Jet Setting

The traveling has begun.... and I am exhausted but exhilarated by what God is doing in Africa and how he is using his people to spread the Gospel! 

So I am going to fill you in based on each trip..... 

Adi, DR Congo October 17th - 24th:

On the 17th my boss, Megan, and I hoped on a plane to Arua, Uganda. In Arua we were met by Akuma, the head surgeon/mokonzi (head of the town basically, most important guy) at the Airport and from there we "danced" - bounced through the biggest pot holes you have ever seen, seriously, ducks swim in them when it rains - for three hours over the Congo/Uganda border. 

When we arrived in Congo, I was just expecting to get there and have dinner with Rachel and Lisa, two short termers from Canada that we were there to check up on. But that was not the case. Apparently, Rachel and Lisa had told Akuma that Megan is in charge of sending short termers to different areas in the Central Region. Akuma took this to mean that Megan was a mokonzi bigger than him. So, of course, he had to honor her. And honor he did. 

We got out of the car to the sight of students lining both sides of the road leading to Rachel and Lisa's house. The were singing and dancing and ushering us out of the car. We stood with the children lining both sides and saw three women walking very slowly towards us holding a hoop of flowers for Megan and a bouquet of flowers for the both of us. The women walked towards us slowly in a wedding march style, and then from behind them two girls came dancing up and then chucked, and I mean chucked, handful of flowers at us. This continued for about twenty minutes until we had walked the length of the road. At the end of the road there were about fifteen chairs set up and two chairs for us at the front. We then were greeted with about five different speeches and a few songs by the youth choir. It was nuts. Traveling with Megan sure has some perks. 

Rachel and Lisa are working at the hospital in Adi. So on Monday we went to do consultations with them. Then, on Tuesday we did surgeries. And I got to be in the room, taking vitals and holding flashlights. Word of advice, do not have surgery in North East Congo if you don't have to. Adi is one of the best hospitals in that region, but it lacks a basic thing for surgery. Anesthesia. So we gave each person an epidural which lasted about an hour, but surgeries went about an hour and a half. Oh and when you have an epidural, you are awake. So I spent the day taking vitals, but also watching the meds wear down on people, having to hold them down so they don't make things unsterile, and holding their hands trying to get them through the pain. Rachel and Lisa do this every tuesday and friday and just by being there, holding peoples hands when the other doctors and nurses don't, they have been a testimony to both the patients and the doctors. 

Gulu, Uganda October 27 - 29th: 

On Monday, Megan and I hopped on the post bus up to Gulu. Five hours, one book, and a dead ipod later, we arrived. There is something about Gulu that I love. The minute I arrived I was happy. We were visiting Jeremy and Cori Sinclair, to short termers working with Favour of God Ministries doing counseling and youth work. Cori and Jeremy met us at the bakery (Laur and Jess the same one we went to often when we were there) and had a quick lunch of Somasas and soda then headed out to explore Gulu. 

We were only in Gulu for a short trip, but it was still good. Jeremy and Cori showed us all the different ministries of Favour of God, but my favorite part was going to football (soccer) practice with Jeremy and Cori's teams. I spent the time practicing with Cori's girl's team. The girls are mostly net ball players so seeing them learn was both exciting and funny. But what was more was watching them interact with Cori showed me that even through fun things like football you can show the gospel and do God's work and have an effect on people's lives. 

......

These barely scratch the surface of what I have seen in the past few weeks, it is so difficult to cram it all cohesively into a blog. But God is at work in Africa, I am confident of that. 

I am so sad... less than six weeks left here. I am in Kampala until the 20th, and then Megan and I head out to Sudan and then after that I hopefully go to Tanzania, then back to the States on the 18th of December. 

Miss y'all and hope things are well state side! 

 

Happy Independence Day!!

Woah, I am officially terrible at this thing. My sincerest apologies if you have actually been checking this more often then I do.

 

Well since I last posted, a TON has happened. So what I am going to do is just try to give you a glimpse of what has been going on. Forgive me in advance, this is not some of my best writing.

 

Wrap up at Smile Africa:

 

            Leaving Smile Africa was so hard. In just a short time I really fell in love with so much there. I miss every single one of the children I got to know there, but mostly I miss my ‘son’ as the teachers called him Derrick. Through Derrick, God showed me how powerful love can be.

