Hacked . . . Off!

Hacked. That is what happened to my email account. And that is what hacked me off!

I woke up this morning in Uganda to several email messages from friends and family, asking if I had sent them an email – the only contents of which was some random link – and wondering if they should open it. No, do not open it! One friend did open it and the link connected them to a site about some mom working from home, making lots of money. When my friend tried to close the site, it would not close, so she had to restart her computer. No harm, no foul, but very annoying.

In an attempt to prevent this from happening to my other friends and family, I decided to send a general message of warning to all my contacts. Easier said than done. Hotmail would only allow me to send messages to one page of contacts at a time. This shouldn’t take long – I only have 28 pages of contacts! Really, in the U.S. this would not have taken long. But today in Uganda the internet was very slow – it is slow everyday! So it was taking about five minutes per page of contacts. After I was halfway done with this project, I got hungry and decided I should eat breakfast. When I returned to the computer, my internet connection had been lost, so I had to sign back in to my hotmail account. But no, my account had been shut down by hotmail because . . . it might have been hacked. Really? I didn’t know that! At that point, I wasn’t sure if hotmail finally realized someone hacked into my account or if they thought I was the hacker since I had been sending out mass emails all morning to all my contacts. Hmm?

So, I thought I could just get my account re-opened and change my password. Easier said than done. When I attempted to do this, hotmail said they needed to send me a temporary password to a mobile number. First, I needed to select the country in which I was located and give them the number. No problem, I thought, because I actually have a Ugandan mobile phone. So, I searched the drop down menu and guess what? Uganda is not on the list! Really? But, hotmail provided another alternative –just answer some personal questions and give them a different email address and they would email a temporary password to me once they verified my information. But, it might take about 24 hours to do so. Fantastic!

About an hour later, I got a nice surprise from hotmail . . . they helped me sooner than expected, so my hotmail account is back (with a new password!). More surprises . . . when I went back to my account, I had several messages waiting for me from friends who received the general message I had sent out. Some of these friends were people I had not had contact with for years, so it was nice to reconnect. So, I guess I should say “thank you” to the hacker for causing me to email old friends that were in my contact list!

This experience brought to mind an email we received last night from a friend who had previously spent a year working in Uganda. He said that we might be frustrated at times with the difficulties of living in Africa, but we should not be discouraged. He told us that when he was facing challenges here, he would try not to feel sorry for himself and would remember that what he was dealing with paled in comparison to what the average Ugandan was dealing with. His experience in Uganda taught him to be more patient and to learn how to deal with challenges. This is well-timed and well-appreciated advice.

Living in Uganda is already teaching me to be more patient. The problem I am having with my email account is really silly compared to the suffering I see around me. Besides, this problem could have happened anywhere I was living. But I am living here in Uganda now. I should be grateful that I am living in a place with electricity (even if it goes off and on a few times a day!), running water, and mosquito nets. I should be grateful for all the amazing things we will see and do. I should be grateful for the ways God will use us. Why am I complaining?