InvisibleJosh

college station normalcy...sort of

2006-08-23T10:20:00.000+03:00

I'm not sure how much i'll write on this thing now that i'm back in civilization and can just talk to most of the people that read it, but i thought i'd give you guys a few quick updates on life right now.

Firstly, Impact was absolutely incredible. If there's one thing i've learned it's that no matter how much we pray for things contrary to the Lord's will He never answers those prayers because that just wouldn't make sense. So with that in mind I went ahead before we went to Impact and prayed with my guys that it wouldn't go smoothly, that there would be complications and frustrations and that altogether our plans would fall apart becuase ultimately He is glorified when our plans dont happen and his do, and when he breaks plans to show us His better way. For example we have Lazarus. His sisters and the disciples urged Jesus to quickly get to him so He could heal Lazarus. What did Jesus do? He waited till Lazarus died and then glorified God even more by raising him from the dead, not just healing his ailment.

With all that in mind Impact didn't "go off without a hitch" and it was awesome. On the evening of the third night the power went out right about when we were ready to have the basically climactic speaking/worship awesomeness that was planned for the third night. The band didn't want us to go ahead and have an acoustic concert and so some of the guys on exec got really busy hooking an amp up to a car stereo to make the whoel thing happen in the basketball court outside. At first I was really frustrated becuase we don't really need a band to worship the Lord, we can do it anyway anyhow, that's when i realized exactly what we needed to do.

I led our camp in the direction back toward our camp room and veered off into a clearing in the midst of alot of trees. I emplored them all that we give God the glory in this, that we pray over the freshmen's years, over their time here, over really how awesome God is, and just whatever people felt led to pray about. I really expected our counselors to pray, but after i opened it up only our freshmen were to be heard. It was really quite amazing to sit there with my eyes closed in the middle of the woods listening to the cries of the hearts we'd been praying for for so long.

So after that we went back and joined the worship session and the spirit was absolutely alive and moving in that place I could feel Him there amongst us and it was breathtaking, i wish you could have been there to see and feel and hear Him make himself known to so many hearts that needed exactly that. I know in my heart He released people from bondage that night, he freed people, and he redeemed people that thought they'd been previously saved but didn't know Jesus in spirit and in truth.

Ultimately, "His ways are higher than our ways..." and always always better than our own.

An amazingly huge blessing upon returning is the fact that our camp still wants to be a camp. I mean last year our camp didn't make as much of an effort and might not have been as close as this time, add to that the fact that my heart was totally elsewhere last year when i was at impact, but i mean tonight we had dinner and played games at my house and i had about 30 people in my living room and i absolutely loved every second of it.

School starts in less than a week and the job i thought i'd have when i came back ended up not being available. Turns out the bike shop i worked at for about 10 months before i left to go to africa hired up everyone they needed over the summer because they got slammed with business. I just love the apparent change in my heart though. To see Rod feel really bad that he coudln't offer me a job, and then for me to just smile at him knowing that i am not supposed to have a job right now, at least not there.

Then today here's something to get excited about. I ate lunch with a friend of mine who has been accepted into IMB (international missions board)'s Journeyman program. So for hte next two years she'll be a missionary in southern China reaching some unreached people group, the details of exactly what she is doing were kinda fuzzy, or i just cant remember. But the point is I got really pumped hearing about what I'm going to get to do in africa when i get done with school. Then also in the past few days i've really felt a conviction about how much I dislike my major especially now that i know it's not where my life will take me, and that while i may dislike it, I am here right now, because I amo supposed to be here right now, and it's as simple as that.

So i'm excited to find the purpose of my time here for the next 1.5 to 2 years, to see what i need to see, do what i need to do, meet who i need to meet, and move in the way i need to move.

Life's never been more exciting, and i've never felt so alive...

james dudt is a doody head

2006-08-04T08:19:00.000+03:00

ok that title was just for james, enjoy you butthole.

So here's my last day in Africa, my last day in Uganda....at least for quite some time. What can i say? it's definitely been an adventure. I've met some amazing men and women of God, I've seen amazing things and it's changed the path of my life quite profoundly.

I don't have much more to share with you guys, all i can say is thanks for reading and thanks for your prayers. It's 820AM here right now and i have approx 12 hours before we head to the airport and i board the plane at 11pm africa time, 3pm central time. Today i'll spend in the city, sucking in the sights (and the smog/burning trash smoke) for the last time. The walk to work this morning was definitely bittersweet. I think it's finally hit me just how much i am going to miss this place, how thankful i am for the time and experience that was spent here, and how much of an impression it's made on my heart, and for that matter my soul.

Again thank you so much for your prayers, they've been felt, in the midst of being in africa and coping with a different culture, poverty, starvation, death and dying i've also dealt with alot of personal stuff, like who i am, why i am the way i am, how i relate to people, how people relate to me, etc etc. It's been good, it's been tough, i've been broken beat up and lifted up again a few times. It's all definitely been worth it, and now i am sad that i have to go.

Thank you so much for your support, thank you so much for your love, it's done wonders! thank you so much for everything you people are absolutely amazing!!!

Well, it's time for friday mroning worship, and i'm definitely ready to go play guitar and lift up the Almighty God of the Universe! Get excited, for He is worthy of all our praise.

See you kids back in the first world...

wow is the end in sight!

2006-08-03T08:30:00.000+03:00

this will prboably be my last or my second to last post whilst still in africa. This summer has definitely been a life changing experience that i cannot easily forget, and i pray i am forever changed by all that the Lord has done and shown me about his character, and his heart for his people.

I guess my last big prayer request is that God really makes whatever change, whatever revelation, whatever it was that i was supposed to ocme here this summer and find out or see or whatever, stick. I want it to stick hard, i don't want to forget this place, and HIS heart for it. I dont want to go back to the states and fall back into my cushy lifestyle and forget how different it is over here. How people live daily on such meager means. People live on less than a dollar a day here, and that's life. And this could be an argument in itself, but so many people in this position are happy with their lives, they are happy with their God, they are happy that they can eat at each meal. Thanksgiving over meals is much more real because they know they can't rely on their own power to eat, it's up to the Lord. Let me remember that, when i am wanting more more more, remember that people here with nothing nothing nothing are and can be content with all they do not have.

I'm thinking as well i'll need a bit of help from him not to be cynical when i go back home. I mean it's going to be really easy to look at lifestyles and judge people instantly as wrong because they have money, when in reality there's nothing wrong with money itself, just the love of money. And i'm sure you guys can understand why there would and will be cynycism there, i just pray that i wouldn't let it hinder relationships or give me a lofty attitude that's paradoxical in thinking, "i'm so much better than yo ubecause i'm so humble."

So today marks the last work day while i'm here, the last 14+ hour day spent at the office doing red-lines, fixing correctoins to CAD drawings, and otherwise staring at a computer screen for long enough for my eyes to fall out of my face. The end is in sight and i'm very excited about it.

One thing i absolutely cannot wait for: to stand in an HEB (which i learned this summer dont exist outside of texas, or at leaset not in other parts of the country) and just drool in awe like a kid in a candy store.Wow, how appropriate is, "the eyes of texas are upon you" ? Even here, they can see me!!

and yet still more murchison shots

2006-08-02T07:56:00.000+03:00

As is typical Ugandan fashion, we were directed to completely ignore the sign

This is a picture of a guy named Kenny who was in our group. I thought this picture offered amazing perspective of how massive this waterfall is. There was somethign incredible about sitting down below the water line and not getting wet.

This is a fish eagle, which looks incredibly similar to our bald eagles back home. The only difference is we saw these things everywhere.

