Hello Uganda

Good bye Kenya….hello Uganda!! Serving in Kenya was tremendous. What can I say?…I was a little nervous coming into The World Race. Where would I be living? A tent? What would I be eating??? Although there have been a few interesting meals, as a whole the food has been wonderful. Would I get sick.? Get malaria?? Nope!! Malaria has been an issue for a number of people on my. We have had whole teams come down with it. While we are taking preventative medication it does not cover for all the different stands of malaria. While staying in Kenya we had developed a close friendship with a native Kenyan named John. He had never had malaria but in one night he started running a high fever, nausea, and body aches, some of the classic signs of malaria. His countenance changed from exuberant joy to extreme weakness but the thought of going to the hospital for him was a worrisome because of the cost. It was so awesome though, because we where able to take him to a clinic that night and start treatment and within hours of receiving treatment he was feeling better, and by the following afternoon he was home. His bill?….2,500……!!!…..shillings….so what does that translate to in dollars….only about about 25!! I wish you could have seen the gratitude that was on his face and felt the joy that filled his heart after our team payed his bill. It was a look that was worth millions. He has become a great friend and I hope to continue our friendship even though I am continuing on now in Uganda.

I have now been in Uganda for a little over a week and things have been great. It rains just about every day but really the weather is soooo nice but where there is rain there is MUD and lots of it. Its not till you get more in the city that you have paved (pot hole ridden) roads, so I have just got used to washing my feet on a regular bases (I typically where sandals everywhere I go). We are located just about 25 minutes outside of Kampala (the capital of Uganda) in a village called Kisigula. This past week we visited Conerstone elementary school located in Ggaba (near Lake Victoria). I did not really know what I was getting into when I signed up for The World Race but I am coming to discover that we are here to do just about anything….but teaching??? I never saw myself as much of a school teacher but here I am teaching in Africa. Thankfully I my students are 1/3 my size and most their problems have to do with telling time…whew….I think I can handle that. We have been traveling just about every day to teach for a few hours in the schools that the pastor, our contact here, is head over.

So traveling here in Africa is sooo much fun. Ok maybe you have to have a little bit of a twisted sense of humor to think so but its just crazy at times. We have to travel to “taxi park” once we get to the city to get a connecting taxi to where we are trying to go. “Taxi park” is so crazy. There seems like there is about a gazillion van/bus like taxi’s crammed into a very small area and if it had recently rained its might as well be a mud pit. If you can manage not to slip and fall into the mud as you squeeze between taxi's, so close together that you can barely fit, then you are doing good. When you do find the right taxi, which I could never do without the help of a local contact who always helps us, you get to watch as taxi drivers yell at one another (who knows what they are saying…???) trying to get us into there taxi. But eventually we make it into a taxi and we are off…..or so you would think. So this past time we sat for about 20 minutes as we where jammed bumper to bumper trying to get out of the taxi park. Tires spinning in mud, people pushing taxi's out of pot holes, the wonderful smell of BO a 18 people packed like sardines into a matatu (that’s what they call a taxi here)

So what am I learning….flexibility…physically (you know you have to bend in some interesting ways to fit 18 people in a small van), mentally (teaching!!!…ok I know its only elementary but its still challenging. Plus have you ever watched the show “Are you smarter then a fifth grader?? Point rested), and spiritually. God likes to put us in things that we never foresaw to teach us things we never knew about ourselves. God is so good. Africa is so good. This opportunity has been so good. Your support in my life is so good. Thank you for everything. Hope you all are doing well.

Downtown Kampala, Uganda