May30, 2012

May 30, 2012 Hi everyone, I have a unique blog today with a special request.  First of all, after school today we got the treat of going in town to a resort hotel and swimming, which was a great escape for a couple hours.  We laid out for a little while and then swam in the rain until the sun came back.  It was a great day to just enjoy the company of any, Amanda, Sarah, and our African friends David, Tim, and Diana.      Before I start this next part I need to give you a little bit of general information.  The most popular form of transportation here is by a piki piki, which is a motorcycle taxi.  They speed all over the roads with people hanging on for their lives.  More often than not the drivers don't have driving permits or taxi permits.  Sadly, it isn't uncommon for them to get in accidents and when they do, they generally jump off and flee the scene.  Here are the reasons they leave quickly: 1. Obviously because they don't have a permit, 2. So they don't get taken to jail, and 3. So they don't get flogged by the crowd especially if the accident is fatal and clearly their fault.  Now I'm sure a lot of you may guess this or just assume, but I'm gonna go ahead and state the obvious, their government and laws are a lot different and less enforced than ours.  For example, cars and buses and all other forms of transportation are allowed to freely pass each other and they don't exactly have speed limits.  Scary? Absolutely.  So anyways back to the story.  Some were driving back home from the pool and ahead on the road we see bushels of leaves scattered across the road and a mob of people surrounding a specific area.  We slowed down to try and figure out what was going on and to our displeasur we saw a woman sprawled across the road covered halfway by a shirt.  There was a huge cut across her leg and the bone was clearly sticking out.  Everybody was standing around staring at her.  At the time, we didn't know if she was dead or what was going on but there were 2 abandoned piki pikis nearby, so we assumed there was a motorcycle accident.  We were all speechless.  There was some sort of policeman at the scene, so we continued driving. As soon as we passed the scene, a huge (and I mean almost double decker size) bus flies screaming by us, not paying the least but if attention to the crowd or slowing down at all.  If you have a sensitive stomach please stop reading here.  We were all shocked by how fast the bus was moving that we kept our eyes on it to see if it would slow down, but it didn't.  Next thing we knew the bus was literally running over the woman's body as well as the piki pikis and people were literally running for their lives.  We don't know what happened next.  We all sat there in the car speechless the rest of the way home.  Nobody could really grasp what had just happened, we could only hope that the driver of the bus was apprehended and arrested.  Now I'm not just telling you this story for your jaw to drop.  If you're offended by it or don't like it I do apologize.  I just thought it would be an opportunity to ask for your prayers for Uganda as a country and it's people and government.  Apparently stuff like that isn't unheard of and they don't always capture people because they will flee.  Now understand that this is a touchy subject and people are sometimes hesitant to talk about it, but the government here isn't exactly like ours in terms of looking out for the people in the country it's more of a selfish type of ruling system.  Finally, please continue to pray for my time here and the people here and that the lords work is done in the crusade this week and during the rest of our trip as well.      The team arrives tomorrow and then start their work bright and early Friday morning.  I will be a part of what they do during the weekend and after school, but I think it'll be nice to have my own time at school.  There are 9 people in the team and they'll be here until the 9 of June.  Please also keep praying for my work a the school because I'm getting frustrated and definitely need patience with the children because they're struggling a great deal.  If nothing else I just wanna be able to love on them in that time and hopefully help them out at least a little in their school work.  I miss and love you all so much and again appreciate your prayers and encouragement and support so so much. 