Ok sadly this picture didnt come out very well or even very sharp, but i was in a moving car and roughly knew when to take the picture.

Needless to say though, this is definitely the picture of the summer.

Now what I wonder, is what do they think an aggie even is, cuz i'm not totally sure myself...

some more murchison shots

2006-08-02T07:46:00.000+03:00

Insert aggie joke here:

"How many aggies does it take to fix an engine...."

Ahh...the savannah...

some of my photo skills on display...

And lastly here's our elephant friend, if you look very closely you can see he did really give us a very "masculine" show...

Murchison Falls 2

2006-07-31T08:29:00.000+03:00

My thoughts on the actual falls, "...wow, breathtaking, no words, can describe the absolutely perfect magnifience of it all...amazing, spectacular, wonderful!!" I mean i could just word vomit on a page every superlative i could think of and it still wouldn't do it justice, just as these photos never could either. I have some video of hte falls which is pretty amazing and ill show some of you when i get back, but for now here's a taste of the absolute fierceness of the Lord's creation. You take the Nile, (at the risk of being wrong here) the longest river in teh world and shove it through a seven meter opening then you're bound to get something powerful and spectacular. So check it out...

This first one is me not really sure why im making that face but, I am, trust me i really was happy to be there (also i apologize about the size of the pictures on the last post hopefully these will make up for it). Actually im not really sure what's up with my faces, apparently it was, make stupid faces day for me. Anyways, enjoy:

Murchison Falls 1

2006-07-31T08:00:00.000+03:00

Why hello there my beautiful friends and family. Including today there are exactly 5 days left for me in the wonderful, yet odd country of Uganda. This past weekend I finally went on safari and all i can really say is, "wow", the absolute majesty of the Lord is so manifest in all of these fierce and lethal, yet beautiful and gentle creatures.

Before the pics though i think my words would be best shown if i just copy my journal entry from the night before our game drive, enjoy:

In the midst of your creation (well that statement is not really a suprise at
all since i can't go anywhere to escape your presence) here I am in Murchison
falls national park in Uganda w/ no real outside ocntact since my phone doesn't
work here, and in the midst of so many wild animal's homes.

Just on the
way to camp tonight i saw a lot of wild picgs grazing in the camp area
itself.

I am so incredibly excited to see more, even the crocodile I
managed to be about 30-40feet from today on accident really inspired alot of awe
in me as well as fear. I think of William Blake's poem, "Tigre tigre burning
bright, in the darkness of the night..." And it goes on to ask how God could
make something so horrific and dangerous as a tiger.

It's really
beautiful to be reminded of that aspect of our Lord. That fierceness about Him,
that He's definitely not tame or domesticated, He's wild (like He's made me to
be) and He's free, and along w/ His love, His danger and awe inspiring fear is
also to be embraced.

I think that can better describe the fear we think
of when fearing God. It's notthe fear of punishment that guilts us into feeling
bad, but to see His beauty and His danger and His utter unpredictability, and
yet to trust him, to see that and be afraid not because we are scared, but
because we are absolutely overwhelmed w/awe and inspiration and thus fear of
something so incredibly mighty, that is what I think we should feel
instead.

I love how N.T. Wright points out that so many people, and sadly
even so many Christians, think that the Christian God is a "spy in the sky"
waiting for you to screw up, and they really don't nkow the God of Israel who
loves, who forgives, who willingly dies for our sakes.

That is why we
find ourselves so unsuccessful hwen we seek to serve God and we find we cannot
grow, that's because that is a false God. That doesn't match w/ the character of
the God I know. I worship the God of love and awe inspiring fear, and no other.

This picture is of a baby crocodile that i arguably got too close to. But man the amazing feeling I got of placing myself in God's hands like that, I know it's wreckless and stupid, but again that awe inspiring fear and danger is absolutely incredible.

Here's some water buffalo

Here's an elephant that definitely chased our safari van, and put on a "masculine show" of sorts that I don't have pictures of but will definitely get from the other guys

Lastly, here is a massive group of giraffes. I can't possibly describe to you what it felt like to see such majestic creatures. Mark was able to get a video of one running and it was nothing short of breathtaking seeing such a massive animal gallop

random around town shots

2006-07-26T20:33:00.000+03:00

All these pictures were taken on saturday when Mark and I ended up walking probably 3 or 4 miles (note the second one, it's my favorite)

walk to work

2006-07-26T20:20:00.000+03:00

I thought you guys'd enjoy some pics from the normal path i take to work every day...

retrospect

2006-07-26T12:56:00.000+03:00

Besides letting you guys know how the safari goes this weekend and showing you some pictures of that, I think the next few entries will be me looking back on this summer and summarizing what i've thought about/done for the past two or so months.

I've been so busy here with work for the past two weeks that i've really not been doing alot of thinking about anything. And it was in the past few days that i realized how normal i feel here now. I still cannot believe that i have 9 days after today before i am on my way home, it's so surreal, and i dont even nkow what to expect.

So i look back at the spiritual state i was in in May and am completely floored by the work the Lord has done. I went back and read alot of journal entries and looked at all the prayers that were answered in me in just the past two months. How much has the Lord restored me to Him and grown my faith in Him by simply showing me His love.

I look at my character, and see how the Lord has slowed me down. I mean just at my tactfulness and sensitivity to not say certain things around locals. Or i can see someone say something and think, "wow that was really untactful" and it sucks to be reminded that I am like that as well, but it's good to see how He's moving me beyond that. I knew i cared about people, but the Lord has relaly taught me alot about loving people for who they are and where they are at, not where i want them to be or where they are not. Just like Jesus loving people regardless of who they are what they've done and where they are at. I mean love won't change anything if it's conditional.

Love for the simpler things. Like a walk to work, or a boda ride in the rain with my rain jacket on. All these simple easy to miss things are gifts, and gosh i've enjoyed all of them.

Then I look at all the sad things I've seen, all the pot-bellied kids, all the governmental non-action, and i've definitely come to realize that all these big problems cannot and never will be solved by big governments with lots of money and power, and ultimately these problems are in God's hands. Honestly if you had a billion dollars you couldn't fix one country over here, you just couldn't it wouldn't work the way we think it would. I've definitely seen that good intentions really dont do squat over here, it's only Him that allows anything to happen at all.

I am almost positive engineering is not hte direction my life will take me in, and you guys have no idea how excited i am to finally say that for real, rather than half joke about it. I really want to learn more about the world, about people, and somehow do something that will allow me to be back over here someday for a very long time. If not here then somewhere else besides teh states. It's a big world, and the future is bright, and i cannot wait to see what God has in store for me.

One thing that's definitely been drilled home is how amazingly blessed I am by Texas A&M. Nowhere else, and at no other university could I find this many amazingly god fearing men and women, nowhere! I look at the amazing people this university attracts, and i realize how incredibly awesome my friends are there. Jared, Wes, Andy, Jspence, i seriously miss praying with you guys, i mean that could be the reason for a get together because i feel so energized after doing so, i love you all and ill see you very soon! Amby, Kristin, Yaks, and whatever girls i know will frequent our house in the fall, you are so welcome and i can't wait to see your amazing faces!!

well this was ramble after ramble so im gonna stop and get back to work....10 days left...

this is it

2006-07-24T07:57:00.000+03:00

i cant believe it took me this long to figure out something so simple, but maybe it's so amazing that's why it took me so long ot figure it out.

Every day, every single day, we have the opportunity to make a choice. All of us, in our walks with Christ have struggles, have ruts we get into, have downtime where God just doesn't feel intimate or close, and even when we know He is there but we just dont feel it as well as the times when he's so presently there we can't contain ourselves we have a choice.

