Farewell to the PPAC Team

As I write I am sitting in the dark of our room in Jinja as our children sleep.  Today we said farewell to the team we have been with for the past two weeks - it was hard to see our time together come to an end as it has been such a great group of people.  It is amazing how bonded you can become living in such close quarters and serving in such a unique culture together.

One of the highlights of our time together came just hours before they were to depart as all 13 of us hired a boat driver and set out to find an appropriate (ie semi-clean) place to Baptize three of the people on the team in Lake Victoria.  After a bit of searching, the perfect spot was found right at the soure of the Nile River.   The "Do not Urinate" sign gave us that little bit of confidence that this would be a nice clean piece of water!!  Well, not really, but there we stood and listened to three people talk about why they wanted to be baptized at this particular time in their lives - It truly was the perfect end to the trip!!

We saw everyone off and then settled in to spend one last night here in Jinja as a family, which we realized is the first time we have been just the 5 of us ever in Uganda.  We've had a fun night!!  My only wish is that our bed didn't smell like something died in it!!  I have learned to sleep on my back in order to keep my nose as far away from the mattress as possible!

We continue to feel incredibly thankful for the chance to be in this country that we have grown to love so much.  Tomorrow we will meet up with Brent and Nigel in Kampala to get some supplies and then head back to Mpigi.  As fun as it is to get away for a couple of days, we can't wait to get back to what feels like 'home' here and to be with our friends.  Scott and I will begin to spend a greater amount of time teaching, we will continue to do some care and compassion visits in the community, and of course we will simply "be" with the community, whatever that may look like from day to day.

Thank you for your prayers - we have been blessed with health and safety thus far (apart from insect bites, lots of scrapes from falls, and a more pronounced cheek bone for me as a result of a paddle to the face during rafting).  Yes, I rafted the Nile - so much fun!!!  Thanks to a few 20 year olds that convinced me this would be a good thing to do:) I must say that our guide 'Juma' kept us quite entertained throughout the day!  Besides doing his best to make sure we were afraid for our lives most of the time, he also taught us many things, such as what a 'Badonkadonk' is!!  He would like a wife with a large one!!   Scott and the kids did a 'Family Raft' which was great fun for them.  Owen would have liked some bigger rapids, but he did get to go down some Class 2's in a life jacket so that was fun for him!  He can't wait to be 16 so he can raft and bungee jump with everyone else!!