CHAPTER 19

Be. Not. Afraid.

When you have all the power, you don’t need all the words.

Our family has spent a lot of time in Africa. My son-in-law, Jon, is an

engineer and a hydrologist and has spent years building underground
dams in Mozambique. Lindsey now goes with him there. Maria, Richard,
Ashley, and Adam have all traveled to Africa as well. When I first arrived
in Uganda in 2001 , the country was still in the middle of a twenty-five-
year civil war fueled by Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army. I
knew almost no one there. I had originally gone to Uganda to help friends
whose nonprofit had gotten into some trouble with one of their projects.
While I was there, I began wondering if I could be helpful to this country
in some small way.
I’m a pretty good lawyer, and knowing God often uses what we’re
good at to guide us into what we do next, I headed for the courthouse.
Maybe I could find someone there who would let me know how I could
help. When I got to the courthouse, there were soldiers with machine
guns at all the entrances and exits. A trial was underway against some of
the president’s political opponents who had been charged with treason.
This was a capital crime, and it added to an already tense time for the
country. The last time a trial took place for treason, under the former
leader Idi Amin, it resulted in fifteen deaths by firing squad. That was
years earlier, but no one knew how this one would turn out.
I saw an official-looking office with more men and machine guns
around it than any of the others, so I headed there, figuring someone
important must be behind the doors. I inched past the soldiers, checking