We have a choice every morning to say, God you created me to enjoy you and so today I choose to, I choose today to lay down my cares, my worries, my sin, my pride, my selfishness, my righteousness, my holiness, my talents, my skills, my hurts, my pains, my guiltiness, my shame, my self-loathing, my depression, my etc... Thanks to His choosing us we now have the ability no, opportunity to choose Him back! The spiritual ruts or dry times i woudl assume almost if not always are our own creation, or at the very least our succumbing to lies of our own flesh or of the enemy, both of which have been defeated.

So I challenge you as well as myself daily, to dedicate and declare yourself to God, not for salvation because you can't receive something you already have, but just for personal dedication, for quality of life, for joy and for peace.

This is so beautiful in it's simplicity and i love it, but that's what i've found here, no matter what, no matter what hte situation or problem we can always choose to glorify and exalt Him and that in turn gets our hearts right. How funny that all is seemingly right in the world when our hearts and minds completely exalt Him in all that they do, it's probably because that means everything is right. The problems will be fixed as He sees fit, so this is me looking back at an entry from last week where i was talking to Mark about how i should be having a crappy day. Thus the power of God to transcend the temporary and put our hearts on something bigger, something more.

If something is not eternal, it is eternally worthless -- C.S. Lewis (horrible paraphrase)

something to look forward to...

2006-07-22T10:27:00.000+03:00

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so ;
For those, whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy picture[s] be,
Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou'rt slave to Fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke ; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And Death shall be no more ; Death, thou shalt die.

-- John Donne (Holy Sonnet X)

There is always more, and He is always beautiful...

2006-07-22T09:39:00.000+03:00

From my journal this morning:

Ahh...Saturday, here at last, this has been the slowest week of the trip so far but apparently even it turned out to be a good thing.

"He works all things to the good of those who love Him."

I was sitting w/ Mark yesterday in teh Namuwongo market drinking a soda and was sayking to him how much the Lord has changed my heart, that I'm still slightly sick (from what we now think to have been contaminated water), it's been a crappy day outdoors all day, i'm tired from working so much and i've ridden in a taxi way too much. as of two or three days prior i woudl have been having a crappy day, but yesterday I was so excited about the Lord that none of those other things mattered, it was amazing, how all circumstances, annoyances and hindrances literally pale in comparison to His brightness and His greatness.

I am so excited about how good Jesus is, how much He loves me, how much He cares for me, and how much He watches over me. Truly to hide ones heart from pains, irritations, and altogether hurts from things uneternal, all one has to do is hide ones heart in THE MOST HIGH GOD!!, and all previous cares will seem to drift away.

...

But i've finaly hit the down hill here...I actually would be ok right now if (sorry guys i want to be both places but this hasnt been true till recently) Impact got canceled and i could cancel my lease and stay here all fall. That woudl be ok b/c I know I willmiss this place so much...So anyways, life is good and I have the lord breaking me to thank for that...

Thus i want to encourage you guys that it can always be better than it seems, that there are unconscienable (wow butchered that word) depths in Him that we will never be able to understand, and we really ought to never be satisfied with what we think we know about Him, because no matter how far we've gone we've just skimmed the surface of who He is. In fact I've found the further one goes that much bigger God seems to have become. As we become more and more aware of our depravity and more and more aware of His goodness He seems that much less attainable, and that's ok because he accepts us where we are at but seeks to constantly change us as He makes us more holy. So seek Him hard and deep, press in to the heart of God, and while i can't explain how to do that becuase that looks different for everyone, I encourage you to ask Him to help you if you dont know what to do.

There is always more, and He is always beautiful...

more random pics from today

2006-07-21T20:55:00.000+03:00

The rails seem to be a preferred method of travel/commerce/whatever...

Afro tech!!

And naturally the Florida Restaurant...

This is scaffolding, but holy crap would that be fun to take a mountian bike down that!

Littering and...

2006-07-21T20:24:00.000+03:00

As promised here is a picture of a trashpile/dirtpile, there is a really bad one near there but i forgot to get a pic of it today since we were in a hurry...

and here is a fire presumably burning trash not a block from the office...

this is a public transit sign, Ugandans love their speedbumps!

Bid daddy Property Agents, gosh am i gonna miss the signs here...

Littering? No...well yes

2006-07-21T07:55:00.000+03:00

Yesterday I realized I have yet to talk to you guys about this, and i wish i had a good picture to portray my thoughts but anyways here goes:

Well, here in Kampala, and in other parts I'm sure you can pay a weekly fee for someone to pick up your trash. You just set it right on the curb and they come and pick it up no problem right? well not exactly. First of all, every kid in the neighbourhood will go through it for any scrap of food, any reciepts that might say how much money goes through here etc, basically creating a mess most of which im sure the garbage man doesnt bother to pick up.

So I've lived my entire life in Texas under the "Don't Mess With Texas" campaign, and really i don't litter and I'm sure that's a reason why. I leave trash in my car and make sure it all gets in teh dumpster/trashcan/etc. and i can trust that it all goes to a landfill somewhere far away from where anyone lives right? Yea for the most part, or maybe it's an "out of sight, out of mind" thing. Either way, here I don't actually know if real landfills exist perse, and I KNOW they don't dispose of certain trash items the way we would at home. This realization really hit me when Mark and I were cleaning out the refrigerator where we have been living back in early June. We filled up our trashcan and had no idea what to do from there. So we asked the guard, he came in and grabbed it, poured it in a pile behind the guardshack, and lo and behold the next morning the pile was burning, plastic and all.

This is completely normal here, as can be evidinced by the smog and smell all over (which is why i loved being out in the country at the end of June so much, i guess in the IDP camps they can't afford things that create trash to burn). So I'm thinking, well, i could throw this trash in the trash can at the office which supposedly goes to a landfill, which is more than likely just a poorer neighbourhood....So this house of white people is throwing away garbage sending it to a poor black neighbourhood (soudn a little racist? I think so). Or perhaps there is a landfill, or the more likely word to describe it woudl be a "dump" but i can garauntee people live on or near it and probably aren't benefitting from the trash coming from every direction. Also when i was on a taxi coming back from Mabera forest back in June i was drinking from a water bottle and put it in my backpack, because experience tells me to saveit and put it in the trashcan so i don't litter...But when i get home i'llput it in a trashcan that will get poured in a pile outside and burned...

All this to say, I guess i have justified littering here. Everyone does it, I mean one time i was on a taxi and had a bananapeel (bad example but hte same thing would happen with any sort of trash) and was holding it and hte lady next to me said, "you throw away" and opened the window.

The Ugandans are equally unmodest about throwing trash out of cars as they are about public urination, which i saw alot of last weekend. [Sidenote: I love what the Ugandans say (probably an english thing really) to describe where they are going, either a "short call" or a "long call" ill let you use your imagination to figure out what that means. But when you're on a bus for 8 hours inevitably you have to stop and take a "short call." So imagine a bus of 200 people all filing out women/men/children to pee on the side of the road, it's definitely a sight to be seen!]

So yesterday as I was walking with Mark to the bank, i realized i needed airtime for my cell (which had about 10 shillings on it, i.e. half a cent or absolutely no ability to make a call). So i stopped to buy some airtime cards and after i took them out of the plastic wrappers and dialed in my time to my phone i gasp!! threw them on the ground. I was thinking, that's definitely an aspect of life here i have not shared with you guys, so there you go!

oh here's a really bad example of a trashpile, or what is left of one, but it will suffice I guess, ill do my best to get a picture of a big one next time i see it.

i love you all so incredibly much, have a wonderful day!

