‘My faith taught me not to live in fear’
Woman follows instincts to flee work in Uganda
Vancouver Christian Jenny Konkin believes she experienced an extraordinary encounter with God that may have saved her life.
It occurred during 2005 in Uganda, she says, while she was volunteering at a children’s orphanage, fulfilling a lifelong dream to help out.
“I had black baby dolls as a kid. I always wanted to go to Africa to work in an orphanage,” she says.
“I can’t handle the fact that some people are born into terrible lives and we have such beautiful ones.”
Konkin, 30, grew up in a family that cared about the downtrodden.
The family’s concerns for others rose from hard experiences. Her grandparents, Mina and Mario Angelicola, survived the Second World War in Italy, while her father’s Doukhobor relatives came to B.C. after being persecuted in Russia.
Konkin’s offer to work in Africa was accepted by a Christian church in Kampala, which placed her in the city of Lira. The jungle encampment outside town included an orphanage, army base and refugee camps.
She already had some experience volunteering in troubled neighbourhoods in Winnipeg and Glasgow.
In downtown Winnipeg, she worked with one teenage “client” who was a convicted murderer out on day parole, while in inner-city Glasgow, she encountered gangs who threatened each other with baseball bats.
But nothing prepared her for the heartache of Uganda, where even the Christian-sponsored care workers just went through the motions.
“It felt very dark,” she says. “The orphans screamed at me because they didn’t know what I was. They had never seen a white woman.”
Something else was weird. After a lifetime of talking constantly with God, there was suddenly silence.
“I felt very alone. It felt like God had just left me,” she says.
But she soldiered on, fussing over a lost toddler named Robyn. “He never smiled. He hated it when I bathed him every day and brushed his teeth. But one day after he’d almost died of malaria, I caught him smiling at me. He knew that I loved him,” she says.
Konkin says she was so intent on overcoming the crushing heat and cultural differences that she wasn’t aware of a long-running guerrilla war in northern Uganda.
A group called the Lord’s Resistance Army had been ravaging local villages for years and, unknown to her, white tourists had been murdered shortly before her arrival.
What followed struck her as so strange that she has not shared it even with close friends.
Two weeks into her posting, she says, God came back into her life in a hurry one afternoon. A voice inside her head told her she was in danger and had to leave. With no idea what to make of it and no knowledge of the rebel army, she was frozen in fear.
Konkin spoke to the “camp mother,” who admitted that tensions with the rebels had risen dramatically.
Konkin didn’t have all the facts, but trusted what was revealed to her and made plans to get out immediately.
Despite the gravity of the situation, a calmness came over her. She no longer felt alone or cut off.
“I’ve always felt protected. My faith taught me not to live in fear,” she says. “My purpose on this Earth isn’t finished yet.”
Konkin and her brother, Josh, are now business managers of the Avalon Hotel in Vancouver, which was bought by her Italian grandparents as a business venture in the 1970s.
The Konkins have also founded a non-profit society called the Whole Way House, dedicated to improving residents’ lives. “The No. 1 need is overcoming loneliness,” she says. “People should have a place where they feel safe to come home to.”
Their plans for the venture can be seen online at wholewayhouse.ca