            Derrick is a little boy maybe three or four years old, the teachers aren’t sure exactly how old he is because his mother died when he was tiny and she was the only one who knew his birthday. When I got to Smile Africa, he was one of the most volatile and violent three year olds I have ever seen, yet he was also the one that wanted to be held more than anyone of the other kids. So, from the first day I got there he kind of became attached to my hip. But at first, he was still violent and volatile. If any other child tried to come near me or touch me, he would reach out his little hand and pinch or punch that child as hard as he could. Or sometimes, he would be sitting in my lap and suddenly got angry and would hop up, run to the other side of the room and just whack another child square across their head. One day, I even had to chase him down as he carried a brick in each hand attempting to stone another child. Not only was he that violent, but he broke out in temper tantrums at least five or six times a day.

            But despite it all, he had the most beautiful smile and I was just drawn to him. Everyday we would be together at least for a little bit. By the last week we were inseparable. He would find me as soon as he came in the morning and run into my arms and would stay by my side until the moment school ended. A few days before we left, one of the teachers was just randomly commenting about a change she saw in Derrick. In the month since being there, Derrick had started sitting in class for the first time and being more obedient. Because she said this, I started thinking of the Derrick I first met and the Derrick I was now holding. Derrick had changed so much in so little time. I had not seen him have a tantrum in at least a week and a half, he got in very few fights now, and he even let other kids hang around me. I don’t think I can really describe to you how big this change was through writing, but I was overwhelmed by how transforming just a tiny bit of love can be. I didn’t do anything but hold this kid and play with him, I couldn’t speak to him or explain why I was there to him, but it didn’t matter. Just doing that was enough to change him. It makes me wonder what would happen to all of those kids if they could just have someone to show a tiny bit of love to him.

 

Kampala:

 

Ok so I am no longer in Tororo if you haven’t picked that up. On the 26^th Laura and I traveled back to Kampala and had two more days together before she flew home on the 28^th.  It’s hard to describe exactly what I do here in Kampala as I where many hats and my job will be changing again in just a few weeks.

 

The past two weeks I have been splitting my time working in the Central Region office in Kampala and working at Reformed Theological College in Kampala. At the office, I am doing whatever work they need done in the Short Term program. At RTC I am working with a AIM missionary from Kampala helping at the Nursery school there and helping her in whatever way I can.

 

Some interesting moments in Kampala:

 

-        Every lunch at RTC has involved political discussions with Kenyans and Ugandans about the upcoming American elections.

-        This week has been festival week at RTC so this allowed me to have experience such as:

-        Playing Korean style table tennis against seminary students

-        Judging a African Fashion show where my job was to choose who dressed the ‘smartest”. Among the contestants where cross- dressing males, who scarily looked quite normal in the girl’s clothes.

-       Judging a dancing competition at a Christian University, and once again it contained cross-dressing males who could dance quite impressively in a skirt.

-       One of the most meaningful experiences this week was getting to read my Pop-pop’s favorite book to all the children at the nursery school after not seeing that book in year. The teacher’s do really know how to use books, not many Ugandans read books so using story books in school is a foreign idea. So I had the opportunity to just demonstrate it to them and got to share the book “The Giving Tree” with all the students in the nursery school.

-       Freaky experience: getting in a accident in the taxi buses called Mutatu’s (14 passenger vans that you fit about eighteen in ) on the way home from celebrating independence day in Kampala. We completely side swiped another Mutatu right in front of a bunch of police. Our driver tried to just keep driving, but the police stopped and we had to all get off and board another Mutatu. Just a normal day in Kampala lol (Mom don’t freak it was not bad)

 

Ok so that is just a glimpse of what has been going on. Life is crazy, so I am terrible at posting but now that I get better internet I will try to update more.

 

Prayer requests:

-       Pray for my family and me as we are going through a trial right now and it is very difficult to be here and not be able to be with them

-       Praise God for good friends and mentors in Kampala

-       Pray for my friend Will Boyd that God would heal him miraculously

-       Pray for Derrick that he might now Christ

-       Pray for Emily, the girl Laura and I were discipling in Tororo

-       Pray for Smile Africa and all the children there

 

Quick Update

Unfortunately, and as you can probably tell, I have been without internet for almost two weeks. My apologies for the lack of updating. Right now I will just give you a quick update because I am so tired after each day of work I can barely think well, let alone write well. I give you a good update on saturday.