PR's and just to ramble

2006-07-19T16:41:00.000+03:00

part of a journal from this morning:

I'm not sure if this is jsut me focusing on my physical state and thus being very negative w/my outlook on the rest of my time here...maybe it's also the fact that I've been cooped up in this office for two days this week and I'm starting to dislike being in doors. Regardless of the reason, I am cranky and whiny and thus it affects my outlook.

I am worried that i'll get back and love all the time i spent here except the last three weeks and see those as a complete waste of time.

Those were my musings last night and it's possible I'm completely wrong.

Well since this morning i feel alot better actually, I felt like vomiting on the car ride from the house to the office, and even today i dont feel like shooting myself in the face after having spent the entire day in teh office. But my PR is in there as well, guys please pray for me that I woudln't waste the time I have here dwelling on home and things i miss, and rather my vision would be for the here and now (in an eternal sense). I mean afterall if i wanted a vacation it cost an awful lot to come here, thankfully you guys provided the means to get me here, i realize I havent thanked all of you yet!!

Wow, how selfish have I been! Thank you so much for your help in getting me where I am at right now. You have helped fulfill the Lord's will in my life because He truly has changed alot of things and broken alot of thigns down in my heart and really grown me and shown me different parts of Him, and all of that is realyl very exciting, but none of it woudl have been possible w/o your help! You have been a blessing and through your blessings have come countless more!

all i can say is thank you thank you thank you!!

So here are a few more:

I'll have to explain this one a little bit, but Impact is an organization I'm involved in back at A&M, it "seeks to glorify the Lord in every aspect of it's existence by giving incoming freshmen [christian (or not)] their first glimpse of the body of christ at texas a&m" (there Laura do i win a tshirt? haha). Anyways the structure is like so, there are two sessions and alpha and an omega session, the alpha and omega sessions host 10 and 9 camps respectively at a retreat center somewhere in east texas called pineywoods. Each camp has two cochairs who lead 12 counselors and 2 prayer teamers (all of whom are current students and have been cultivating a family sort of back at a&m since around february), also at impact we will get another 40 someodd freshmen per camp 4-6 of which will be assigned to each counselor partner ship (a boy and a girl) called a BASIC group (brothers and sisters in christ). It is also led by an exec body (also students). all that to say is that I am a cochair, and in august impact will happen when i get back. So i was hoping you could pray for impact as a whole and for the incoming freshmen in my camp specifically. Each camp is named after a tribe of Israel and combined with teh session, so my camp is called "Omega Gad." Sorry for such a long winded explanation, anyways that's my life back at a&m in case any of you were interested.

Next I really want to begin to hear and see and perceive God and His Spirit and all that goes on in the spiritual realms outside of this time space dimension whatever better. I know He desires this too so please pray for that in my time left here as well...

Ok the power died so we'll see if there's enough juice left in the batteries to let me post!!

Much love from Kampala!

update on my health

2006-07-17T20:49:00.000+03:00

This is just to quell some worried minds (mostly mom's) and just inform you guys on yet another part of my experience whilst here.

This afternoon Mark started feeling ill as well, and i guessi haven't felt horrible all day, but really really gassy, ha. So steve was taking him to the clinic and i opted to go as well (there you go mom, probably the first time i've gone to the doctor at a sign of illness in a long time). Well after some tests we foudn out i didnt have malaria or worms (although i thought as long as it wasn't going to be any worse since it's very curable if foudn in time, that it woudl be cool to go back and say i got malaria, i suppose the mothers among you would be to differ, but im sure others of you can understand perfectly). The doctors we talked to were a man and woman from Israel who were both Jewish working at a Christian clinic (they thought it odd as well) but they were very friendly people, and they agreed with my initial diagnosis that it was food poisoning of some kind, perhaps viral or bacterial, but they gave me antibiotics to be safe. I want to say the pills are called something like "flagella" or soemthign like that, not really sure, but they're supposed to have an analgesic effect which is never a bad thing.

Here's to hoping i get a little less gassy since i opted to eat dinner tonight after not eating anything but bread or fanta (i've fallen in love with orange soda!) in the past 48 hours. and for that matter feeling alot better tomorrow morning after another good night's sleep.

i'll leave you with whatever random goofy pictures i can find on the harddrive...

This is me right as i walked into the office after having been rained on alot, i also have my backpack under my jacket, anyways i felt i looked wholly ridiculous and i figured so would you guys, so enjoy...

some more low-res shots of Kibarara

2006-07-17T13:44:00.000+03:00

So here is the road that the bus dropped us off on, as you can see it is literally in the middle of nowhere...

This is the other direction and is equally depressing...

These are about the coolest animal i've seen yet. Blue tail, yellow body, green head, not really sure how that helps them in the wilde but it sure looks neat...

another pic from the top of the "mountain" we climbed...

Definitely a different sort of weekend...

2006-07-16T17:57:00.000+03:00

I wrote before of my plans for this weekend, and unusually enough (for africa) they stayed the same. Mark and I boarded a bus that we thought was the 6 oclock bus in the bus park at 5:45 am. I was loving the amount of people on the bus right around six cuz it would mean i'd get a whole row to myself, at least for awhile. Sadly the bus didn't leave till 8:30 and we were left sitting on it till it completely filled, or for that matter overfilled. One thing i became painfully aware of this weekend, is the American idea of "personal space" has no meaning here. People pack into painfully close quarters in the effort to make more money, so needless to say the next charter bus i take anywhere i will be hardpressed to find a reason to complain about comfort. Because at lesat there won't be a guy in the aisle sitting next to me taking all my leg space, or some guy standing up in the aisle with his elbow in my face.

So we finally got to a small village outside Kasese called Kibarara. this place is about as "middle of nowhere" as you could possibly get. There is absolutely nothing there except for fields of dead maize stalks, matoke trees, and a house with a tin roof every few miles or so. We arrived there about 4 in the afternoon, or three hours late, and went to see Alan on the worksite. He is the construction manager for an irrigation project that eMi designed for Western Uganda Baptist Theological College, or as we affectionately call it, Wub-t-c. He'll be out there till the day before i leave and so it was good to see him once more before then. There isn't much to do out there besides read and talk, so we all did our fair share of both. Meals there were interesting to say the least. We paid 5,000 shillings a day for a big lunch and dinner. Each meal though, only men were at the table. For example, the first night we ate dinner at Foston's house (the director of teh college) with he and his son Padwin, His wife and daughters were in the kitchen the entire time and only came out to refill the water jug. Then i think they ate whatever it was that we did not eat.

On Saturday Mark and I were determined to climb one of the foothills in front of the mountains, which looked to be very close due to the sheer massiveness. It turned out to be a little further than we thought just to the foothills, and i have no idea how much further it was to the mountains. We started out at 10:00 and got back at 1:00.

Saturday night i was in for a surprise, my stomach started feeling a little weird right before we ate dinner, and then i coudlnt eat very much at all. Afterwards we were about to go to bed and i had to make a few trips to the toilet, i.e. a hole in the ground you squat over. Then eventually I had what looked like food poisoning. Let me tell you, nothing is more depressing than food poisoning (or at least the symptoms) with a squat toilet, it's not fun at all. [forgive me if this is too graphic but i thought it was awesome] So after trying to throw up for about half an hour i think our neighbours heard me and went to get Foston, the head pastor for the college. I was laying down fruitlessly as i had been most of the night because sleep was impossible, and he knocked on the door and asked if he could do anything. I told him all i could think of was to pray, so he came in i stood up and he put his hand on me and began to pray. Probably the instant he put his hand on me i could feel my stomach about to empty and promptly did so when he finished. I just thought that was an awesome blessing from the Lord because i needed to vomit badly. So, Foston, Ngungu, Storiko, and our neighbour Eric brought me medicine, Promethazine to stop vomiting, and Flegella which is apparently for worms. Still not really sure what i have, and i'm not totally well yet, but i'm getting better, and needless to say it was an interesting night.