Tuesday may 29, 2012

Good afternoon!  I hope you are all well.  I just got back from bible study and decided it was a good time to update everybody because this was my first day at school implementing my ideas in small groups.  I might have mentioned this earlier, but Monday's are our days off so yesterday we went into town for lunch with Katherine.  There's a really good restaurant in town called chat n chinos that is run by a Ugandan whose parents are involved in another ministry here.  The restaurant owners good friend is a muzungu and she helped him put the menu together so it's kinda become a muzungu hangout.  Anyways,  so at school this morning Amanda and I started our pull out groups n both classes.  We pulled the lower kids in the nursery class first for an hour and each had half of the group.  I took the lower half and we went over letter flash cards that I made.  It was a little more frustrating than I anticipated, but I definitely see potential for progress and learning.  The biggest challenge with the nursery class I think is going to be a girl named Nora.  Nora was severely malnourished growing up so she is very far behind developmentally and has been in the nursery class for 4 years now- Nora is 13 years old in a class with 3-6 year olds.  She has much difficulty retaining information and staying on task, but she is one of the sweetest kids in the class!  She tries very hard and in the classroom I try and work with her one on one when it's time for writing skills.  The other children treat her the very same that they treat each other, which is a blessing because she is so great with the little ones and she always has a smile on her face..      Amanda and I have come to discover that the school system here kinda skips basic skills. The children don't understand the concept of what sounds letters make or even how to identify letters.  I keep praying for patience because I can already tell this is gonna test it.  I've decided I'm gonna make a matching game with capital and lower case letters as well as just small flash cards with letters on them so I can lay them out and ask them to hand me the letter a and so on.  Any other ideas?  Keep in mind our resources are very limited :/ but I'm willing to be creative!      As for me,  I can still feel the devil poking at my insecurities and vulnerabilities, but I also feel the lord strengthening me and creating defenses around me.  I get homesick often but luckily I've become pretty decent at thinking it through and reminding myself that I need to take each day as it comes and really take advantage of the days or else I'll get home and look back and regret and feel ridiculous about wasting all this time.  Again, I'm so appreciative of all your love and support here because it helps keep me going.  I ask that you pray for the school and that God will really use all of us to encourage everyone here and use them to teach us.  Please pray for Nora and the other children of the Genesis primary school that they will be able to be on the same level as their peers in the near future so they can move up next year.  Continue to pray for the people and community here and for the team coming in on Thursday.  There's a team coming from Florida that plans on evangelizing in the community and leading a crusade during the night.  I love and miss all of you!

May 26, 2012    Hello! It's Saturday afternoon and I'm sitting on the porch with my neighbors (nancy and bosco) and their family- they also work for the ministry. They are some of the most amazing people I've met here! Bosco is the school administrator and also helps with so many different aspects of the ministry. His wife nancy also helps with so many parts of the ministry and cooking and taking care of children.  Bosco and nancy came here from Kenya where they ran their own orphanage.  They have taken in Samuel, the 16 year old I talked about a couple blogs ago, which is amazing of them in itself.  They are very selfless people and go out of their way to make us more comfortable.  They really exhibit the love of the Lord in their everyday lives and it's so encouraging.  I feel so blessed to have them here with us and as a part of the ministry.  We just spent the last hour playing with photo booth on my iPad and they loooooved it!! We were all laughing so hard that we were crying... It's awesome to be around people like this, it definitely makes me feel more at home.  And now Bosco is tying the little ones up to a pole with a big rope and they are looooving it! He's one of the best dads I've ever met because he's just a big kid himself, so the kids love it!  One of the things I missed that really excites me about being here is walking to and/or back home from AWANAS because the children are so excited about muzungus that as we walk down the street children come from all over and walk with us.  They come and hold our hands and are excited to just be with us... I'm not saying this to sound like we're some big popular group, but it's so fun to be surrounded by them.  It's very funny at the same time because it's a big muzungu caravan- 4 white people and crowds of children all around us.  I'm sure it's a sight to the rest of the villagers.      Your prayers really have been working miracles here because I'm to the point where I feel comfortable and excited being here. Making friends and being around old friends really helps me feel at home, and I've also been sleeping better!  By 9pm I'm usually exhausted and looking forward to laying in bed and reading because I get up early and the heat itself is exhausting.  Anxiety comes and goes but I'm determined to overcome it and I'm reading/have read awesome books that have been helping me as well.   Thank you all so much again for your prayers and words of encouragement, I miss and love you all!

May 24, 2012

Hello!!!! I hope my last blogs didn't exhaust all of you! I hope you all are doing well also! So I've been observing the primary school all week trying to figure out how I can help and after a discussion with mom last night I think I've discovered ways I can help! It's so encouraging for me because the past couple days have been tough bc I have been feeling like, how can I help? What can I do to make a difference? It's been difficult to find my purpose or niche here, BUT I think I've found it! They have 2 classes in the primary school with only 3 teachers total. In each of the classes there is a very low group that has no idea what's going on and a higher group that follows, so we suggested to the administrator and Katherine that I pull out the low kids in each class for an hour each and work on phonics with them. They don't understand letter sounds or recognition but they're expected to spell and write and read English at 4 years old... Are you serious?! I really have hope that I can help with this and with time I'm sure it will be better, so please pray for that! Your responses are wonderful and your prayers are working! Thank you all so much! Miss and love you all!

