After nearly 15 hours on the bounciest bus I have ever been on in my LIFE (I literally felt like I was in one of those bouncy castles the whole time), we arrived in Kampala, Uganda. The bus ride certainly did a number on all of us, as most of us just wanted to sit down on the sidewalk after constantly being ejected off of our seats a few inches every time we hit a bump (that happened about every 5 seconds). Other World Racers have told me that this is pretty common for travel on buses in Africa. We then met our contact for the month, Pastor Noah, and he picked us up in a van and took us to the sleepy little town of Lwamata. I felt like it was Africa meets the wild west because there were oil lanterns everywhere and set up like an old western city you would see in a movie.
Pastor took us to the church first to show us where it was and what kinds of ministry we would be doing this month. The church also has a school that is right behind it and we got to meet a lot of the children and teachers. A lot of the children at the school are orphans, which is pretty common for this community. We actually met an Australian couple that are here to build an orphanage for this community (hopefully we’ll get to visit it sometime this week). At the school, we will get the opportunity to teach English, Bible classes, and other academic classes while we are here this month. I may even get the chance to teach math, which would be awesome!
After we visited the church and school, Pastor Noah took us to the hotel (more like a motel back home) we would be staying in for the month. Surprisingly, it was much nicer than I thought it was going to be….nice beds, safe environment, and chickens everywhere (not so surprising really). Oh, I forgot to mention the small detail that we only have electricity for about 4 hours a day that comes from a generator at the hotel. Apparently, electricity is not so good in this city because it is a long distance from Kampala. It amazes me that the whole town runs with no power during the day and uses lamps and candles at night and some people have generators. That will also explain why blogs this month will be further spread out because internet is not easily accessible so bare with me for communication back home.
I am honestly more humbled than I have been in a while on the race so far. We have definitely been in poor areas all over the world and have seen a lot of poverty, but we have never lived so close to it before. Even how “behind the times” by western standards they are compared to us really puts things into perspective for how everyone lives here. Electricity and accessibility of internet and other communications is common to find everywhere back home, but here I feel as if I am worlds apart. My prayer for this month is that the Holy Spirit would guide me in ministry and that I would allow him to be a part of every aspect of my life here. I pray that I don’t get caught up in thinking about how these are the last 3 months of the race, rather that I want to be in there “here and now” and really focus on the task God has in front of me.