We woke up at 4:30am to catch the bus to Kampala at 5:30. Man the bus was amazing, we get on and there was practically nobody there. So i ended up with a whole row to myself and sucessfully slept for about 5 hours there and didn't have any GI problems the entire way. Although i definitely wasn't and still am not feeling up to par physically. About two hours before we got back (the bus ride lasted about 8 hours) the bus stopped for a "short call", so naturally after being on the bus so long i had to go. I traversed aroudn a trashpile to do my business and on the way back was accosted by several men who wanted me to pay them for peeing in a no-urination area. One pointed to a sign that was not written in english except for "urineting" yea it wasn't even spelled right and wanted me to pay him since i did something wrong. I refused and kept walking but they tried to block my way. Finally at the entrance to the bus i told him, "look, i'm sorry forgive me!" and pushe dhim aside and boarded the bus, thankfully that was the end of that.

We reached Kampala at about 1 and walked to the taxi park then reached home around 130. I slept till 5 came to the office for dinner, didnt really eat and went home. Last night i slept from 8:30PM to 7:00AM needless to say i needed rest.

I guess this is me asking you guys to pray for health, and also saying, "mom dont' worry, if this persists i will go to the clinic, and if it's really bad the best hospital in Uganda is a five minute drive away."

Here was my view from the shower stall on saturday night before the sun went down.

This is a shot from the top of the "foothill" which was more like a mountain itself, it was probably another 5 or 10 miles to the mountains themselves.

Here is me, dead on the bus...

Pic from the cornfields of the sunset over the mountains...

UT, eat your heart out...

check this out, this article was found on http://www.newvision.co.ug

Night trekkers fewer

Sunday, 16th July, 2006

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By Chris Ocowun

NUMBERS of night commuting children in Kitgum district have reduced, according to a head count report by UNICEF and other agencies.

The report says as a result, six night commuters’ centres have been closed.
Kitgum RDC Nahaman Ojwee on Thursday said the number of night commuters reduced from over 20,000 in 2002-2003 when there were regular attacks by the LRA rebels in the suburbs of Kitgum town to only 5,164 because the rebels have not attacked the town in three month.

The RDC and the LC5 chairman, John Komakech, said by August, all night commuter centres shall be closed.

“We want to sensitise the parents and the rest of the community around Kitgum town so that they can be prepared to receive their children home, instead of moving every evening to town and yet there is no major security problem now.

“However, partners will continue to give whatever assistance they want to give the children at their homes,” Komakech said.

He said there were cases of prostitution at the night commuters’ cenres, including rape and defilement. He said parents were not even bothered to follow their children to the centres.

“Dismantling of the centres shall be part of the return of IDPs to their homes,” he said. Ojwee said some of the partners were against the idea of closing down the centres because they were reaping from them.

He said such violated the children’s right to parental care.

Thus sad to say, and i can't articulate this as well as James can, but the invisible children campaign is alot of wasted energy. I mean don't get me wrong, they are all well meaning, but I get an email this morning talking about the invisible children global tour 2007, and i'm thinking, "why are they still focusing their efforts toward a problem that is/is being taken care of?" Right now there are 30 IC college student staffers in Uganda and about 30 more on the way, and James points out, "for about $2,000 round trip times 60 people, that's about $60,000 and couldn't that go to accomplishing something more than 60 well meaning, albeit ignorant college students can accomplish?" So, all i'm saying is, and i am guilty this too, before a bunch of college students, or anyone for that matter jumps head long into a cause like this, it woudl do well if they researched it a bit. Couldn't these kids willing to spend all that money work on problems at home? or at the very least on problems in places where they actually exist and where the government isn't actively trying to fix it? If you don't believe me check it out : www.newvision.co.ug

Ok now i'm looking at the IC website and wondering what the people that are over here or are coming will be doing, turns out IC has no idea either:

Volunteer in Uganda
Timeline: Future.
Unpaid.

Although all of our programs are, and need to be run by Ugandans, we are going to need more and more volunteers to go to Uganda and help implement many of our future programs on the ground. These volunteers must be there for a minimum of 14 days. A basic description of your work on the ground is not available yet, because we are still developing these programs and creating partnerships to be able to most effectively use people’s time and talent once they are in Uganda.

So basically they want you to come, spend way too much money on a plane ticket and be there for fourteen days to accomplish what, absolutely nothing, not to mention they are taking volunteers for programs which either don't exist or they haven't figured out what to let the people do while they are here.

Or maybe really what needs to happen to inspire the millions of cause-less 18+ kids in america, is for someone else to come along with a well edited, entertaining, documentary that is readily available and in dvd format...

(sorry for they cynicism, some frustrations needed to be vented)

kids and foks and brothers and sisters and mothers and father etc

2006-07-10T19:34:00.000+03:00

Here are some pictures of me playing with Sofia and Madeline yesterday. Sofia was playing the "Josh's head fell off the couch so i have to put it back on, and hten knock it off again" game with my head. And Madeline was playing the "i'm an airplane game." Man I love playing with kids, and how will i miss these two!

Family,

I've been thinking alot lately about how I am and how people view me and talking alot to some of the guys here about it as well. I knew this all along, but i never had it articulated into words. i put myself out there alot, by that i mean i am so ridiculously open and out there and no holds barred unadulterated me, that I do get on people's nerves, especially people that are very different from me. I know for a fact i have a knack for making people feel uncomfortable as well, and usually it's not on purpose, and i can see how me being so deliberately up front can really make some peopel feel way outside of any semblance of comfort.

Natural reaction is such, and not even that i am a special case, everyone reacts the same sort of way to people that they dont like or dont get along with. We make snap judgments, we make fun of them, we talk about them behind their backs etc. It's so funny how many problems would be solved if we simply had the courage to go up to another person and just talk to them about what is bothering us if it was legitimately something that hurt the other person. On the flipside, so many problems woudl be avoided if people woudl realize that nothing they can do will actually change a person. I mean we hear at church all the time that the burden of salvation isn't upon us, all we are is vessels for Christ, so in that aren't we jsut vessels for Him in affecting change in His people? We even look at Christians we perceive as being less far along than us, and look on them in pity, and as if we are these amazing crusaders that are going to fix them and make them ok.

Well that's trash too. We cannot change anyone, not one person can be changed by anything we do. If we react badly to the way a person is (and i'm speaking of people who aren't acting maliciously) then it is not their problem, it is ours. So why do we react in such petty ways to it? First of all i know you guys can quote Romans to death and know that "...all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." And i'm sure most of you have realize that this is the great leveler, this is the thing that shows that none of us is any better, deserves anything more, than anyone else. Yet we insist upon it.

And i guess i could steer this conversation toward self love and why we love us since we have nothign inherently good in ourselves, which is true and helpful in this. But I guess i just want to point out how horribly the church treats itself. I have seen non-christians love peopel better than I see Christians love peopel. What kind of a testimony is that? Yes their love for peoepl comes from God and yes He is glorified by that love, but why can't His people love each other well? I can't qualify it, but i'd venture to say that there is just as much if not more gossip within the church as without.

The main point of this is to point out something i'm learning here, but that can and should be applied anywhere. It is never my job, NEVER, to make people like me. It's never my job to please people at my own expense, it's never my job to seek recognition from my peers, to seek approval from those around me, to seek acknowledgement and validation from any other person. I can't help but go back to Eldredge over and over again no matter how little scriptural backing his book had, but NOBODY can tell me that I am a man, nobody can validate me as a person, nobody can tell me that i'm ok in such a way as to satisfy me. If you rely on men they will fail you.

