FamilyLife Today®

Peter Mutabazi: The one parenting tool that works for one child but doesn't work for the other because this child went through different trauma, this one came from different trauma. This one came at a different time in your marriage life, this one came at a different time in marriage. So each child is always different. And if we can, yes, love on them for sure, but begin with: love isn't enough.

That we have to do more for our kids, especially for us as foster parents and adoptive parents, to love our kids despite what they go through, despite the challenges that they have, that we get to be the best parents we can be.

Ann Wilson: Welcome to FamilyLife Today where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson.

Dave Wilson: And I'm Dave Wilson, and you can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

All right, welcome to FamilyLife Today. Peter, I love saying your name.

Ann Wilson: Wait, his last name? You've been saying it for like three days.

Dave Wilson: Peter's one thing. I can say that. But I've been walking around all morning going, Mutabazi, Mutabazi. You've been on here before, but some of our listeners or watchers don't know your story. We're going to talk a little bit about your latest book, *Love Does Not Conquer All: And Other Surprising Lessons I Learned as a Foster Dad to More Than 40 Kids*.

That puts you in the category of most interesting man in the world. What do you mean a foster dad to 40 kids?

Peter Mutabazi: Well, that means you get kids and then they go home, and then they get adopted, and they send you more. Make sure you always have kids at all times. That's what I do.

Ann Wilson: And what's unique is you're a single foster dad.

Peter Mutabazi: I'm single. I'm hoping one day someone on this show might come and say, "That guy, I'm going to go after him."

Dave Wilson: Give us your journey. Last time you were here you told us the beginning of your story, which obviously has a lot to do with why you're doing what you're doing.

Ann Wilson: I think I cried half the time Peter was telling his story because it's so miraculous. It's really unbelievable. We'll put a link to that in our show notes so people can go and watch the original long version of your story.

Dave Wilson: But you have to tell it again in a short version.

Peter Mutabazi: I come from Uganda and grew up poor of the poorest. As a kid, I had to go fetch water three to four miles away. As a kid, I never had one meal a day. As a kid, I never slept on a mattress until I was 16 years old. As a kid, I never had a pair of shoes. I never had a second pair of clothes, only for one to Sunday, and that was it. For me, there wasn't something in life that showed there was hope for me.

At age four, I began to realize not only were we poor, but my father was the most abusive human being you could imagine. So on one side you have poverty, on the other, a mean dad.

Ann Wilson: How many siblings do you have?

Peter Mutabazi: I'm the oldest of five. The abuse was really difficult because it wasn't coming just towards me but was coming towards my mother. I had one parent that loved me but could not protect me or protect my siblings. That was life for me. At age 10, I ran away and became a street kid. It's on the streets of Kampala that I met a stranger after five years of living on the streets that changed my life, that he saw the best in me that I didn't even know I had.

Ann Wilson: You've got to share just a couple little stories of this stranger that you met because it's miraculous how that encounter came about.

Peter Mutabazi: As street kids, we would always steal, and we would steal food from people who used us. Most people on the streets weren't kind. For us, we never associated kindness with anything good. If someone was kind, you had to run away because after, if it was a woman, they're going to ask for sexual favors. If there's a man, they're going to do something towards you. Kindness was always a way of run for your life.

When I followed this man and I wanted to steal from him, he did something unique that nobody else had ever done. He said, "Hey, put my food down," and he followed by asking me, "Hey, what is your name?" I said my name is Peter and took a few steps back because I thought he's going to do something, so I better be ready to run. But he did not. He fed me for one year. One day he said, "I got two options for you. I can feed you once a week, or you can go to a school where there's food."

Ann Wilson: You didn't care about the school so much.

Peter Mutabazi: All he said was, "If you go to school, there'd be three meals." I had never in my entire life had three meals a day. I always dreamt that if there's heaven, it's a place you can have three meals, literally. That's what I thought. I went not because I wanted to be anything. To me I was like, one, he'd been there for me for that long. Two was, there's no other place you can have three meals. It was more of curiosity. I'm going to check it out. And sure enough, there was food, and that's what changed my life.

