Random Facts

It has been awhile since I have written and now I don’t even know where to begin.  I am thinking this is going to end up being a “random facts” blog!!!  One more day before visitors will start arriving in Uganda and while I am VERY excited to have everyone here, I am sad because it means that our time here is passing too quickly.  We are enjoying the deepening of our friendships with our Ugandan friends and I feel I am finally able to speak a tiny bit of Lugandan with them which is a major accomplishment.

On Saturday mornings I have been making my way down to Rose and Geoffrey’s home (He is the pastor at the church here).  It is now tradition that I will bring coffee for Rose and myself and we will visit while she does her laundry and her daughter Praise sits on my lap.   I have such respect for this woman…..she exudes strength and gentleness all wrapped in one!!  Each day she can be found down at the church with Mama Sophie praying for up to 2 hrs at a time.  Although we know very little of each others language, we visit for a nice long stretch on Saturday mornings and we learn from each other.  She is lovely.

On a different note, we had a visitor show up at our home today.  He was very intoxicated and insisted that Scott was “Joseph”.  Other than his motioning for something to drink, and his outstretched arms to hug me, we were understanding very little of what the man was saying.   He was also sporting a rather large Machete so I started to wander up to find someone who might be able to talk to him.  However, before I got even 10 steps Malumba (the man who manages this place) was on his way.  I think part of the reason I feel so safe here is that they ALWAYS seem to know what is going on for us and are looking out for us.  He was able to lead this man away and then we all had a good laugh as he told us the man had been speaking Swahili to Scott.   

Our kids continue to thrive here.  Owen is fully immersed in life here and has made some wonderful friendships.  Tonite, I found him walking arm in arm with his friend Kato.  Really, is this our Owen???  Whenever the kids are around, Owen is amongst them and we learned tonite that was he hasn’t been doing is getting clean underwear as he informed us he’d been wearing the same ones for 6 days!!!  And backwards at that!!!  What a kid!!!  Of course, his father was proud!!!  Beck continues to enjoy being the life of the party.  However, yesterday I found him at the older girls home teaching them songs!!!  There he was, surrounded by a group of girls singing his heart out.  He had come and gotten song sheets for them and I suppose was giving them Demo’s of the songs!!!  Pais is still sticking close to mom and dad, but is venturing out more and more!!!  She continues to kneel to greet the Mama’s, which they find so funny!!

I did two days of Counselling Training last week with 16 people.  We will continue to meet weekly for the duration of our time here.  I love teaching them and learning from them.   On Sunday Michael encouraged the whole church to come out, so we shall see what happens!!!  Just good to be able to share some of what I have learned with them.

We continue to be so thankful for the chance to be here and already I wonder how we will ever be able to leave!!!