Friendship

Some of my neighbors. I miss them!

Churchplants, Children and our Summer Team

These last couple of weeks have been really awesome. On Sunday, we were able to go to the very first week of a new church plant. This was not on my bucket list, but it definitely should have been. It was so incredible, and I was blown away watching the Holy Spirit move on this first day. There were all sorts of very different people there. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a church with that much variety, but it was really great to tell people of all backgrounds that they are loved. We’ll keep visiting with and pursuing the people there and are praying that everyone will soon come to know Jesus personally.

It was held in a disco joint (they told us we could use the building any morning of the week), and I was so incredibly blessed to be there. While it wasn’t exactly conventional, it was great. The main people that helped to start the church plant were all really faithful and excited about what was going on and it was really neat to see the fruit of that (I was not one of the main people to have started this, but did get to see some of it unfold).

We’ve also been having wonderful times with our neighborhood friends. They are probably all under 10, and I’m starting to wonder how I would be able to love kids more, even if they were my own. One of the girls is deaf, but she always has so much to say. She’ll run up and give us a huge hug when we see her and then proceed to tell us, with her hands, stories from whenever the last time was that she saw us. A lot of times these stories are a bit lost in translation, but it is fun to talk to her. We’ve started praying for her often, she is so great. The other kids will a lot of times run up and start attaching themselves to our hands. We’ll sometimes find ourselves with three or four kids on each hand, which is great.

The summer team also arrived today. There are two women, one my age and another closer to my parents (a first grade school teacher) and they are both very sweet. They’ve only been here for a couple of days but are doing great and both seem like they will be really great to get to know over the next few days.

Not in America

It has been a while since my last post, I hope that everyone is doing well and have really enjoyed hearing from all of you! This will be my first post since arriving in Gulu, and I will be trying to condense many thoughts and stories.

First of all, the power has been out quite a bit lately. We also ran out of water for a while, and this has all combined to create some interesting experiences. Because of the lack of water, I took my first bucket shower. This is when you get a jerry can full of water, dump it into a bucket and then pour cups of water over you to bathe. It was quite cold, but I was really excited about it as it made me feel more Ugandan. : ) Ashley has also been sick while this has been happening. We are not sure what the sickness is, but we’re pretty confident that it’s not malaria, which we think is a good thing. A few people have been overly kind and helpful through this, namely the Forestor family, Jessica at Café Larem and our night guard, Cosmas. I could really go on about them for quite a while but will just say that I’ve been blown away by their kindness, concern and willingness to serve. We also had Simon, Pato and Lona drive around with us for literally hours going to clinics to see if we could pinpoint what is going on with Ash. We’ve narrowed it down to something bacterial, have medicine and are all praying for a quick recovery. They were great with helping us during that process! Also, Ashley is feeling a lot better today, so we are very thankful!

The neighborhood ministry is still so much fun. We are trying to teach a little deaf girl some simple words in American Sign Language, and I think she may be starting to understand at least two words (dog and later, we’re not totally sure why these two). The village is so great. This was only my third day to go out, and I learn new things every time. Today the kids apparently decided I should know their language and would speak to me in long Acholi sentences. My reaction would be to talk back in gibberish and they would just laugh. I also had around 20 kids gather in a circle with gaping mouths to watch a little girl play with my hair. My hair feels very different to them, and they are rather fascinated by it, which is funny to watch. They also played elbow tag for the first time, and they were so intense! They would, at times, actually tackle one another to be safe from the person chasing them, and the kids just laughed through a whole lot of the game, as did I.

Later in the day I had my first experience visiting a family. It was totally different! I sat on the floor of a mud hut, which is smeared with cow dung for a yet-to-be-discovered reason and was served chicken and cassava. Culturally, it is very rude to not finish your entire plate of food; this can be intense as the portions that they serve are most of the time probably around three times an American portion. Also, they eat literally everything off the chicken bone and then oftentimes break it and suck out the bone marrow.. through this process I prayed a lot, thought of my grandpa who always impresses me with how much he eats off of a chicken bone and wondered if they are still filming episodes of fear factor (I did not suck out the bone marrow, maybe next time). I really love that family though, and I was so happy that they invited us over. It is exciting to continually try new things as well, I am so glad to be here!

I have oftentimes experienced here that the evidence of the hope Jesus provides to people can be so obvious in people from all different backgrounds! This is amazing to see, and I am blown away by how cool it is that I can witness these things. Just hanging out with people, in many ways quite different from me, is intense and so much fun. I am excited to see what the future holds and know that God will provide everything we need, He is awesome!