Ann Wilson: Tell our listeners, too, where did the faith component come in?

Peter Mutabazi: The faith came in later. He was really kind, and that bothered me. Why is this guy so nice, so kind?

Dave Wilson: Did he do that to the other boys as well, or just you?

Peter Mutabazi: Just me. He would give us enough food to feed about five kids. But also we would always go in the group. That is how he would always feed us. For me, faith wasn't something that I wanted to hear about because my father was very religious. He was Roman Catholic. I could not believe someone who can pray and hit the kids a few minutes later. I associated abuse with religion.

Ann Wilson: So you wanted no part of that.

Peter Mutabazi: No part. It reminded me of the abuse from my father until this man took me to his home. Once at his home, they had a table. The table had food, and on that table, they put one extra seat and they put my name on it.

Ann Wilson: Did he have kids?

Peter Mutabazi: Yes, he had five kids. Putting that name on their table really gave me a glimpse that you belong. But also he really shared with me the life of Joseph. He had one story he'd always tell me. "Peter, every time I wanted to give, Peter, what did Joseph do?" I'm like, "Hold up, why? Why does that story always have to come?" I had to memorize the words. The words were, "For what you meant for evil, God used it for good to save a life."

Once they put the name on the table, that gave me a clue of what a family looks like because I didn't have anything to compare what a good father is, what a good family is. Now they became my ideal. Wait a minute, if he has this family, if he cares for them, he went to school. Then for me, school became important. I excelled in school, and that's really how I got to where I am because watching him love his family and also include me in that family is what gave me the zeal to want to go back and do better.

Ann Wilson: After that, where did you go from there?

Peter Mutabazi: Then I went to high school. I went to university in Uganda, and then I went to university in England, and that's how I came to the United States as a student.

Dave Wilson: So you were actually, if I go back, you were a 15-year-old first grader.

Peter Mutabazi: Exactly. What did matter for me was, I didn't care that these were little, there was food. What kept me in school had nothing to do with school.

Ann Wilson: It's called survival instinct.

Peter Mutabazi: Food. Food kept me coming. I said, "Okay, I'll stay. I'll stay. These kids, they can call me whatever they want to call me, but food is coming." That's how I survived.

Dave Wilson: I mean, there's something there when you think about if we're trying to reach people with the love of God and they have physical needs, start there. Correct? You can talk all you want about God, but they're probably not able to hear it if their stomach is empty.

Peter Mutabazi: Absolute. Also as a foster parent, it's hard to have a child who's hoarding food. They're holding food for the only reason is they know there's no food tomorrow. How do you tell that child God loves you so much when their one worry is no food tomorrow, no food tomorrow? Anything I got to gather, I got to keep.

When we meet people's needs, I think they get to be in a place where they feel, *this need is taken care of, now what more can I learn?* Until people are in that place, then we can hear the gospel. But also they get to know their tummies are full, that God loves them in a way that he's providing for them.

Dave Wilson: What happens when you get here?

Peter Mutabazi: I get here. My first day I flew from Uganda to Los Angeles. The family that took me in took me for dinner. I go to eat, and I had never seen that much food in my entire life.

Ann Wilson: Was this the first time in the United States?

Peter Mutabazi: Yes, first night. I was like, there is so much food. As I was eating, I noticed there were people who were passing by with buckets of food. These were waiters.

I asked, "Hey, where's that food going?" They said, "Well, it's going to be thrown away." In those moments I began to not angry, but more of confused about God's love. Like, "God, how could you love us, but you could give so much to others to throw away, but others can die for lack of beans and potatoes?" Because in my family, we'd lost members of my family for lack of beans and potatoes.

