Rogers' Story: Choosing Courage Over Surrender

“All of us have gone through the gate,” Rogers said. “All of us.”

The large, green iron gate marked the entrance to AidChild, a home for children living with HIV/AIDS in Uganda, East Africa; children who no longer have the support of extended family. In 2012, Uganda reported 190,000 children living with HIV/AIDS and 1.1 million were considered orphaned by the epidemic.

Rogers came through the gate ten years ago.

Two years earlier, his mother had died.

“Our family splinted apart after her death,” Rogers said. An older brother and sister found places to stay, but Rogers did not. “I always wondered why people kept on pushing me away.”

It would be two years before he had HIV testing. A social worker named Godfrey pedaled him several kilometers on an old bicycle to a hospital.

The test was positive.

“I wasn’t shocked,” Rogers said. “Not because I was young. Nope. I was fourteen years old. But because I actually never cared at that moment. I had my life switched off the day Mom died.” 

Having already failed at several suicide attempts, Rogers welcomed the diagnosis as a way to end his life.

Sometimes heart gates can only bear so much before they swing shut.

The hospital made arrangements for Rogers to be admitted into a boarding school and life settled into a routine. Several months later, Godfrey and the Children’s Welfare Officer came in with happy faces.

“We have found you a home and a dad,” they said.

The adults were excited, but Rogers was hesitant. He was not excited about moving to a village, even though he had nowhere else to live.

He arrived with a “super sad face with crippled thinking.” He entered through the green, iron gate with a sign that declared, AidChild. Precious Life. Real Hope.

Some gates are built as barriers to keep people out. Other gates are an entryway into a new world--a doorway to new possibilities, where hope waits hinged in the opening.

Rogers saw happy-faced kids having a snack after classes. He remembers being served a lunch of Irish potatoes, beans, greens, watermelon and fresh passion juice, but he had no appetite.

“Deep down in me I was very sick with a broken heart. I never expected to be made whole again.”

He was prescribed three weeks of bed rest where staff, nurses and kids loved him and visited him continually

.Hope began to work its way into his heart cracks.

"Courage is a motivating power and belief to do something when all situations surrounding call upon you to surrender.” - Rogers

Rogers.

Rogers pointed to a time in his second year at university when he fell into a partying crowd and decided to quit taking his medications. He became very ill, to the point of death.

Through a haze of pain, he realized people loved him. He felt the responsibility of being the oldest at AidChild and knew the younger children considered him a role model. The years of love poured into his life gave him the courage to not surrender.

Looking back to that season, Rogers says it is okay to make mistakes, but to learn from past errors and make sure you only make new mistakes. He is currently getting a bachelor’s degree in Real Estate Business Management and he plans to impact change in his country and around the world.

“Most importantly, trust and never leave God,” he advices. Rogers acknowledges God as the One who gave him a home and led him through that gate ten years ago and-- through the people at AidChild--taught him to love himself.

Rogers signs all his emails, “with hope.”

“I am a young man living on hope,” he says.

Precious hope--a hope that healed a splinted heart and became the key to open the gate to courage and not to surrender.

Precious hope, indeed.