One of the people that I the the privilege serving with used to insist that you cannot make a withdrawal unless you have made some significant deposits. This is simple for those who have accounts. What he was making reference to though, was to do with mentoring and in a sense counseling.
You as a leader are going to come across many people who will need help and assistance. The amount of time and money and resources that you end up placing in these people will determine how much you can take away from them at critical points in their lives.
The person you are dealing with is like an account. You are tasked with the job of investing into their account-compliments, suggestions, improvements, and so much more. This is the easier part, the harder part is when you need to chip away important parts of their being.
No matter what you do, they will not give you access to that part of their hearts if they do not trust you. The trust that you seek will be based on how much you invest in their resource tank and what you have physically done to demonstrate that you care.
Unless you can prove over time that you care and that you are willing to pay the price, not much of what you do will be accepted.
I am saying this with a bit of a heavy heart. I guess I do not know how to respond to people who are constantly bombarding us with Criticism about my people and their unwillingness to work.
Criticism is one thing when it comes from a local, but completely different when it comes from a foreigner.
Maybe this is the challenge that 'white' Americans face when they criticize a 'black' president. You can call it courage or you can call it audacity.
We can reason and even accept some of those criticisms when they come from one of our own but you dare not go there as an outsider.
These are arguments about the nature or the criticism and not the content of the criticism. Even if we marry both ideas, the essence of the argument above is that both forms will be rejected if the authors of these have not in previous moments spend enough time and energy giving fully and wholly to those whom they claim to serve.
In some of my previous comments, I wrote to you about how a prison camp had emblazoned on its entrance a sign that read "only work can set you free". I went on to attempt to demonstrate how there exists a possibility that the dreams of many could turn out to be nightmares if the promises the were made at arrival were not fulfilled. I then quote the words that were used at the Statue of Liberty to show some of the promises that Lady Liberty Made to her new citizens.
Uganda as a whole and Buganda in Particular runs exclusively as many other countries or settings on the words of its genuine leaders and authorities.
In the sixties, our Kingdom and its subjects believed in hard work but also moved by the King sought to develop their minds so that that in ignorance they would not spend too much energy. This was one of the messages that Mutesa II gave to his people. A few years down the road, we are not only interested in developing our minds as directed by the King but in harnessing the power of our Youth.
This form of investment has taken on many shapes. For revolutionary people it has meant time in the bush making sacrifices on behalf of the nation. For others it has taken the form of prison time and extensive periods in detention. Others have spent precious moments on the streets demonstrating. One preacher when he was asked a more experienced man why he was having difficulty in the mission field responded "try tears".
Maybe part of the problem in our continent has been how to quantify this investment especially because many of us feel poorly equipped to accomplish our tasks in the four and then possibly eight years which we are given. This is probably a weakness in the democratic system but also a broader problem in a citizenry that are not empowered to make change happen in the absence of visible leaders.
We find ourselves in the fields of war listening to the taunts of a Philistine Champion as he mocks us. He wants one man and we are still searching for that one man.
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