I was really struggling with my faith watching the food and wondering, "God, how can we love you the same way? Or how can you say you love us the same way?" That's when Psalm 139 just again came back to my head. For the Lord says, "Before the word is on my tongue, you know, that you know, you know when I stretch, you know when I rise." For David to say, "God, you know every little instinct of my life," I was like, "Hold on, if this man can... had 300 wives, is that true?" I mean, he had everything you could think of, but in Psalm 139, he does not talk about what he had but the simple things: "That you knit me in my mother's womb." To me those words really helped me to know God loves me not based on the food but for I'm fearfully and wonderfully made.

Dave Wilson: As a pastor, I have definitely felt the tension of serving marriages in our church. It's a passion of ours and couples aren't falling apart, but they're not really connecting either. Things can look fine on the surface or on the outside, but there's always some drift happening underneath. You see this as a leader and you know marriages need support, but figuring out what to do often it can feel overwhelming. We've walked with a lot of churches through this and most just need a simple place to start.

Ann Wilson: We have that for you. So if you thought about doing a marriage event but didn't want to build it from scratch, this is a great way forward. When you purchase 10 or more workbooks, we'll include the full video study. Just use the code STRONG FAMILIES. Did you hear that? STRONG FAMILIES.

Dave Wilson: That's one word.

Ann Wilson: Yep. Through June 30th. You can go to familylifetoday.com and click the link in the show notes and just again enter the discount code STRONG FAMILIES.

Dave Wilson: Let me tell you, strong families don't happen by accident. Sometimes all it takes is one intentional step to help couples reconnect again.

Ann Wilson: I would say if you're a parent listening to this and you haven't taken your kids around the world just to see how other people are living, it opens their eyes. When I've gone and I've come back, I remember I had been in Nepal to some of the villages in Nepal up in the mountains where there's nothing. We come in as guests and they were so proud to hand us a boiled egg that they had had, and that was a luxury to have that.

Then I remember coming back at Christmas time going to this mall close to where we live, and it felt so terrible to me of our surplus and how we take it for granted that I had to go home because it just doesn't make sense and some people are living in such poverty and we have this surplus of things that we don't even need. I think it's good for kids to understand there's a whole world out there that not only need Jesus and the gospel, but they need food and they need provision and they need love and gratitude.

Peter Mutabazi: Gratitude. That's it. To step back and say, "God, you love me like I cannot believe." When you open that closet and you count how many shoes are in there to stop and say, "God, wow, you love me." To go to that pantry, open that fridge and say, "Wow, there is food." I love encouraging young kids to say, "Look back to your mom and dad and say, 'Mom, thank you that I have a meal,' because some kids have nothing to eat or to be grateful for."

Luke 12:48 convicted me: "To whom much is given, much is required." I felt I was the wealthiest man on the planet.

Ann Wilson: Did you feel like that?

Peter Mutabazi: Oh, yes. I had an apartment and it had an extra bedroom.

Ann Wilson: What were you doing to make money?

Peter Mutabazi: I was speaking, that's all I could do: telling my story and speaking and raising funds for kids and also doing odd jobs with Compassion then, Compassion Ministry.

I felt I was the wealthiest man on the planet. One day I am traveling with some of the pastors in Kenya and there's one pastor holding a picture and he's like, "We just got a baby and I love this baby." I'm like, "Hold, that child is black, you're white, how does that work?" Then he explained about foster care. As he was explaining, the light bulb went off. Those are my people. That was me as a little boy, hopeless, not knowing where's my mom, where's my next future.

But I didn't know they would allow me to be a foster parent. I traveled all over the world. I had never seen a black person who was adopting in Uganda or in Ethiopia. I believed the lie that you have to be married and you have to be Caucasian. Literally, that's what I thought to be a foster parent. I walked into the foster care and said, "Hey, is there a way you could allow me to mentor teenagers, teenagers who can hang out with teenagers for an hour?"

That was my whole goal. I go in and the social worker looked at me and said, "Have you ever thought of being a foster dad?" I said, "Yes, but I'm not qualified." I didn't say the other thing. I just said, "I'm single." Said, "Hey, Peter, you can be." Literally, it was on a Monday. I said, "You have to give me papers to sign to assure me that I can be a foster parent."

