Adventures in Variety

We arrived in Nakaale yesterday afternoon in good order after only about three and a half hours of driving. This was much better than only a couple of days earlier when the missionary who was picking us up came down to Mbale and the direct road was too muddy and the longer detour took him almost six hours.

The peace and quite here is lovely, especially after the bustle of Kampala. Birds and insects form the primary sound backdrop with everything so green compared to last I was here. It’s now the tail end of wet season, so the grass is high and the trees are in full leaf. When I was last here, it was March, which is the tail end of dry season, and that year was unusual because there had been no September-November wet season. I don’t think the temperature is that much different than Kampala, but it feels so much cooler with the lower humidity. I’ll take some pictures as I’m out and about for work the next couple of days.

Today has been a restful Sunday, with church this morning and dinner with the pastor, his family, and a number of others. We’ll have evening service, then cook our own supper.

Tomorrow, our work starts with me taking care of some maintenance work at the clinic and Taryn helping with the preschool, Karamoja Education Outreach (KEO).

Stuart

We finished out our time in Kampala well and came up to Mbale on Wednesday. It’s been a nice couple of days here visiting with friends and purchasing groceries to get us through the next few weeks.

Tomorrow, we head up to Karamoja. The roads have been pretty bad, so we may have to take the long way around to get to Nakaale. Thankfully, one of the missionaries will be driving us from Mbale, so we’re in good hands.

Prayer requests:

• My sore throat is over, but I still have a lingering cough that makes it difficult to have a conversation, since whenever I talk much, I start coughing.
• Margaret has been having trouble getting solid sleep. Hopefully the quiet in Karamoja will help with that.

Stuart

We arrived without problems (both we and our baggage) on Tuesday night and got enough sleep to avoid jet lag, which was nice. That’s not to say that we aren’t dealing with sleep deprivation, but that’s technically something else. ;-)

Wednesday, we were able to go grocery shopping and get cell phone SIM cards and transfer up to the EMI apartment. Our apartment here is normally used by EMI interns, so it’s only set up with twin beds and the mosquito nets won’t work with the two beds squished together. Turns out that two people actually can sleep on a twin bed…

It’s been a busy few days of getting to know EMI and the Kampala area. I’ll post a better summary of EMI once we finish the rounds of talking with everybody, but I will say that it’s been very encouraging. Margaret has also been doing particularly well, which has made things easier.

We attended church today at New City Church and it was refreshing to feel like we were (almost) at our home church.

This week we’ll be with EMI for a couple of more days and then travelling up to Mbale to see friends for a day or two, then up to Karamoja at the end of the week. We still need to work out the details for all of that.

Please pray for:

• Knowing the right questions to ask so that we may get an accurate sense of the work and life here.
• Relief from my sore throat that I think I picked up on the flights.

Stuart

Four years after we left Uganda as individuals, we’re headed back as a family!

We’re leaving in only three short weeks, on October 28th, and returning a month later, on November 29th. We are excited to have two ministries to work with. For our first week, we will be working in the capital city, Kampala, with Engineering Ministries International, focusing on their research and development operations, which aligns with Stuart’s professional background. For the last three weeks, we will work in the rural northeastern region, Karamoja, with the Orthodox Presbyterian Church; there we will be assisting with facility maintenance and educational outreach, all of which supports church planting there. You may remember that this is where we met back in 2015, so it holds a special place in our hearts. In both places, we will be meeting our potential teammates and learning what work the Lord might have for us there long term, especially as we approach this as a family, rather than the individuals we once were.

As we prepare to go on this new adventure, we hope and pray you will support us however you are able. God works through the prayers of his people, and we covet yours. In order to keep you informed of our activities and prayer requests, we will keep this blog up to date. If you’d like e-mail updates, send me a request and I’ll add you to our list.

We are also looking for partners to join in sending us to do this work. We will be on the field for a month, and our cost will be $5800. We are 48% of the way there, so as of today we still need $3000. Progress to our goal is shown in the upper right of the page. And yes, my programming skills are completely rusty, so it’s just text!

Stuart

I spent today cleaning and organizing our garage, which I’ve been putting off for years (the last time was before we were married). I kept adding stuff wherever it fit without much effort (usually the floor), which resulted in a garage where minor gymnastics were sometimes required to navigate it. While I don’t have a before-cleaning photo (I don’t tend to think of such things until after it’s too late), I do have a post-cleaning photo. You can use your imagination for what it looked like before my efforts. Some of it did go in the dumpster, but most of it was just organization. The thousands of mouse dropping, along with the desiccated carcass of one the producers of said droppings, definitely went in the dumpster. That’s not the hazard.

Now, cleaning a garage isn’t normally blog worthy. The impetus of the blog post is what happened about one hour after I finished cleaning. I went back into the garage to put something away, and out of the corner of my eye saw a huge empty space. My first thought was “who stole all my stuff?!” and a mild panic before coming to my senses and realizing that nobody had and that I was the source of the huge empty space. Which I had spent all day on and only finished one hour before. Sigh. I guess that’s the penalty for not cleaning for years.