A HEART IN PAIN

‘It’s okay. You can talk to me, but I will not listen!”

These were the words Harriet welcomed the three missioners who visited her home in Aloet Ward within Soroti City East.

She was seated with one of her daughters, one preparing lunch, the other mending a bag for one of the younger children. As the evangelists walked into her homestead, she watched them approaching where she sat and courteously welcomed them.

Upon introduction by the evangelists, her demeanor noticeably shifted. It was telling as Toti Elias, an enthusiastic missioner from Kabale District in Uganda shared on the loving power of Christ, and his wish for man to forgive. Drawing from Romans 12:17-18, he shared his own personal story of being excommunicated from his home by his father at the age of 17, and how his uncle also threatened to have him, and his mother killed if they ever went back home. He carried all the anger and resentment with him, vowing to exact revenge, but all that changed when he found Christ in 2015 and accepted him as his personal savior. And how that decision led to him forgiving his father and uncle and ultimately rebuilding the burnt bridges.

She said, “How do I even begin to forgive someone who has burned my heart. I have been through so much hurt and pain, and yet there never seems to be an end to it. I have given my life to Christ before. Prayed and cried out to him, but he has never answered any of my cries. So, when I say you can talk to me but I will not listen, it’s because I am tired of waiting. There is nothing I have not been told, nothing I haven’t read in the Bible, nothing I haven’t heard preached in church. If there is a God, he forgot me.”

Upon realizing the depth of the hurt in Harriet, Tito saw it as an opportunity to counsel her, going deeper into his own story. As the minutes wore on, she started becoming receptive to what she heard and at the end of it, asked him to pray for her. Her prayer request was quite simple, that God revisits her. She desired to know the God that gave Tito a heart of forgiveness.

In the end, she was placed with a local church and introduced to the senior pastor who vowed to keep checking up on her and guiding her as she sought a new relationship with Christ.