But there's hope! We have one job, that is to love God and love people. That's it, the greatest of the two commandments. I wish more people knew Deuteronomy 6 just as well as the story of Jesus giving the two greatest commandments. It talks about loving god, but it goes further, it says we are to meditate on loving God all day long, everywhere we go, talk about it with everyone we come in contact with, and even to put it on our doorposts. So my job while i'm in Africa, while i'm in the States, while i'm anywhere, is to love him and love His people. This is an encouragement to everyone as well as myself, because i suck at this more than anyone, but no matter how much somebody gets on your nerves, how much they hurt you, you exist to glorify the Lord, to show His love to them.

So I encourage you/me to love, let that be the motivating factor behind everything, meeting people where they are at, like Jesus did, not trying to change them so that we can feel more comfortable aroudn them. Let the church take the plank out of their own eye before they seek to take the splinter out of their brother's eye. I woudl even go as far to contend that it's not my job to take that splinter out of my brother's eye if it's not causing Him to sin.

So lastly to reiterate, it's not our job to change people, it's God's. It's our job to love Him and His people. Life boils down to that, and it's amazing how that truth can change everything.

10 weeks and goin strong

2006-07-08T20:37:00.000+03:00

I wanted to share with a few fans, or people that absolutely might hate it, either way i wanted a reaction. Check out 10 weeks of growth, you can even kind of see the blonde hair on my face. Needless to say, my blonde mustache that you can't see unless the lighting is right or you are close enough definitely gets all sorts of food stuck in it as well as stuck in my mouth all the time. But hey guys, i'm goin strong. Jspence, you'd be so proud of me and know that this beard/beardish thing partially goes out to you, and then a part of it goes to andy's european beard thing, basically guys pray that someday i can be grizzly adams...

...that is all

ramblings

2006-07-08T14:39:00.000+03:00

I've been thinking alot about the things that i miss back home and i think i'll list a few here:

1. Peanut butter (we have it, but it's just not the same w/o all the preservatives and partially hydrogenated soybean oil)

2. cheesecake

3. chips of any kind, i mean they are here too, but just rare

4. my own car

5. real roads (if this country was more developed you could drive across it in about 8 hours, whereas now it woudl take about 30 i woudl guess)

6. street signs (no joke)

7. clean air (apparently kampala is home to what is called, "the kampala headache" there is so much pollution here whether it be from cars spewing out black smoke or burning trashpiles which inevitably have plastic in them. I miss the north for that reason first, the air was amazing. I mean if i take a picture at night here i'll probably get some specks of dirt in them because of the flash, that's how much stuff i am breathing in)

8. Not sticking out in a crowd (at least not because of my skin color), it's a little different having the tables turned and becoming hte minority

9. my friends, you guys have no idea how much i look forward to reuniting with all of you! mom, byron, dad, laura, john <---all my parents really

ok that was enough negativity, here are things i will miss when i'm gone:

1. the people (College Station is supposed to be known for it's hospitality, and people ther are definitely more friendly than in Austin, but neither have anything on this place, the people here love more and better, and talk and listen, it's grand)

2. the kids (there is no better place to be a college aged guy cuz these kids need some love bad, and they love so well, like little joshua who would just come up and hug my leg till i picked him up)

3. the undeveloped-ness (i'm sure this will stick out more if/when i go to langira island and get to see a place completely untouched by technology, but in the country side it's just nice to drive down the raod and not see anything metal or any poles sticking up besides the occasional cell tower)

4. the oppennes and honesty with the lord that is made easier by having the rug pulled out from under you.

...i dont think i want to make this too long, because really it's gonna be the people that i'll miss, so many beautiful faces. I read in sociology and i thought this was true for a long time that it's harder for people of different races to distinguish features of other races. But man, it's how i've gotten used to seeing so many different ugandans from so many different places who all look completely different.

i guess one last one

5. my new friends, Mark, Alan, James, Josh, Janet, Steve, Melinda, Sofia, Madeline, Kizito, Paddy, Steven, etc etc, they have touched my life in a huge way and were the exact right people that were supposed to be here at the exact right time.

6. Well crap i'm still listing, this one isn't that serious, but i'm gonna miss all the ridiculous signs i've seen, all the clay roof tiles, all the tin roofs, all the palm trees, all the well dressed people, all the barefoot people, the exchange rate!! well i coudl go on forever and so stop my list here.

"more than fine, more than bent on getting by, more than just ok"

Here are the plans for the rest of my stay in Uganda:

from now until i leave during the week work on tabitha project stuff, from CAD drawings to data calculation, to writing the report. The hope is that we'll get done a week before i leave so i can have a few days just to relax and do random stuff.

On monday Alan is going out to Kasese for about four weeks to manage some construction at West Uganda Baptist Theological College, or what we affectionately call wub-t.c. So Mark and I will go visit him next weekend, Kasese is amazing from the pictures i've seen and i'm excited to get to see some mountains before i leave.

The following weekend is open and this is tentative, but Mark and I woudl really like to go to Langira island which is about an hour south of Jinja on lake victoria. This island has a YWAM (youth with a mission) base on it and that is where we woudl stay, the thing im excited about is that there is absolutely nothing on this island technologically speaking, so i'm pretty pumped to hike up to the top and see miles of lake and trees

The last weekend (which will be my last weekend in Uganda) is going to be our safari at Murchison falls, because how can you go to africa and not go on a safari? So expect lots of awesome pictures, and then i leave on the following friday night for the states.

So for those of you wondering how is life over here, it is good, it is real, and it is beautiful, and here's why...

...takes you back doesn't it?

kids/rebels/the north

2006-07-06T08:02:00.000+03:00

Hey there folks, i feel like talking about something completely different today, i want to bring parenting in Uganda to your attention, or for the most part the lackthereof.

Here is a picture of a little boy that stayed in the homestead where we stayed when we were in the north. So by the way the homestead was a big walled in compound of houses lining the walls and a few huts in the middle built to house the teachers for the nursery, primary, and secondary school in the area (for which most kids school fees are paid for through sponsorship). Anyways, so as far as housing goes these people have an amazing living situation compared to most people in the town to be sure. But sadly, as is true in most places in Uganda, the children are more likely than not to not know their father. Since there are no caretakers whatsoever, this cute little boy just walks around the compound by himself from the time his mom leaves for school to the time she comes back for lunch and from then till 5 when school is out. Basically little kids take care of little kids here.

So many times Joshua would be over on our side picking up things we were using and definitely didn't want broken, and some girls, maybe 4 or 5 years old would come and get him. Inevitably half the time he'd be naked and he'd come back wearing something, i think there was one day he came back wearing panties shorts and a very very pink little girls shirt. I guess this paragraph is an aside of how cute the kid was. I didn't hear him make any noise at all until the last two days i was there, but he'd always kind of just wander over (he's about one and a half by the way) naked or not, sticking his tongue in and out and looking absolutely adorable. (Look at the girly shirt he's wearing------------------------------>>)

But such is the case everywhere. When we were at church up there, or even just during the day when the parents would be out in the gardens, sleeping, or i have no idea what, you'd see five year olds with babies tied onto their backs with a blanket, the same way mothers tie the babies to their backs. And i'm thinking, why is this ok? what if there was a huge emergency or somethign happened? would you trust your infant with your five year old? i dont think i would. But then that kind of showcases the maturity level of children here as opposed to the states (good or bad i've yet to decide). But like how many kids like three years old have i seen riding in the seats on bikes behind adults, I mean in the states would you really trust a kid that old to hold on and not fall off, especially on roads as bumpy as these? And here cars have the right of way, and pedestrians have absolutely no rights at all. How many times in the states do you hear about a child running in front of a car, or something like that. I mean like i said a long time ago, there are one lane roads everywhere, yet they manage to fit one lane of traffic either way, one lane of motorcycles zipping through, and pedestrian traffice w/o a sidewalk, yet i've not seen anyone hit let alone kids.

