Here is the monthly summary from last month in Uganda.
Here are the numbers
Number of beds we slept in: 3
Number of Internet networks we used: 3
Number of meals that included rice: 16
Number of times we packed our bags: 3
Cases of malaria in our house: 2
Cases of typhoid in our house: 2
Cases of waterborne parasites: 2
Cases of fungus: 1
Number of babies who cried because we’re white: 5
Number of meals that included ugali or matoke: 15
Number of miles we ran during the gym classes that we taught:
approximately 80
Number of bricks made: 700
Bottles of impure water we consumed: 250
Number of Dutch Blitz games played: 65
Advice to Future Racers
If your contact in Kenya tells you that you should only drink the
bottled water from the brand Rwenzori while you’re in Uganda, listen to him.
Our contacts in Uganda bought us Duke water to drink and we found out the day
before we left that it’s a bad brand of water. The manufacturers refill the
bottles with questionable water and melt the bottoms closed again. That might
explain the typhoid and parasites going around the house.
If you want a good place to spend off days near Seeta or Kampala, go
to the Garden City Mall and the Nakumatt Oasis next door. There is free wifi at
a coffee shop next to the Nakumatt if you buy food or drinks. There is also a
nice movie theater and a sweet food court that has Persian, Indian, Cuban,
Mexican, and Lebanese food, as well as an amazing butchery with the best
avocado bacon cheeseburgers ever. If you’re not on the World Race this might
not mean as much to you as it does to us.
Use your mosquito nets in Uganda. Our main contact for East Africa
told us that almost all World Racers who get sent home for malaria get infected
in Uganda…so take your Doxy!
On a similar note, it’s nearly impossible to find bug spray in Uganda,
so make sure you stock up before you come.
Don’t get rid of warm clothes/sleeping bags before coming to East
Africa. Even if you’re tempted to ditch them in Latin America or Asia, remember
that the nights in Africa can be chilly, especially if you’re at a higher
elevation, such as near the Rift Valley.
Learn lots of children’s games so that if you work at a school you’ll have lots of fun new things to teach the kids.
Ministry Summary
We spent this past month working with Celebrate Jesus Ministries and
Goshenland Primary School in Seeta, Mukono, Uganda. If you want to read the
amazing story of how our contact, Pastor Diphus, and his wife Mabel started
these two ministries, see my previous blog. When we asked Pastor Diphus why he
named the property Goshenland, he explained that in the Old Testament the land
of Goshen was a set apart land where God’s chosen people lived within the land
of Egypt. When calamity befell everything around the land of Goshen, it was
spared along with everyone who lived there. This piece of property sits in an
area in Uganda with lots of witchcraft and indigenous religions, but it has been
spared from any curses that inflict the land around it because God set it apart
for his use.
Our main ministry was to play with the school children and help run
their P.E. class. Thankfully, Brent’s lifelong dream has been to become a gym
teacher in Africa, and he has a degree in Health and Physical Education, so he
took over teaching the classes. The rest of us participated, and often felt
like we had secretly been shipped to an East African fat camp because we had to
run and run with the children who are in much better shape than a bunch of
tired missionaries. The kids were adorable and extremely well behaved, so it
was fun to get to teach them games and learn their games. They also taught us
how to make dolls, balls, jump ropes, and Ugandan mats out of banana leaves. As
part of our work with the school we also made about 700 bricks that will be
used to lay a floor for one of the new classrooms.
Our other ministry was with the church that’s on the same property.
We attended the church for both services every Sunday and did all the preaching
for the month. It was a great experience because we finally got to go to the
kind of African church we had always heard about. The children’s choir was
adorable and really talented, and the entire church was very lively and
involved in worship in ways that we are not used to seeing in North America.
Celebrate Jesus Church is an extremely healthy church that is great at training
up the next generation of leaders and sending them out to do God’s work all
over Uganda and East Africa. It was a privilege for us to get to know the
incredible men and women who run these two ministries and the sweet children
who attend Goshenland Primary School.
Prayer Requests
We are now in Kibaha, Tanzania, which is about an hour outside of
Dar es Salaam on the eastern side of the country. Our team is combined with
Team Divine Collision for the month. We are working with a Pentecostal church
here, and we’re supposed to start our ministry tomorrow. It looks like it’s
going to be a lot of door-to-door evangelism, some rural village ministry,
preaching in churches in the area, hospital ministry, and orphanage visits.
This area has a high Muslim population, so we have been waiting until their
holidays end to start our ministry because everything is closed here. Please
pray for this month-for energy, for health as several people on our squad have
caught parasites, dysentery, etc. from rafting the Nile River, for rest as many
of us are having trouble sleeping since arriving here, and for opportunities to
share God’s love to our Muslim brothers and sisters here. I will try to post a
more detailed blog about our ministry here once it starts, but those are the
main things that you can be praying for until then.
As always, thank you so much for following our ministry and supporting
us in prayer!! Here is a video about our month in Uganda with pictures of all the adorable kids. Enjoy!