We did one more week of bible camp at a church called Bisen Maguri and it went really well. It was much more relaxed then the other church so it was more enjoyable. I think they really enjoyed it, in fact we had adults there every day taking notes. It was intimidating! But they liked us enough that they asked us to come on sunday on preach. So I let Laura take the lead on that one since she already had a sermon, and we spent saturday night editing it without power by the light of our torches (flashlights). Then sunday I figured that I was off the hook, but apparently I should have stayed awake during chapel and morning prayer at St. David's because I got there and they told me I was leading the service. They are anglican! I had no idea what to do so it was quite an interesting sunday, but fun none the less.

Then from the beginning of September we are working at an orphanage type thing called Smile Africa ministries. It is hard work but it is so much fun. There are over 400 kids each day and very few speak english but its motivating us to improve our Swahili. A typical day there consists of this: wake up at 6, head out the door by 730 grab a bicycle boda for about thirty cents down to work, and then from 8 to 10 we teach - I have been doing either preschool type or second and third grade english and math - 10 -11 serve breakfast and eat some ourselves - 11-12 bath all 400 kids - 12-1 Attempt to teach some more -1-230 Serve lunch and hang out with the teachers eating lunch- posho and beans, everyday- 230-330 teach some more and then 330 get to play with the kids till they leave at 4. We do some cleaning and then walk about an hours walk back home. I fall asleep before nine every night, it is crazy but I love it.

Other than that we have been hanging out with Emily and her brother Eli on the weekends. I love getting to know her, I will have to tell you more about her on saturday. We even got to go with them to a swimming pool at one of the hotels here! It was a super hot day so it was so nice!!

That's it for now, more interesting stuff to come on Saturday.

It's a Hard Knock Life

I have never done a blog before so I am not sure what you expect of me, but I find it rather boring to just report what I did that day. Also, with so many new things and little events that blog would be extremely long each day. Instead, I would rather write about certain things that really strike me here and make me think, or write about certain things that God is teaching me while I am here. I hope this ok with y'all.

Coming here, I am not sure what my exact expectations were, but it is a very different experience to be in Uganda as someone attempting to belong to the culture rather than coming to observe it. Last time I was here, it was normal and almost acceptable for me to be walking around with my camera, being loud and American but noy my camera has not left my bag, and I do my best to at least greet people in their own language. As difficult as that can be, especially because I love photography and there are five different languages in the town town I am in, it allows me to be privy to the less obvious reality of life here.

Sometimes, that reality is hard to view. I was not unaware of what was going on in Uganda, I was not blind to the fact that there are many problems in day-to-day life here, but I do not think I understood nor do I yet fully understand it, but I am learning a part of it each day. I could report to you back and forth the situation in Northern Uganda, but I never actually thought about the lives of the children elsewhere in the country, and although they are not being abducted, they live a harder life than I ever expected or imagined.

As I write this, my heart is heavy thinking of what I have learned of their lives in just a few days. When I think of being a kid, I think of the few years of your life when you can be pratically carefree and a time in you life when you are valued and nurtured. In America, the children are valued to a point that it is almost bad, where we treat them like they are eggshells and could be broken mentally or physically in an instant. Here, children are treated in most respects as nothing more than scum.

To be a child in Uganda is hard. Here in Tororo their day to day challenges are beyond my comprehension. I will give you the examples I have learned this week. Take for instance food; here the culture is that man eats first, and then the wife, and if there is some left over it is given to the children. Or the abuse kids face. HIV/AIDs, although ridden throughout the country, has such stigma with it that there is little understanding of the disease. The belief here, especially in the villages, is that if you have sex with a child you will either be cured of the disease, or it will prevent you from contracting the disease. So it follow thats many of these kids are sexually and physically abused by their parents, either out of wrath or that they simply do not understand HIV/AIDs. This kids also face huge challenges with education. The african culture is this: if you have money for school fees, but another need arises you do not save that money for school but use it meet the current need. Later if you have more money then you child will go to school for as long as you have money. Thus, having a steady flow of education is rare here. This means you can have children as old as fourteen in second grade!

The other huge problem that I encountered for the first time today is Glue. Many of the kids here, especially street children, are horribly addicted to Glue. Children as young as five can be living on the street begging so they can get their next fix of glue. They get so addicted to the stuff that even if they take street children and put them in school, they will run back to the street as soon as they can because the glue calls to them. My knowledge up to today was that this was an addiction that only street children really struggled with. But I was so wrong. Today in the middle of my lesson I noticed one girl kept putting her fingers to her nose and holding them there for a while. Not knowing how glue worked, I wasn't really concerned. But when we were leaving the church at the end of club, the missionary I am living with, Evy, noticed a can she was holding and called the girl out. Right in the middle of a bible lesson, in a church, this girl had a can of industrial glue and was just huffing away. We took the can from her, but it was so sad to see. Her eyes showed that she was both scared that she got caught and that she was longing after the can. Something as simple as glue can wreck a life here.

