Simon, 3, and Reed Kibbey, 5, join Ivy Paech, 6 months, Simon and Aggie Paech in their backyard. The Kibbeys are among families hosting the Paechs during their visit from Uganda to churches in the U.S. (The Huntsville Times/Kay Campbell) HUNTSVILLE, Alabama -- Maybe he's stopped by police officers appearing to seek a bribe to let him go. Maybe he's stepped into a hovel to help a family whose floor has been flooded with the sewage-soup of the ghetto.
Maybe it's the hour it takes to thread his way across the city to pay a light bill, which must be paid in person because neither mail nor Internet is secure enough for other ways of paying.
Sometimes it builds up, says Simon Paech (rhymes with "cake"). He's an Australian who had been working in Huntsville when he moved to Uganda in 2007 to marry a Ugandan woman and work side-by-side with her in ministry.
Whatever the cause, sometimes Paech finds the thoughts flitting across his mind: It's too hard. It's too hopeless. I should take my family away.
Then, he said recently as he and Aggie sat together at a friend's home in Huntsville at the beginning of a two-month furlough, he lifts his eyes to the hills and remembers the larger picture.
"Uganda is really a beautiful place," Paech said, reaching to take Ivy, their smiling 6-month-old daughter from Aggie. "Sure, it's hard, but, for me, I've realized that most of the world is actually like that. The U.S. and Australia? I don't want to set my heart on that. That is not the norm in this world."
"And if it's where God wants you to be, then it's the best place in the world," Paech said.
Uganda JourneyMeet Simon & Aggie during their visit to the Huntsville Area.
Sunday 10 a.m. att Life's Journey Church, meeting at S.E. Huntsville YMCA, 1000 Weatherly Road S.E.
Oct. 17 'Shop for Goodness Sake' Aggie's Arts Sale. Handmade crafts from women of Kampala, Uganda, including baskets, purses, and jewelry. 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Renasant Bank (next to Logan's on Balmoral Drive off Airport Road.
Oct. 27 Simon and Aggie Paech will make a presentation of their work in Uganda. Informational Meeting at The 347, 347 Hughes Road in Madison. No childcare provided. 6:30 p.m.
Nov. 3 Uganda Journey Banquet Fundraiser. 6:30-8 p.m. S.E. Huntsville YMCA, 1000 Weatherly Road. Get free tickets by calling Amanda Page at 256-533-7233, UgandaJourney@hotmail.com.
How to Help: Uganda Journey needs a website developer to re-energize and update the current site. Also a video editor. Sponsors and participants are welcome to help with the project whether or not they are members of Life's Journey.
Hard times
Paech had been a research assistant at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a clean, good-paying job. He was a member of Life's Journey, a congregation that meets at the Southeast YMCA on Weatherly Road. He took some vacation time to travel to Uganda to help spread faith and food with workers in Kampala.
Paech expected to return from that trip happy to have been able to help. He had no idea his own life's love and work would begin during that week. That's when he met Aggie, a vivacious worship leader with a wonderful singing voice. They married about a year later.
Aggie, he'd learn later, was only a few years escaped from a vicious relationship with a man who had raped her at 15 and held her in a kind of cultural house arrest for 16 years, during which they had had five children.
"It was really terrible," Aggie says matter of factly, describing times when the man had beaten her violently in front of their children or left her to forage for food while he went off with other women. Several times he locked her, sometimes with the children, out in the street at night.
Her deliverance came, she said, through prayer. Finally, the man, who had never married her, came with a machete raised yelling, "Get out or I will kill you."
Aggie ran, unable to take the children, whom he was not threatening. Later, when he wandered off again, she was able to come back and get the children.
Her story of neglect and cruelty is all too common in Uganda, Aggie said.
"But I leave all this with him," Aggie said with a motion of her hands. "I forgive him. God helped me, and people gave me posha (corn mash)."
She found work as a translator with International Missionaries for Christ, which brought in only enough money to cover the rent.
"Imagine," Aggie said, "I am going with that organization to give out food all day, and I come home and sleep without food. The thing is, in Uganda, there are very many needy people, some who were more needy than us."
Joy in hard places
What Simon saw, he said, when he first saw Aggie leading worship, was a woman who radiated energy and love.
"The more I observed her, the more I was thinking, 'Wow! This is an amazing woman. She is full of life and joy and maturity.'"
The Paechs have organized their own mission together, Uganda Journey, with the sponsorship of Life's Journey and a few other churches in the U.S. and Australia. They now do have, thanks to those sponsorships, enough food on their own table for the children, now ages 16-24.
Aggie started a crafts cooperative among women in some of the worst parts of Kampala. All of the income from Aggie's Arts goes back to the artisans and to Kisoro Kids, a Christian school project.
Chris Persons, an optical engineer and member of Life's Journey who volunteers as mission coordinator between the church and the Paechs, said Aggie's Arts are doing so well that they are moving toward organizing that as a non-profit organization apart from the church.
Persons has visited the country just once. He remembers a place of great beauty and great need.
"To me, the most beautiful thing about the place was the people," Persons said. "They are so warm and joyful, even though they are in very difficult life situations. I was able to see a lot of joy there in the believers we met."
'Do not be afraid'
Simon and Aggie hope they are able to make life a little better in Uganda, at least for a few people. In addition to Aggie's Arts, they have begun assisting a church in Kisoro with making high-quality Christian education available to children in that area. They regularly distribute food through the Manna Ministry, they serve as in-country guides for mission teams from the U.S., and they hold Bible classes in homes and under tarps to teach people hungry to learn more.
Simon thinks of those faces, turned eagerly to a copy of the Bible, singing together for hours.
"It's definitely a challenging place to live, whether you're African or white," Simon said. "It's frustrating because you know things could be better. But it's amazing, too, because we really are doing what we were inspired to do: the arts program, education, teaching, assisting home churches and helping foreign teams.
"It's coming into being as we go along - it's really pretty awesome," Simon said. "God is bringing things into being at the right time."
And when things get bad? Aggie says that's when she reminds Simon of the verses that got her through 16 years of living hell.
"God said, 'Be strong and courageous,'" Aggie said, quoting Deuteronomy 30:7 and 8. "'The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged."