Our Love Story
by The Greatest Author

Love people for who they are, not for who you want them to be. – Carolyn Hax

Many of you have heard me lovingly talk about my friend, brother, and Ugandan father, Sunday. It was almost nine years ago that I landed in Uganda for the very first time. That night, it was Sunday who was waiting to take us home. That night, a friendship that would soon turn to family began budding. I travelled back and forth several more times to Uganda, where over the course of time, we watered the friendship and it began blossoming. My family in America began to hear me talk about my wonderful Ugandan family and they also grew to love Sunday and his family.

Eventually in early 2015, I was reading a book (Let’s All be Brave: Living Life with Everything You Have by Annie F. Downs) when I clearly heard the Lord telling me I was going to leave my home and start the life of an international missionary. I went on a visionary trip to Restoration Gateway in July 2015, felt called to return to Karuma, Uganda, and moved to there in January 2016. After serving there for two years, I felt led to move to Gulu, Uganda. When I talked of this, Sunday reminded me that his home was also my home and I was free to go and stay with his family in Gulu. I decided that since I didn’t know Gulu at all, I would take him up on his offer to at least find my way before I decided where to stay permanently. I decided to go for a visit to his home to meet the family and introduce myself before moving in. Sunday told me that his jajja (grandmother) and his brother, Erick, were prepared and expecting me. They were waiting with big smiles and open arms for my arrival.

The next week, I moved in, still thinking that I wouldn’t be there for more than a couple months. But those were my plans. Sometimes, our plans don’t happen because the Lord’s are greater and more perfect. As was the case in this situation. I fell in love with the whole family. I looked forward to going to work each day, but I more so looked forward to coming home for quality time and fellowship with the family in the evening. I asked Erick, “How can your family just accept someone like me so easily, when you know nothing about me or if I’m even a good person?” His response, “Sunday called us and told us that our sister was coming to stay. She’s a freestyler so treat her accordingly and be free with her too.” And have they ever. They accept me for who I am, help me learn things when necessary, allow me to help guide and counsel them, and protect me as one of their own.

Slowly, I began to realize that the Lord had placed me in this home as a mentor and mother figure to the people of the home. I had filled the middle-aged motherly gap. Ironically, Erick had already been placed into the position of fatherly figure of the home and we were asked to operate in our roles and keep the home well. (How can two single people operate in such positions platonically? Cue the fireworks? No, not quite yet. I’m still stubborn.) I quickly realized that I admired the man Erick was and truly cared about him so that there would easily be the possibility of me falling in love with him. Therefore, I prayed that the Holy Spirit would give us a cover of protection from those feelings for each other. (I didn’t even ask Erick how he felt about anything; I simply told him that we would relate as brother and sister so we could function properly in our roles of the family without mixing in emotions and that would be that.)

Months passed where we spent our time getting to know each other. Learning and teaching each other. Studying behaviors. Growing annoyed with our cultural and communication misunderstandings—okay, maybe this one was just me 🙂 Having deep, heartfelt conversations. Reading the Bible, attending church, discussing our creator, and praying with and for each other. We laughed, we cried. We complimented, we apologized. We grew, we changed.

I had always prayed for his future wife and family because I truly saw something different about this man. He is not defined by his culture or his family or his friends. He is and will continue to be a mover and shaker amongst his family and community. He is a light and a rock in his family and community. So I prayed that the Lord would lead him and his wife together in His perfect will. That they would be different. That they would be a leading example for positive change for the Lord. I recently asked him (kind of jokingly but mostly not) if he would like for me to train him to be a true gentleman for the benefit of his future wife and family. He happily agreed and thanked me. As a true teacher and trainer, I was excited to begin my work on this project. But quickly, I realized he was responding to training so well that I started to become jealous of his future wife. Nevertheless, I still prayed for them, but I also prayed that I would remain guarded and not stray the course from a pure heart for the Lord. (Little did I know, I was training him for myself—ha!)

