of Relentless Love and Redemption, Katie has now reached the end of her year in Uganda. She had committed to her parents to go for one year as a missionary and then return to suburban Nashville to start college.

In that year, she has started a non-profit organization to provide schooling for children, rented a large house, planted herself firmly in Ugandan soil, and adopted 19 girls, providing a home, food and love for each of them.

Yet commitment to her parents hangs over her. She thinks that perhaps she can go to college for a semester, return to Uganda , and do the rest of her college degree by correspondence or online. But she knows she has to return to Tennessee.

And she does.

I can think of a dozen justifications she could try or arguments she could make to stay in Uganda, as well as 19 real reasons. But she has made a commitment, and she returns to keep it.

It’s almost too easy to find reasons to break a promise. Virtually all parts of our culture are littered with the bones of broken promises.

Consider politics. We’re heard “read my lips – no new taxes.” We’ve heard a president justify killing an American citizen without due process or judicial review – the same president who was so appalled (as a candidate) at jailing terrorists at Guantanamo without due process of law. I watch a presidential candidate try to convince us he’s an honorable man – while approving attack ads that bring politics to new lows (and that’s quite an accomplishment).

And then there’s Katie Davis, who is willing to walk away from what she’s created in a small Ugandan village to keep a promise to her parents – honoring both her parents and her God.

I think I know how this will turn out, but I’m still in awe.

We’ve been discussing Kisses from Katie, let by Jason Stasyzsen and Sarah Salter. To see more posts on this chapter, please visit Sarah’s site, Living Between the Lines.

Katie Becomes a Mommy, Times 5

Katie becomes a mommy. Five times over. And this is just the start.

Led by Jason Stasyszen and Sarah Salter, we’ve been reading Kisses from Katie: A Story of Relentless Love and Redemption by Katie Davis and Beth Clark. Katie is living in rural Uganda, serving as a missionary. One thing has led to another, like they always do, and Katie finds herself adopting three girls, and then two more.

This is part of the tragedy of too much of central and southern Africa. Wracked by civil war, disease, high mortality rates due to AIDS and other factors we would find alien anywhere in the United States, children too numerous to count have been forced to become adults. Too many children have to care for younger siblings. Too many have to care for sick parents.

With the first three Katie adopts, their parents are dead or gone and their grandmother can barely find enough food for herself. And so a 9-year-old cares for her younger sisters, and the 5-year-old has to work in the fields to find food.

For more than a decade, we sponsored a little boy in Kenya through World Vision, until the development goals were achieved and the community moved to self-sufficiency.

We didn’t just send a monthly check; we followed Andera John’s life. He lived with an intact family in western Kenya. Our sponsorship meant he could go to school, and we received regular report cards. Sometimes we sent extra gifts, and over time his family bought two milk cows (one for the family and one to provide income by selling the milk to others), a goat, clothes, school uniforms and other things they needed. We have a picture of Andera John and his brother holding the leads for the two cows while his older sister stands in the background with a new sweater – one that was hers and not a hand-me-down. Our cost was small indeed, but it helped propel the family’s fortunes.

Right now through our church, we’re in the process of sponsoring another boy in Kenya and a girl in India. Lots of churches have programs like this, sometimes worked through the missions ministry, and organizations like World Vision and Compassion International have more children for sponsorships than sponsoring families can be found.

It’s not the same as officially adopting and raising five little girls, but a very small contribution can have a huge impact.

Related:

Compassion International’s web site

World Vision’s web site


To see more posts on this chapter of Kisses from Katie, please visit Jason Stasyszen's site, Connecting to Impact. 

Becoming a Catalyst

Katie Davis comes to realize, or is led to realize, that a need exists for an organized ministry in the Ugandan village she’s working in, and she begins to figure it out.

Led by Jason Stasyszen at Connecting to Impact and Sarah Salter at Living Between the Lines, we’ve been reading and discussing Kisses from Katie: A Story of Relentless Love and Redemption by Katie Davis and Beth Clark. I’ve been chafing a bit during the reading – Katie has been expressing an attitude towards her home culture that I’ve had problems with.

The attitude changes in Chapter 4, “Saying Yes.”. If she’s to create the organized ministry needed to educate, feed and clothe the children she’s working among, the resources are available locally. So she turns to her parents, their families, their friends and other people in the United States. Far from being self-absorbed in their SUVs and shopping mall expeditions, they all step forward and give. The funds and organizational structure are created in the United States and then flow to Katie’s work in Uganda.

Miracles begin to happen. Children would have had no opportunity for schooling, a good meal, clothes or hope – suddenly find all three. The story Katie tells at the end of the chapter – how the mothers and grandmothers come to understand what is being done for the children – is marvelous to read.

Something in this chapter is changing for Katie as well. No longer is she comparing and contrasting cultures or the affluence of the U.S. versus the poverty of rural Uganda. Instead, she has become a bridge – a bridge between resources in the United States and a great and growing need in Uganda. She’s working, and fully understanding how God has created the resources in one place for use in another place.

Katie has become a catalyst.


To see more posts on this chapter of Kisses from Katie, please visit Sarah Salter at Living Between the Lines.