Tomorrow evening we will be leaving Israel and taking an all night bus ride to Egypt. We should arrive in Cairo in the early morning hours and tour the pyramids before boarding an all night plane for Nairobi, Kenya. Once we are in Kenya, we will arrange transportation to our ministry site in Lira, Uganda.
So far on the World Race we have not been “out in the wilderness”. We have been blessed by comfortable housing (usually with a roof over our heads), running water and toilets, a stable government and economy, small animals that won’t harm you (Uganda is home to Africa’s “Big Five” animals), and most of the comforts from home (the previous countries have been 1st and 2nd world countries). ALL of that is about to change. Please keep us in your prayers! If you haven’t seen the movie “Blood Diamonds”, please watch it. Here is some information I found on a website about Lira, Uganda. I’m not sure how much of this is still going on in the area, but we’ll soon find out.
“Lira is making news around the world. It is not so much the things the people of the town are doing, but what is being done to them by this wild-eyed jok (jok is a spirit, good or bad) by the name of Joseph Kony, whose Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has been raiding villages, towns, and camps of refuge that have become camps of death and destruction.”
“War in itself is bad, but this conflict has been going on for 18 years with no resolve in sight. This war is hellish in that the Joseph Kony’s army recruits its soldiers from the villages and schools of northern Uganda through abductions. Thousands of children have been robbed of childhood and, in many cases, of life itself. Boys and girls are turned into ruthless killers who no longer feel, but are numbed within, and their souls have become seared by the atrocities they have seen and in which they have forced to participate.”
“Children 10 years old are taught to kill, often beginning with their own families. Others are killed and a child is let to live and then the child is commanded to kill in order to stay alive. If children do escape, they will never be the same again.”