May 20, 2012- may 21, 2012      Kozeo (hello) everybody!  I know maybe you're overwhelmed by everything I've posted at the same time, but internets been down for the past couple days and I haven't had the opportunity to upload anything.. Sorry!  It's Sunday evening at 7 and we are getting ready for dinner.  This morning Sarah and I taught Sunday school to the little ones and then went to church.  We taught the children about Esther and how she saved the Jews from being killed by Haman.  Church lasted about 2 hours, which is pretty standard here but pretty long for us being from the states :/.  It's tough because it gets pretty hot inside the church.  Last night I had difficulty sleeping again, which kinda sucks because it's definitely catching up to me.  My body is exhausted and my immune system seems to be getting weak because I'm developing somewhat of a cough and unfortunately it's allergy season here too, which sucks for me :(.  Anyways enough complaining, I know!  After church we had lunch at Katherine's and played with the kids for a little while and then Sarah and I went into town with our good friend Bumba.  The wifi Internet cafe was closed, so we headed to a non wifi Internet cafe which was slow but I got to see my emails and got a few sent out.  I also got to see all of your posts on my blog! I want to try and express to you how appreciative I am for your posts! They're such a blessing to me and a huge source of support and encouragement, so thank you a million times over and keep em coming!!!  After the Internet cafe Bumba, Sarah, and I went to a little restaurant in town for African milk tea (one of the most delicious drink I've ever had- its a mix of African spiced tea and milk).  We are preparing for dinner at the moment, which Katherine has made for us tonight.   Once again, as night falls and it gets close to go home to bed, I started getting anxiety about going to bed.  Sarah talked it out with me again, which helps me a lot.  I decided to try something new while going to bed and turned on a sermon on my iPad to go to bed to.  It helped me so much because it kept my mind focused on one thing.  I also sleep with my rosary at night, which comforts me a lot too. I prayed through my room before bed to build up Gods defenses against the devil.  I slept through the night and felt much more rested in the morning which was great!        Today is Monday, and ended up getting the day off.  We had breakfast at Amanda and Andys and then went into town to do some exploring.  We tried the wifi cafe out again so I could try and upload my blog, but of course they were out of wifi, and unfortunately Internet is still not working in the village :/. While in town we did some shopping around and got some great DVDs.  After town we came back home and will spend the rest of the day hanging out.  Right now, we are actually hanging out with the 16- year old boy Samuel I told ou about earlier and he seems better today than he was 2 days ago, which is exciting and totally a God thing!  I start at the school tomorrow and Amanda will be joining me in the morning and we will come have lunch together back at the house and then I will go back to school after lunch and she will help in the office for the rest of the day.  I'm very excited and hope that I adjust to the heat soon so I have more energy!! Enkutaka (I love you all) and miss you!      

May 18, 2012     So I know I already updated but I'm gonna post 2 blogs today only because I forgot to mention one very important thing in the other blog.  Today we were told about and met a 16- year old boy that is very sick with aids.  His mother has aids and so he and his sister contracted it from her.  His mother isn't around much and when she is it isn't exactly the best situation so his grandmother has been taking care of them most of their lives.  Sadly, his grandmother passed away recently and so his mother is supposed to be taking care of him as he gets sicker and sicker, but she doesn't seem to be around.  He's been in and out of the local clinic as well as staying with some of the youth leaders from Kenya who moved here to help with the ministry (they also have 5 young children, so they're definitely a God send).  Anyways, he has the mindset now that he has nothing to live for and his sickness is making him depressed and sad all the time.  Andy, Amanda (the couple here from colorado), Sarah, and I invited him and another one of our Ugandan friends to watch a movie with us tonight and they came!  So right now it's 9:47 pm and the 6 of us are sitting here watching Rio! He's laughing and enjoying himself, which is awesome!  How lucky are we to have families that love and care for us? If nothing else being here makes me so appreciate the everybody in my life because I've been so blessed and fortunate to have such an amazing family and friends.  So what I'm asking you all to do is please pray that he turns to the Lord in all of this and that his spirits are lifted and that the Lord can somehow use us to help in any way possible!  You're prayers are amazing and so much appreciated! Thank you all so much! Once again enkutaka (love you) and miss you all :)