So the kids are mature, i guess, in a kind of sad way they grow up too fast, or at least faster than our kids back home. Then now on to something that someone brought to my attention two nights ago. Uganda is i think one of the few if not the only countries that took to heart Bush's encouragement of abstinence to prevent the spread of AIDS in Africa, and it actually worked, Uganda's AIDS rate has plummetted in recent years. But apparently there are alot of rural kids that it's hard to convince to be abstinent. Let's imagine you live in a one room hut with your parents and two siblings. It's completely normal and not unheard of for your parents to have sex with all of you right there, and you're getting this message at school about not having sex till you are married, but you have this thing going on at home and you are curious, as is the girl in the hut next door. I mean i can't offer a solution, but that's what's going on. Or maybe you are a 13 year old girl and the boda boda driver is offering to buy you some nice clothes or to pay for you to get your hair done if you have sex with him, and your parents can't afford to pay for those things, and they've inevitably never talked to you about sex and all the issues accompanying it.

It's just sad...and yet so many grow up to be amazing human beings, testimony to God for sure.

Praise God though, (Pak Lubanga) i dont know if i told you guys how incredibly stable the north has become. Kony and most of the top dogs in the LRA are in the Congo, actually separated from a mountain they believe contains the spirit that gives them power. Actually the reason Kony (who is Acholi), basically victimizes his own people is because there is a well on that mountain, and they believe the well gives them strength, and since the mountain is near Acholi-land (Gulu), he cannot venture far from there. Recently the UPDF completely cleared the LRA out of that mountain, and thus since they have been weakened, which indeed leads me to believe this is more of a spiritual war than you woudl think. I'm sure there are countless stories of Kony surviving and getting out of things that are humanly impossible, but most people think he's possessed, and i woudl incline to agree, by a very powerful demon. So anyways, praise god because they have been largely cleared out of hte north area, and all that is left is small raid groups that are starving out in the bush and come into towns to steal food once in awhile. And in Kitgum apparently citizens can walk around freely at night without worrying about their safety. And even the "invisible children" the night commuter numbers probably hit their high in 2003 at about 28,000 kids, but now it's down around 5,000.

I guess i was feeling a tad cynical, i'm supposed to be this dangerous crusader, and i was thinking i was walking into a lion's den and i would see some horrific stuff while i was up north. But i didnt, it was peaceful, which is good, but I dont know i hope that makes sense to alot of you.

So i'll close this one out with a picture of the bush, because i'm sure some of you are thinking, "what the heck does the bush actually look like?" Actually oddly enough it reminds me of the hill country in Texas, with palm trees, mostly flat, grassy, some trees here and there...

ok much love to you all, you all bless me beyond words, and i miss each of you dearly!!

so much ahead of me

2006-07-05T07:55:00.000+03:00

I know I promised more thoughts on Rackoko, but my mind is somewhere else since I got back, which i guess makes sense, out of sight out of mind, sort of. I mean I miss those kids, I miss some of the cool things I saw, and i definitely left a piece of my heart there. In all actuality i've thought some on how amazing it woudl be to just go somewhere like that, live in a hut of my own, learn the language and just preach christ day and night, love with all that i am. I mean that's true ministry, not throwing money at people or problems, not another church program or scheduled event to change things (dont get me started on scheduled revivals), true ministry is throwing your life at people, that's what Christ did, and that's what i want to do, although im not sure how that will play out in the end.

here's a journal entry I wrote last night:

Independence day, Wahoo!....

...Ok not really that excited or thrilled about it, but thoughts on my future have definitely resurfaced from several weeks ago. Like tonight at a 4th of july party i was invited to i was talking to /more listening to a British girl talk about what she does w/ the UN and her masters degree program in human rights at Columbia. Anyways lots of international law, foreign aid, international politics, how aid money works - sounds incredibly fascinating and intereesting. To jumpstart living in a third world country, or to get to a place where i can learn alot about how the world works and how nations deal w/ one another, and help me get a leg up in an N.G.O. As far as I know, my life after school will be me helping people, not sure where that will take me again, bu i think and i hope that it will lead me away from teh States completely.

I want to see Africa, and the rest of the world, ultimately i want to love peopel and help change things for people around the world who have never known it could be different than it is now.

So i'm assuming the next few years i have alot of learning and steps to take to lead me to where i will eventually end up.

I know eventually all roads lead to being a missionary of whatever sort whereever i am and whatever i do. But understanding hte way the world works better than i do now woudln't hurt.

I'm excited though, to maybe even more than just opine that engineering isn't where i'll end up for good or even for a short bit, i think i really do want to further my education, further my knowledge on things going on around me so i can be better equipped to serve those in need, maybe i am completely wrong and He has me somewhere else after graduation, we shall see...

...or more like i shall see and He knows...

How exciting? I come to Africa perhaps even to find a completely new direction for my life. I'm just really excited about the horizons that keep getting wider and more open, I love knowing it's already planned, and that He has big things for me, and i love that He has more places to take me before I get there. Everybody knows the addage that it's all about the journey and the getting there and not about where you get, but the journey itself, i'm excited

He is good

BTW I encourage you guys to check out A.W. Tozer's "Pursuit of God" it's really short and a quick read but it's deep and challenging.

2006-07-02T20:19:00.000+03:00

I just realized that you guys are probably thinking, "what the heck does an IDP camp even look like?" Well I didn't take any pictures when i was inside of one just to be sensitive to the people there that are pretty darn depressed about where they are at in life, but this is from the road by the largest camp in the north i think, I want to say somewhere around 20,000 all living in these mud/brick/thatch one room huts, working in gardens, and some of them drinking their lives away. It's sad but it's reality up there and i really want to talk about that alot more tomorrow morning

As the summer is winding down it is hard for me to not feel homesick. I mean i'm more than halfway done with my internship but still i have a little over four weeks, and I really miss alot of people back home. Jspence/Andy/Jared/Wes, I miss praying with you guys and just talking about life and hte Lord with you, you have no idea how dear to my heart you have become in the past six months, and i love each and every one of you!

So i guess in that comes me asking for prayers of encouragement, to finish strong, as Paul said to "fight the good fight" with all the fervor and passion I can muster and that the Lord will give me. "surely He has done great things" and will continue to do so. Also pray for more of the holy spirit, that the Lord would open me up to receive Him more and more and be continually changed. He has changed so much in me in the past month and I want Him to do the same in the next month.

Much love kiddos!

2006-07-02T19:59:00.000+03:00

Hello again!

several things i wanted you guys to know, I changed the comment options so now anyone can anonymously comment on here if they like, also I'm not sure why, but when i use this program to upload pics they don't come out with the same quality or in the same size (you can click on the pics and see them full size normally, but for whatever reason the last few are much smaller), so i'll be working on that.

Anyways, i wanted to show you one picture of our model we made for the ministry this week. To remind you guys it was called the Tabitha Project, and is a vocational school for widows in the IDP camp. You can see the gate on the left is the entrance to the compound, the building on the left is going to be a store for the widows to sell things they make, on the bottom will be the guardhouse/admin building/reception area. On the far right is first one classroom building and then latrines. Next the two buildings in the middle are also classrooms. Up above the last tin roof building is the kitchen for the compound. Then further up all the thatched roof huts will be a house for Carla (the ministry leader) a gazebo type thing, and two huts for western guests there for short term mission trips. If you look really closely at the top in the back is the water tower for the sight which I personally made and am very proud of!

