God Loves Uganda And Other Reasons You Need Good Karma

Funny. Dupree decides to write about how she believes in karma the week I wanted to talk about good karma. Stealing my lime light...

Anyway, as a logical scientist, I don't actually believe in karma. But I love the idea of it. Help a friend with homework and suddenly you can actually do your own. Someone has a holier than thou attitude and they constantly get humbled. My plain-tempered roommate who will not stop asking for my food has to go on an empty stomach when I don't make dinner. (Fine, that isn't karma per se, but this is revenge on a leech.) (And I'm not passive aggressive until it comes to food.)

But what happened last Thursday can only be called good karma.

To start the night, we went to a coffee shop. Half-asian got something sugar-ry and I got my sugar-free latte and, since I had extra cash, I put three dollars in the "good karma" tip jar.

Next, we end up buying tickets to see a random sundance film called God Loves Uganda. We didn't really know what it is about but what we did know was it was suppose to be controversial.

We get in line to sit (thirty minute wait) and decide to ask the woman in front of us (and, I believe, her partner) what the film was about. After about thirty minutes in line, we find out that I'm from BYU, she is a molecular biology professor at U of U, she studies the same things that I'm currently studying in my research lab and, best of all, she is on the board to accept grad students into U of U. She then asked for my e-mail and we have hence e-mailed. Talk about sheer, dumb luck (or good karma if we're going to stick with the theme of this post).

P.S. We also found out the film was about homosexuality in Uganda.

And holy Hell guys, the film was amazing.

Basically, there is a homosexuality bill in Ugandan Parliament that would make being homosexual a life imprisonment sentence and homosexual acts will result death. And, worse, the bill has 90% popularity and there is only one place in the entire country where LGBT people can stay and be safe. That place was founded, and run, by a man named Bishop Christopher Senyonjo. And, this amazing man who believes in God made a spectrum of people, tall:short, straight:gay, appeared and did a Q&A after the film.

I can't write about the entire thing (that would need several pages to put what I want to say) but I can't stress enough how much the Evangelican church has done to promote this anti-gay bill to cure what they term "sexual broken-ness." I realize that most people who contribute to this church don't realize where their funds are going, mainly because churches are NOT required to publish where their funds go and it makes me wonder. Where is the Mormon church's money going to? If I could take one thing out of that film it would be that churches need to be more open about their worldly spending.

Anyways, I consider this all good karma because I will not forget this night for a long time. Such a good night. Meeting people who can help me with my post-BYU future and watching a film that has an extreme emotional impact on me.