Day 1

May 18, 2012      ok so its the first full day here finally.  last night was much better than the night before in terms of my fears.  i was still restless and had trouble sleeping, but it was more of my mind not being able to stop going a million miles a minute thinking about all kinds of different stuff.  In the end that was much better than staying up in tears, scared so I'm very grateful for that. All of your emails and blog posts absolutely contributed to that so please know how much I appreciate that and how much of a positive effect it has on me here, they honestly keep me going and keep my head on why I'm here, so I definitely can't thank you all enough for your support and encouragement- keep it coming!! Haha.  Today was wonderful! I'm getting so excited about why I'm here and what I'll be doing here after seeing my friends and the children, oh the children!  They are everywhere and sooooo excited to see muzungus (white people).  They run up to us yelling "muzungu, muzungu!" and shaking our hands and staring at us, it's so funny but also a great experience.  Not to sound selfish or vain but it really makes me feel like I'm here for them, to love them, and to do anything I can to show them the Lord's love.  It makes me smile right now just thinking about how I get to work with these children literally everyday for the next 2 and a half months :).  In case I forgot to share this before, I will be teaching at the primary school (kindergarten and 1st grade) Monday- Friday from 8 am to 4 pm!  Sounds like a long day at first, but then I reminded myself that's the exact same time I worked everyday at home at stonewall, so not so bad, NOT TO MENTION I get to work with the cutest kids in probably the whole world!  I will walk to and from school every morning (quarter mileish, maybe a little more) as well as home for lunch and then back because the food they make for the children isn't necessarily for muzungus, and I'd rather not take the chance in getting sick, soooo a mile a day isn't so bad! Yay for exercise the African way!  Saturday mornings we will have AWANAS (kinda like a vacation bible school for the little ones and youth of the community) where I will be helping with the "cubbies" smallest children (again YES!).  We will be teaching them about stories from the bible and doing different activities as well.  Saturday afternoons will be our time off where we may rest or go into town (Mbale is the closest town about 15-20 min away).  Sunday's of course we will have church all morning (lasts about 2-3 hours, seriously yikes, not to mention how hot it gets in the church :(, BUT we will have the rest of Sundays off I believe).  So there is my day to day in a nut shell! I'm really excited to have consistency this time and kinda be able to do most of this stuff on my own because I think it will really make me feel like a part of the village instead of an outsider.  Last time was great, but I'm glad to be contributing the same way everyday instead of going out to conferences every so often in different towns and not really knowing what I was doing each day. Please don't get me wrong that was wonderful, especially for it being my first time, but independence for my second time is so exciting!  I'm still worried about night time, which I know mentally makes it worse for me because I'm just expecting it to be hard, but I know the day will come when I'm completely comfortable because I already feel this time being different than last time.  On a side note I do have a lovely family of bats living in my ceiling where the only thing separating us s a screen square about 1 foot by one foot in the corner and then of course a ceiling the rest of the room.  But hey I'd take bats over bugs ANY DAY!      So let's talk about the heat, Y U C K!  It's very hot here (no air conditioning anywhere if anyone was wondering haha) and we visited the school where I'll be helping today and it's especially hot in there.  That just means doing more laundry for sure!  But if they can all do it so can I!  I know I'll adjust to it though so no worries.  Internet has not been working all day so I'm not sure if I will be able to really post this tonight or if I'll have to wait until tomorrow.      I apologize for this being so long if any of you are bored i just wanted to give a complete update, and once I get going its hard to stop because I don't wanna miss anything!  This morning we had our meeting basically just discussing our time here no what we will be doing, which went well.  Following the meeting katherine (lady who started the organization) and pastor Charles took us around to see everything that's been done since the last time I was here, exactly 3 years ago.  The church used to just be a cement building with windows, but now it is painted and tiled! It is beautiful!  The genesis school (primary school where I'll be working) is also the Sunday school room right behind the church and has also been painted and they have built a wooden divider inside so that they're able to have kindergarten on one side and first on the other, which is nice.  poverty is what hasn't changed though :/... It is still mind blowing that poverty like this exists in the world.  I'll try and paint a picture for you... As we were going down the road (which is just a dirt road through the village with potholes and everything) in the van little children were chasing us and waving, which as great, but half of them were naked and the other half maybe had a shirt with nothing else and to add to that they were completely covered in dried mud.  They live in what are called mud huts because they're literally built out of mud.  And the mud huts are teeny tiny, so they basically only sleep in them and live outside (don't forget about the heat I told you about).  Fortunately (don't take this the wrong way and I hope I'm not offending anyone by saying this) ignorance is bliss.  They've never been exposed to anything else so this is all they know.  And a bigger fortunately, the ministry does a great job at helping provide food and other needed items if necessary.  Following our "tour" we headed into Mbale for a lunch out and to run to the market for some things. Lunch lasted about 3 hours haha (beautiful thing about Africa- they're not really ever on a schedule, maybe that's why I love it so much! :)).  We got mini bananas, which by the way are amazing! Way better than American bananas.  So before I say what else we got let me preface it by saying last time I was here they only had bottled water (which is the only water we can drink, which is also the ONLY water we can use to brush our teeth with - sucky and annoying), bottled coke, bottled fanta, and bottled sprite.  So today we went to the market and found.. Wait for it (this is for you especially Jaclyn)... COKE ZERO!!!!!! How excited am I?!?!  Water gets boring so this is definitely a nice surprise and treat every once in a while!  Aywayssssss now I'm in my room resting and blogging and getting ready for dinner in an hour at Katherine's house (on the ministry's other compound about a mile away).  We will eat dinner at her house Friday, Saturday, and Sunday and every other meal on our compound with the 2 other Americans here and when the other teams come they will be joining us as well.  So I do believe I'm FINALLY finished for this round!  I hope it wasn't too boring or long, and please PLEASE leave comments I love seeing them (when Internet does decide to work), so thank you so much for leaving them last time I love and appreciate it so much!  I miss and love you all!

