We spent the month of August in Uganda doing ministry with the Kinkiizi (pronounced Chin 
Cheesy) Diocese of the Church of Uganda in the village of Kanungu. We are really close to Congo about 2 hours drive on dirt mountain roads from the nearest town. Prior to coming out here, we spent 3 days in Jinja Uganda, then a couple more in Kampala (the capitol city). While in Jinja, I got to go to the Source Café which is a place I’ve wanted to visit for a long time. It was started by missionaries 10 years or so ago. My team rushed into town on the back of motorbikes, got coffee and sweets to go, and headed back out to the campground.
In Kanungu we spoke at 3 schools during our first week. The next 2 weeks the kids were on school holiday and each local church hosted youth events where we presented the program. We spoke on topics such as HIV/AIDs, life in America, and also gave encouraging messages from the Bible. We also worked with the church youth painting the new addition to the cathedral. I had a lot of fun painting with 15 foot tree branches attached to the end of the paint roller. The church is big with about 700 people from the village and surrounding areas coming to church on Sundays.
While we were painting, or taking a break from painting, I got to eat some fresh sugar cane. Some of the girls came walking up the hill with a 6 foot stalk of sugar cane, took a machete, and chopped it into 10 or so pieces. They brought me a piece and the two guys next to me started ripping it apart with their extremely strong teeth. (speaking of strong teeth, I have a video from last month of a guy opening a coke bottle with his teeth) I had to get some more help with the machete to get into my piece, but once I did it was delicious!! Sugar cane, bananas, pineapples, peanuts, and passion fruit all grow
locally and we can pretty much eat them as often as we like.
We will spend the next few days in Kampala with our entire squad. I should be posting some more blogs about life in Uganda while we have internet before we head out to Dublin next week.
