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April 27, 2012

Faces of a Nation Too

Uganda was part of the British Empire or independent member of the Commonwealth from shortly after the source of the Nile river was discovered by John Hanning Speke and Richard Burton (no, not the actor) in the 1860s until Idi Amin’s brutal dictatorship began in 1971. In that 100 plus years the infrastructure of the country was built by the British, including the influx of a servant class from India. All of that ended in 1971 when Amin returned everything of “the Imperial British” to “the people”. As with all dictators, “the people” meant him. The country has been in decay ever since. What is left is the shell of an empire abandoned and a new dictator who has been president for the past 27 years.

But what about “the people”? It is not a question their leaders want to answer.

By Paul B Womack | Comments (0)

April 24, 2012

Faces of a Nation

Three out of four people in Uganda are under the age of thirty. It is a nation of children. What will this nation be when these children are men and women? Will poverty have crushed hope? or will faith provide it? There is joy in these young hearts, undaunted by circumstance. We must quench their longing for love with the water from which they will never thirst again. And in each small way we provide for these we unlock the possibilities of a nation of young minds in pursuit of something more.

By Paul B Womack | Comments (0)

April 12, 2012

iTexas Tour : Wildflowers

We took our kids out a couple of weekends ago to take some pictures of them sitting amongst the Bluebonnets. It’s kind of a right of Spring around here. The Texas Department of Transportation spreads wildflower seed along the medians of the rural highways, and sometime in March they begin to bloom. What I realized though, is that the Bluebonnet may be our state flower but I’m a sucker for the Indian Paintbrush, have been since I was a kid. For me, these red and blue swatches along the road represent the red and blue of our state flag, with the bright white cottony clouds of our coastal Spring standing in for the white. I could go on and on – I just can’t get enough of the Texas countryside in the Spring. Everything goes green, a thousand different shades and vibrances of it. Then the wildflowers come out and the farms and ranches and towns down the winding country roads are awash in color. It is something spectacular and fleeting, with the long summer months waiting close ahead to wash clean the landscape with its own relentless ideas about Texas.

By Paul B Womack | Comments (0)

March 2, 2012

It’s good to be a kid

Whenever it is, it’s too soon. Whenever we give up dress up. Whenever the Magic Kingdom isn’t so magic anymore. Whenever we don’t think we’re kids anymore, it’s too soon. As a father, one of the things I protect most jealously is my kids wonder at what the world holds. The longer they believe what I no longer believe, the better their little lives will remain. It’s a shame that wonder ever goes away at all. But I believe it will be the same wonder we feel when we begin our eternal lives as God’s children.

By Paul B Womack | Comments (0)

January 6, 2012

iTexas Tour: Riverwalk

The Riverwalk in San Antonio is more a tourist trap and restaurant row these days than anything else. Tour boats and colored umbrellas and thousands of people with their eyes on everything buts what’s in front of them. I think that all sounds too negative. I love the Riverwalk. I love the cobbled walkways and stone foot bridges. There are even a couple of places I like the Mexican food. But to me it is an older place with steel bridges spanning the river and old hotels from the art deco ’30s. That’s what I see, anyway. That’s what I take pictures of. Anybody can take a picture of a girl in a bikini top drinking a 3-foot tall frozen margarita, but that’s just what the place has become. Not what it is.

By Paul B Womack | Comments (0)

December 30, 2011

Mother & Daughter

Our Texas tours are all about history – creating our family’s personal history, that is. One of the most beautiful parts of that history is watching my wife and our daughter. It is a relationship I will never fully know. I see it in it’s maturity between my wife and her mother. I see it growing between my daughter and her mother. They don’t always get along. They don’t even mostly get along. But that give and take is changing them both. Showing us all a kind of love that is rooted deeply in their souls.

By Paul B Womack | Comments (1)

December 7, 2011

iTexas Tour: Mission Details

Beautiful, hand-crafted, bridging worlds. The details of these places of worship and war on the San Antonio Mission Trail reveal the life and aspirations of those that lived there. The simple carpentry of the communion table, the color and intricacy of a plaster wall, a Virgin that speaks to the native tribes. From across the seas these explorers brought their world with them and adapted it to their new world. It is a testament to the human spirit.

By Paul B Womack | Comments (0)

November 30, 2011

iTexas Tour: Mission Windows

We’re back on the San Antonio Mission Trail, piecing together the convergence of Christ and conquest these beautiful, ruined churches represent. Most of them are still working parish churches with a resident priest. In fact, there was a christening at the Espada mission when we came to see it. But these missions were not all about the things of God, as their soaring spires and intricate carvings might suggest. These were also forts with military garrisons on the frontier of what was then a new world. Just look at the windows. Always shuttered. Sometimes barred. Many mere holes in the stone walls, more for pointing a rifle out than letting light in. Such is the conflict of our souls – at war with the world, seeking a place of peace.

By Paul B Womack | Comments (0)

November 14, 2011

iTexas Tour: Mission Doors

There are a group of Spanish missions, including the Alamo, from the late 17th and early 18th centuries that run along an old trade route, south from San Antonio. I remembered them from a field trip I took when I was a boy, colored with adventure the way so many childhood memories are. And still they speak a tale of adventure, these monuments to religion and fortresses of war. I did not notice the city that had grown up around them or their sometimes desolate condition. I chose instead to see the Spanish friars and Spanish soldiers sequestered there. The great oaken doors and shuttered windows and great stone battlements and soaring cathedrals. And ultimately the great commission they represent, in what was (and still is) a real and dangerous world.

By Paul B Womack | Comments (2)

May 23, 2011

Becoming an Airman

My nephew, Airman Jonathan Womack, graduated from boot camp at Lackland AFB in San Antonio on May 6, 2011. He was one of 722 on that day, and they graduate that many every week – over 39,000 in a year. I told him in a letter I wrote him while he was in boot camp, “he may not realize it yet, but he is becoming the kind of man that other men honor.” Even my seven year old son thought that wasn’t such a bad thing.

By Paul B Womack | Comments (0)