All this being said, there is hope. What is encouraging for me to see its that through the churches here, the view of children is being changed. Now they want to have children's programs, they want to have trained sunday school teachers. Through the church, they are realizing that not only are the children their future church, they are the future period. I only pray that this is not a slow influence on the culture.

Though difficult to see and learn all of this, the smiles and heart of the children teach me something too. I see in them that despite everything, you can find joy in all situations. And it spurs me on to love them and to teach them about a Father who truly loves them and longs to care for and comfort them.

Sent by Post

I am finally in Tororo!!

For the next six weeks, Laura and I will be working here with a hilarious missionary named Evelyn Ant. We are going to be spending the first two weeks running basically VBS for two different churches. Then for the rest of our time here, and during the first two weeks, we will be working at Smile Africa ministries helping with over four hundred children there. Also, we will be spending some time at the Salvation Army's orphanage doing work there and helping with their street kids ministry.

How did we get here? Well thats a funny story....

Laura and I got up at 5:30 am and drove to the post office. In Uganda post is not delivered by mail trucks or anything of that sort. No, post is delivered by bus. And not only post can travel on bus, but you can buy a ticket and traveling on the bus with the post. So we went to the post office, bought to tickets to Tororo for less than 7 dollars and waited for the bus to arrive. We finally got on the bus at around 9 am and were headed for Tororo. Then we stopped. Practically every thirty minutes, and the conductor would grab the post and drop it each post office. Then we would start again.

Not only did we drop post at the different offices in different towns, but we also picked up other passengers along the way. We started our journey with maybe ten people on the post bus. There are thirty seats, and by the time we got to Tororo there were about fourty people or more on the post. I don't think the bus could handle that much weight, because for the hour before we reached Tororo, the bus would stop, wait for ten minutes, then go a few hundred meters, and stop again. It should have only taken us about four hours to get from Kampala to Tororo, but i think it ended up taking six and half. It was an experience for sure.

Being white, I obviously stick out a ton, and I think children are more curious about it than I realized. While we were sitting on the bus, there was a woman with a little baby behind me and a toddler. I think the toddler understood what a white person was, but the baby was a bit more curious. For five minutes it felt like it would slowly reached forward and just touch barely touch the back of my arm with its index finger. Imbolden by the fact that I never turned around, ( i thought it was funny and wanted to see what she would do), she began to reach forward and just try to wipe the white off of me. She was confused when that didn't work and began to pinch my skin to see if it would go away that way. Eventually her mom saw and made her stop, but it was really funny.

That's all for now. Pray for us as we prepare the lessons for the next two weeks and as we get to know to Tororo. Also, pray for me as I've been sick and have a dash of homesickness already.

Bedemaber (goodbye in Japadhola)

Learning and Riding

The past few days have been mostly relaxing and attempting to get over jet lag, so there hasn’t been much to report. Yesterday the training began but in a fun way. We split up and went to a few different churches, and the met up later for lunch at my Aunt Karen’s and Uncle Greg’s flat, where I will be staying when I get back from Tororo.

I went to Greg and Karen’s church called Zana Presbyterian. The church was really brilliant. It had two pastors speaking simultaneously in Luganda ( the language of Kampala) and English. Unfortunately, other than the singing which was awesome and in both languages, I do not have much detail to give. As we sat waiting to go to church we had a discussion about how we were doing with jet lag and everyone was still struggling with it, but I thought I was over it and bragged to that effect. I guess God wanted to humble me because as soon as the sermon started, it was almost impossible for me to stay awake. I tried everything, I even would pinch myself every time my lids would droop. But it was to no avail, the only moment I was awake for the sermon was when the pastor did an imitation of Shaggy (the singer who sings “ girl you’re my angel, my darling angel” who is in Uganda at the moment). After church we all met up at the flat and had a delicious African meal and watched the movie City of Joy to get us to think about cross culture issues.