Three weeks ago, Read for Life had a few days of staff development trainings. I was planning to co-teach a session on Christ-like leadership. I began reading a book a friend gave to me called Leading Character by Dan Allender. The book talked about in order to be an effective leader, one must HAVE a character and one must BE a character. One who has a good character is simply someone of integrity that tries to lead with a balance of strength and love. In my discussion with my co-teacher, we were mostly talking about what it means to BE a character. The book talks about how an effective leader allows their life story to be intimately known by the followers. This really struck home with me. In the Bible, we read stories of David, Paul, Ruth, etc. but they aren’t just made-up, feel-good stories. Each of the stories follow the character’s life in every aspect—the good, bad and ugly. But most importantly, the stories are told only with TRUTH. We must each also let our story be known, just as the Bible characters. Tell your REAL story. Truly be CONNECTED to that story. No hiding. No running. No abandoning.

In this conversation, we were discussing how easy it is to pretend to live someone else’s story, based on what we wish our life truths were. As we discussed, I began to distinctly hear the Lord’s voice, “Kelsey, don’t let Acoli culture write your story. Don’t let American culture write your story. Don’t let friends and family write your story. But Kelsey, let ME write your story. Let ME be the author.” And it just repeated over and over again, until the next new thought that came into my mind was ERICK. Immediately, the battle of confusion started in my mind. What in the world does Erick have to do with my story? I prayed. And prayed. And prayed even more.

That afternoon, Erick and I were together chatting about random things of here and there as we always do. Then a conversation followed that was convincingly divine and led by the Holy Spirit. We don’t remember how or why the conversation started, but we talked for five more hours about where our relationship was at, where we wanted it to go and what we felt like the Lord was leading us into. We confessed our love for one another. Both of our hearts were completely at peace. Many of you know that I sometimes need a lot of convincing…I looked at Erick and I said, “But my head is telling me, I’m supposed to agree to date you, take you to meet my parents, spend time getting to know you, pursue you and you pursue me…we’ve skipped that…” Erick replied, “Based on your definition of dating, isn’t that what we’ve been doing for nine months?” DUH! That’s exactly what we’ve been doing. Why did it need a formal title? But the protection I prayed for from the Holy Spirit was perfection. It was like the Holy Spirit opened my eyes to see clearly into the past nine months from the Lord’s perspective. Erick had already been pursuing me, but never pushing me. Taking care of me and never taking advantage of me. Studying and learning me and loving me exactly for who I was and pushing me to always walk in the ways of Christ. So many memories from the nine months became even more beautiful when I could see the orchestration of the Lord that had so keenly been put together. It was clear to me that if we had been mixed up in emotions and feelings of pursuing a romantic relationship, I would not have been settled. I would’ve had a muddled mind that doubted the sincerity of the Lord and of Erick.

As time went on, we continued to discuss the difference of cultures and how these processes of relationships typically go for each of our backgrounds. We are learning to balance and be sensitive to each other based on cultural desires and norms. We received the blessing of my parents and then I made a personal request that he take a page from my culture and simply ask me to marry him. No ring or gifts necessary—just a question! But a couple weeks later we hosted a family meeting to tell his family as well.  In my head, I saw the meeting happening where he just simply held my hand and told his family we wanted to get married. In reality, Erick surprised me by getting down on one knee, giving me a ring and asking, “Are you going to marry me?” 🙂 After the proposal, there was a time for the family members to speak to us any words they had. (Let me preface this with letting you know that in Ugandan culture, it is very common and expected for women to kneel to both men and women, for many occasions as a sign of respect. You won’t ever find a man kneeling.) So one of the uncles of the family spoke his piece and said, “I wouldn’t have believed that this was real, if I hadn’t witnessed today Erick getting down on his knee before his future wife. This is true love.”

The beauty of this life is that we have many different faces and cultures, but those differences disappear with the culture of Jesus. God is love. So no matter how we each understand love differently, if we pursue the Lord first, we will automatically meet in His perfect love. Here we are. Mixing worldly cultures. But with the greatest author there ever was, our story is being written like none ever written before. It is our prayer that each of you is blessed by the story of this chapter of our life. The Lord has already written something only He can and we pray you can clearly see the glory of our Father shining brightly through it. We also know we can’t do this alone, so we humbly request that each of you stands with us as we continue to boldly live out this glorious story of the Lord. Thank you all for reading! We look forward to beginning this journey with your support and we would love to hear from you!

Thank you. May the Lord bless you abundantly. We love you all!

Erick and Kelsey