On a Monday. On Thursday, I started licensing class because I knew I had been given so much. I knew I was in a position to love, to provide, but also to show the trauma I had gone through, that I can really come alongside these kids and say it's going to be okay because someone had given me a chance.

That's what I did. Since then I've had 47. It's been a roller coaster, I can tell you. I don't know when it's going to turn, I don't know when it's going to go up. It's just a roller coaster.

Dave Wilson: How many are in your house right now?

Peter Mutabazi: Right now, six.

Dave Wilson: Six. And you've adopted three?

Peter Mutabazi: I adopted three, and I'm in a process of adopting the other three.

Dave Wilson: Really? So those are never going away.

Peter Mutabazi: Never. They might get married, they might get older, but they're yours.

Ann Wilson: Having children is not easy. Having our own bio children is not easy. Having foster kids who have come in with trauma, now we're talking a whole another level of not easy just because of the trauma they've carried in. You have seen a lot.

Peter Mutabazi: A lot. In every shape, form, size, name it, I've seen it. I can give you one example. I got a six-year-old kid who needed a home. At 3:00 in the morning he comes in. I say, "Hey, there's a bathroom over there." He goes, uses the bathroom, he does number two. He picks up number two, he smears the entire room.

Ann Wilson: No.

Peter Mutabazi: Yes, the entire room. I'm sitting there, something is smelling wrong. I walk in and literally it's just everywhere.

Dave Wilson: On the walls?

Peter Mutabazi: On the walls. But this kid is just six years old, and he just came into your home 10 minutes ago. What do you do? How do you respond?

The only thing I could think about was, I got to call the social worker to pick up this child. I cannot deal with this. But before I could call the social worker, I needed to put him in a place where he cleaned up. I let him clean up and then I put him in the chair somewhere and I said, "You know, I'm not going to harm you. You're just here and I want to make sure you're okay."

The kid looks at me and said, "I knew you're going to do something bad to me, so I didn't want you to do anything to me." My heart sank right there and then to realize that someone had touched him in the wrong way. He was trying to protect himself. It had nothing to do with making my house dirty. Absolutely. I didn't call the social worker. Of course I was like, "No." I had to sit with that little boy and find another way for him to feel safe.

To see him really thriving and doing well, you get to know that when we meet children where they are, when we love them as who they are rather than who we want them to be, that we get to be that hands and feet of Jesus. Loving these kids as who they are, not who I want them to be, has truly been a joy. Talk about trauma, I know it. I can smell it.

Ann Wilson: What made you write this book, *Love Does Not Conquer All*?

Peter Mutabazi: I wrote that book and I gave that title *Love Does Not Conquer All* because I have so many followers. Sometimes you hear people say, "I cannot wait to just have them and love on them," and you're like, "That's fine, absolutely." But it's the opposite. Loving someone who does not even know what love means, how do you translate that? How do you love them constantly when they are rejecting you?

Ann Wilson: Even parents with their own bio kids experience this.

Peter Mutabazi: Absolutely. When I became a foster parent, I didn't have tools or someone walk through with me that way. I thought with my experience, let me write for people who want to adopt kids, people who want to foster, even people who want to have their own kid: that when we learn that we don't transfer or project our own self where we grew up and project on our kids, we get to love on them.

We get to see them as different kids. The one parenting tool that works for one child but doesn't work for the other because this child went through different trauma, this one came from different trauma. This one came at a different time in your marriage life, this one came at a different time in marriage. Each child is always different. And if we can, yes, love on them for sure, but begin with: love isn't enough.

We have to do more for our kids, especially for us as foster parents and adoptive parents, to love our kids despite what they go through, despite the challenges that they have, that we get to be the best parents we can be.

Dave Wilson: Have you ever gotten to the place of just total exasperation?

Ann Wilson: I was going to say that, Dave. But they drive me crazy. The poop on the wall is one thing. I don't know if I could handle it. But even worse, have you got like, "This is driving me crazy"?

Peter Mutabazi: Oh, yes.