We woke up bright and early today to begin in-depth training. To begin each day, two of us will give our testimonies. Today, Jeremy and I gave our testimonies. I am not an eloquent speaker by any means, but it was good to give my testimony because one I will most likely have to give it many times while I am here, and two it was a really cool way to see how God used different things in my life to bring me to this place. Then we did some language and culture training. We split up by regions we are going to and went to study with a local from our region who could teach us language and culture. Laura and I went to work with a really cool guy named Ben who is actually from Tororo and speaks Japadhola, the local language. It is hard! Here is a sample:

• • Yoga – Hello
• • Yoga bende – I am fine
• • In’tye nadi – how are you?
• • Artye maber, kosaini – I am fine, how are you?
• • Ichiewi nede- Good morning/ how did you wake up?

Then after some delicious lunch of bread and avocado and eggs, we played Frisbee with the guard and the headed out to a place called Mildmay. Mildmay is local HIV/AIDs clinic that was invited to start in Kampala in 1998. This place was brilliant. I cannot even begin to describe it. It was better than any hospital I have seen, even better than most I have seen in the US. It was good to be at Mildmay and get a backround of HIV/AIDs and how it really truly has effected the people and the culture here.

On the way home we took public transportation. We road the Matatu back from Mildmay to the base of the Matoke Inn road.. The Matatu is always an interesting ride. For those of you who don’t know what it is, it’s a 15 passenger van that ends up holding 20+ people. Then we road bodas(motorcycle taxis) up the hill. My driver was awesome, as I sat side saddle on the back of his motorbike, only holding on occasionally, he made a point of beating the rest of the groups bodas. He speed over and around speed bumps and went so fast. Needless to say we got there first. It was so much fun.

The rest of the week will be about the same. I leave for Tororo Friday, so I will probably put up one update before then.

Finally Here!!

I am finally in the red soil. This journey felt so long and I don’t think I have ever had so many emotions in so little time. We left Pearl River for Newark Airport at about two pm on Wednesday. We got through ticketing fairly quickly, but then we had to help the Munson’s with all twenty pieces of luggage. It took about an hour to get them checked in, to weigh all the luggage, and to get it tagged. It was a hilarious endeavor to us, but I am pretty sure those in line behind us were quite annoyed. At around six pm we were on the flight to London!
That flight was not much fun. We all decided to take an over the counter sleeping pill to ensure that we would sleep, but since we took it so early in the day it just ended up making us loopy and restless on the flight. Half of the group slept, I did it random spurts. So restless but still running on adrenaline, we arrived in London around 7 am and hit the ground running. We checked our carry-ons at some sketchy place in the airport then bought an all day tube pass and headed into London. It was really weird to be in London because I had just been there less then two months ago, but when I was there I was even more tired so I don’t even remember where we went. So every place we would go I would have a vague memory of it, but I couldn’t tell you definitively that I had been there before. Anyway, we did basically everything in London in about nine hours. We would think of a place we wanted to go, or look at a place that sounded cool on the map, and then we would hop on the tube and go there. By the time we got to Wembley Stadium, around three pm, I was exhausted. We walked wembley and even saw a Segway race around the stadium and then decided that even though we had a few more hours till our flight we would head back to the airport. I could barely keep my head up on the train and nodded off more than once. Through a few more train changes, we arrived at the airport around 445 and had about four hours to kill. We slept, or attempted to sleep. Oh and Laur, I got a mango passion fruit smoothie thing of course.
At around nine we were headed to Uganda. I tried to talk to this adorable old lady next to me who was from Uganda, but she couldn’t understand me. Pray for me that I learn to speak slowly and distinctly, as I am beginning to realize this is going to be a huge hindrance while I am here. After failed conversation, I fell asleep before we even took off and didn’t wake up till the served us some nasty dinner. I slept most of the flight and didn’t wake up until they were shoving a breakfast box in front of my face. That breakfast was weird, one thing I will never understand is where British Airways comes up with their menu for breakfast, it was a spinach egg and mayo sandwich thing!
When we landed we had no problems. All of our luggage arrived, Lawrence was there to pick us up and after a little confusion over who he was picking up, we headed off to Matoke Inn, the AIM guesthouse. We get to hang out here and relax for the day, which is perfect because I don’t think I have ever been this tired in my entire life, but I am not allowed to go to sleep so that I can break the jet lag.
Being here is really weird. I think because I am so tired my emotions are going haywire, because one moment I am like so happy to be here and am excited because its all familiar and feels like a second home, and the next I get really frightened when I realize that five months is a long time. Pray for me that I will get focused and not get homesick.

That’s all for now folks! Love y’all and miss you!