The beginning

      So I finally made it! After 20 hours in the air I finally get to have a break from flying!  Surprisingly I did a lot better on the flights than I thought I would (in case you're confused flying terrifies me).  Technically I'm still on a plane for another hour and a half because in a little bit we will make a drop off/pick up in Kigali, Rwanda (hopefully quick!).  Flight experience so far has been  pretty good.  The food is surprisingly better than i remember except that i feel like they're constantly feeding us (I've had 4 meals in the past 16 hours) (which isnt terrible except for the fact that ive been sitting in the same place for basically 20 hours and so has my food.)  Best thing about airplane food by far is the dessert, worst thing is the pizza because of its nasty chewy crust!        I met up with Sarah, the girl from Colorado who will be working with the ministry for the summer as well, and I think we're gonna get along so well! She's been to Kamonkoli (village where we will be living) 3 other times before.                  I'll be honest I am starting to feel a little homesick and kinda have that looming feeling that the adjustment period will be a little tough, but I suppose I expect that because of how different everything is and just the lack of communication I'll have with family and friends :/.  Fortunately, yesterday morning (while I was rushing to get everything done because I left it all last minute) I got stuck behind a car in the middle of a meltdown right after I said bye to my mom and the car had a bumper sticker that simply quoted psalm 46:10 - "be still and know that I am God". I honestly don't think there could have been a more perfect time for me to see that... I was scrambling all day and overtaken with anxiety and fear and as soon as I read that I was reminded that who am I to worry about this trip? Yes, it's very outside of my comfort zone, but that's when God uses us the best isn't it? The rest of the verse finishes by saying "I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth". I mean really? I'm so amazed how God works sometimes because the beginning of the verse is telling me to give up control and let God do his job, and then the rest of it finishes by God proclaiming he will be exalted among the nations... I think it's pretty fitting since I'm going halfway around the world to do His work and spread His love. I am nervous and scared and anxious and excited and ready to see what He's gonna teach me here!  I'm chasing my lion (in case you're confused by that reference you need to read "In a pit with a lion on a snowy day" by mark batterson it's an amazing book encouraging you to step outside of your comfort zone and let God use you. I hope my posts don't get boring to anyone I'm gonna try and post as much as I can! Please leave comments because this will probably be the main form of communication I have! I miss and love you all so much and I can't wait to share my adventures with you! :)    So this is gonna be 2 blogs in one... We just got into kamonkoli (village where I'm staying) and luckily the hotspot is working right now so everyone can get an update! Last night was miserable for me :/ I think a big reason for that was because I was expecting it to be so I just allowed myself to break down unfortunately. Please keep me in your prayers, when night falls for some reason I just start to get attacked by the devil and my mind goes crazy. I'm 7 hours ahead of you all so start praying in the afternoon and it'll be my night!  The positive about it all so far though was how awesome it is to see my friends here! It's been 3 years but doesn't seem that long at all! My Internet connection here is through a hot spot so it's super spotty and won't always work and it's only in the office and isn't always on, sooo I will update as much as I possibly can! If you wanna shoot me an email feel free!! I love hearing from friends and family! I love and miss you all so much! Thank you all for your prayers!