Ann Wilson: Just their outright rebellion and attitude.

Peter Mutabazi: Oh, yes. But here's for me what works best for me. I thought I was a believer until I became a foster parent. Then I realized how far of a faith man I am because I realize that I give that middle finger to Jesus, to God every day, but he does not strike me. This is the same attitude I need to have towards my kids. To love them, that's what I signed up for: to love them despite they're calling me every word you could think of.

Sometimes I got kids who put holes in my wall and I'm about to say, "But we put two more last week, can we just go somewhere else different?"

Dave Wilson: So they're literally kicking or punching the wall?

Peter Mutabazi: Yes. And what do you do? Usually, after that, we go for ice cream. Then we go Hobby Lobby and they pick up whatever painting they can to cover that hole.

Ann Wilson: Really? Hobby Lobby.

Peter Mutabazi: That reminder, "Hey, there's a hole here," even if it's at knee level. Absolutely.

Dave Wilson: So do you really go get ice cream?

Peter Mutabazi: Yes. To talk to a human being who's mad, agitated, feeling unseen and unheard is like talking to a wall. It does not help at all. I've learned as a foster parent to put my kids to the place they can hear me is the best place I can be able to parent and help them out. An ice cream is another way that chills my child to feel "Daddy's here, I'm okay, and what I did last minute is not defining what I am right now."

As a parent to step back and say, "I want to hear you and I want to be there for you. I want to make sure that the focus isn't what you just did, but the focus is what's going on? Tell me." Putting them at a place where they can hear me, see me is the best way to have that good communication. Sometimes it's the ice cream.

Ann Wilson: That's really smart. I usually say to parents, especially as you're getting into teenage years, but I think when you're in foster care or adopting a child, the phrase "don't take it personally" is a big deal. I know as a parent, I took so many things personally and it wasn't about me. Most of the time, almost all the time, it was about something they were dealing with.

Dave Wilson: It was about me. That's what it was.

Ann Wilson: Sometimes it was. It was displaced. I think that is true that we take it so personally: "How could you?" But by diffusing it, taking them to ice cream or taking them out to lunch and not making it be about this disrespectful thing. You might get to that later, but in the moment you're asking what's going on.

Peter Mutabazi: You're making sure they are seen and heard and you're validating their feelings. I don't know any child who was ripped out of their home. They were never told why. They brought them to a stranger's home. For me to expect that they should love me doesn't even make sense. That's unreasonable. Sometimes for us as foster parents we get to step back and say, "I want to hear my child, but I want to validate what they are feeling."

I don't like the way it's coming out of their mouth for sure, but at the same time that sense of "I want to hear them." It really helps us and also removes me from thinking about... I come from a world where if you yelled at me, all I could hear was my father. It's easy to push the buttons and bring back my childhood trauma. If that raised my brain, I'm going to bring my childhood trauma into my parenting style. But by me stepping up and saying, "It's not about me. I'm not bringing my father into my child's behavior."

Ann Wilson: Wow, it's been a long time since we had Peter on FamilyLife Today and I am so glad he's back.

Dave Wilson: Me too. His story, just him reminding us of all that he went through is pretty dramatic. I feel so wiped out emotionally.

Ann Wilson: That's what I mean. It's so cool to see. God is the God of resurrection. He gives you a new life and a new purpose and his life is a calling. The book we've been talking about today is *Love Does Not Conquer All: And Other Surprising Lessons I Learned as a Foster Dad to More Than 40 Kids*. You can get the book at familylifetoday.com, just click on the link in the show notes and we've got Peter back tomorrow.

Dave Wilson: Let me just say this. We meet a ton of couples who say FamilyLife helped them when they needed it the most. That's what being a FamilyLife partner is all about, helping others find that same encouragement and tools that you found right here.

Ann Wilson: We'd love for you to join us. So click the donate button at familylifetoday.com and become a partner today.

Dave Wilson: FamilyLife Today is a donor-supported production of FamilyLife, a Cru Ministry, 50 years of helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.