Alright the power just went out and i got permission to use the generator for 20 minutes so i'll talk to you guys more tomorrow.

Pak Lubanga! (Praise God in Acholi)

But mabe (Good night in Acholi)

some of my week in Rackoko

2006-07-01T12:16:00.000+03:00

Oli Otya!(Luganda for hello/how are you)

Ok, finally figured out how to upload more than one picture at a time with this new program I just got. Well, i am back and i must say it is good to say that i am home. This past week was amazing, and hard, and fun, and sad, and beautiful and ugly all at once, and i dont know if i can even do it justice via blogpost but i'll try.

This first picture breaks my heart alot, but i'll explain the background. We went to a child dedication service at the church on saturday afternoon (which is just a big piece of canvas tied to some eucalyptus poles basically fashioned together like a big tent), and were place in the seats of honor (which i didn't like very much at all). It was hard having 7 white people sitting behind the pulpit and not getting to enjoy the service from in front. But the hard part was being exalted by a people's that shouldn't exalt us at all. It really was humbling to be lifted up by them because it made me feel so uncomfortable. But there were kids just crowded all around us, many of which had probably never seen a muno (the Luo word for white person) in their entire lives. So I was seated on the end and i got to play with alot of kids during the service. It was fun, but man these kids don't smile like american kids, or even like Kampala kids, you can see how much hurt is in their lives in their eyes at times. This kid just broke my heart though, I mean that bandaid is probably covering some infected wound and i guess for most people in this part he's even blessed to have a bandaid to keep the flies off of it. Even though all of these kids absolutely love cameras and having their pictures taken etc. I couldn't get this kid to smile for it either. The saddest thing i saw all week though was during this service as well. Steve and I were watching a kid chew on what we thought was Posho (made from maize flour) but turned out to be styrofoam. We watched him for awhile and saw him swallow it too. I wanted everythign in me to go over to him and stop him, but then i realized i woudl basically be saying, "no dont eat that, but i'm not gonna give you anything else to temporarily stop the hunger pain you're feeling." Needless to say this week was full of alot of eye opening experiences.

This picture is basically to prove to all of you back home that kids do like me, ha! I just thought it was awesome. When we were surveying we attracted kids in an insane way. Apparently three white guys in the middle of a field next to town with no shirts on and a bunch of weird equipment is very interesting. So the three jobs of our survey crew were as follows: one man on the instrument, one man on the rod, and one man on kid duty to prevent the kids from bumping the instrument or the tripod. There was one point where I was on instrument and Mark was on rod and i couldn't see the prism so i sent Alan out with like 30 kids to get some of the tall grass out of the way. By the time he was done he had all the kids chanting over and over, "Bad grass, bad grass!" and im sure almost none of them knew any english at all.

One last thing i want to mention today is that the last two days I was there I got to walk with pastor Harrison through the camps and talk to people about Jesus. I have never known or been able to understand when Jesus said, "the harvest is plenty but the workers are few" until this week. In the course of two hours over two days I got to be instrumental in leading 7 people to Christ!! How amazing is that? You tell someone who basically has nothing and feels hopeless that there's a better way, that there is a god in heaven who loves them and a Jesus that wants to hold them and love them and they say, "yea that sounds good!" It was absolutely incredible, I did real missionary work this week and i am so thankful for that.

So I leave you with the names of your new brothers and sisters to pray for, cuz they are gonna need alot of God's blessings and provision, not to mention alot of faith:

1.Tiger
2.Margaret
3.Carmela
4.Josephine
and darnit i forgot the names of the other three

but they all need to be lifted up so please do.

Oh i just realized I didnt' even tell you where I was all week. The town is basically an IDP camp in the Pader distrcit south of Kitgum called Rackoko (pronounced Rach-co-co) and I look forward to relating as much as possible to you over the week.

So to end with here's another picture from the site, as you can see i've been playing with closeup shots on my camera and have discovered it can do some cool things.

Much love!!

Appoyo!
(Luo for thank you/hello/goodbye/how are you)

termite death!

2006-07-01T11:34:00.000+03:00

This is me after having conquered the termite mound with a panga (conquered is a relative term, for whatever reason the stuff is like concrete, but i was able to cut it down about a foot or so with alot of effort). People here actually eat the termites. When they are "in season" they will go out and stick their hands down the mounds to get as many as possible, the queen being a delicacy, fry them up in oil and eat em like popcorn.

Quite possibly the best picture i've ever taken

2006-07-01T11:27:00.000+03:00

This was from the site when we were surveying and i was running rod (obviously to take this i wasn't doing my job very well, but i was completely blown away with how well it turned out!) I'm gonna upload some pics first and then give you guys a full text update as well.

signing of for a week!

2006-06-22T19:41:00.000+03:00

Well friends, our project trip is finally here, and it is currently 7:39PM meaning we leave for the Pader district in Northern Uganda in approx. 10 hours from now at 6am my time (10PM your time) and i won't be able to update you guys till i get back, but i'm sure it's going to be quite an update after seeing the IDP camps. So please pray for safety, that our team would work well, that we'd make time for the Lord and ministry even when we feel deadline driven. And most of all to have our hearts broken for these people and for hte Lord. Really taht we could see people as God sees them, as his children whom he loves!

So signing off till June 30th, so if you read this before then please pray for me and my team!

So much love it hurts!

Yeshua

venting and ranting

2006-06-22T07:52:00.000+03:00

Yesterday I decided that I really needed a taste of what town was all about. I mean i've been into town several times before, but each time i had a destination and wasn't really in an exploring mood. Not to mention I was always with another person. So i had my first experience with walking around downtown Kampala with no direction whatsoever by myself, and i wanted to talk about what I saw and thought about...

I guess I wish i could fully convey exactly what it is like for a white person in this country. Like...I mean this gives me great insight a small bit of what a black person might feel in a heavily white area. Everyone acts nice, as per the culture. You have no idea how many times a day I hear the words, "muzungu how are you?" Sometimes, just like in the states, i'm not good, and i dont like lying or having to talk about how i feel with every random stranger on the street. And i'm a public spetacle for sure, beacause i look so different from everyone else here. So I get stares, i get stares wherever I go, and the two ways to get people to stop staring at you are to, a) wave, or b) say, "hello, how are you?" Yesterday i was thinking alot about that and how the novelty definitely wears off being the center of attention anywhere you go.

Also, I'm realizing what a novelty "muzungu" used to be and how it begins to feel derogatory. Especially when i'm just walking along, and you can say anythign with a biting tone, as is truwe with muzungu. Like when i'll pass someone and i'll hear muzungu yelled at me when they are already past me. Or if I am walking through a crowded area and i hear muzungu and i turn and i know someone was talking about me. And I suppose this is me careing too much about other people. Like I understand alot of people here do not understand what all the white people, and all the NGO's (non-govt-orgs) are doing here. Cuz by the way there are so incredibly many aid organizations christian and not, and I feel like alot of people here have alot of resentment behind their friendliness. As mentioned earlier you can feel it with the biting, "MUZUNGU!" left and right (kona ne dyo).

Ok now to stop complaining about myself and start complaining about things here. I wish i could convey to you the number of street vendors here. I mean literally every street, every street corner (at least in the areas closer to the taxi park) are completely covered with people, with their wares laid out on cardboard, tarps, blankets, whatever works, tables, etc. I guess i want to paint you guys this picture so you can begin to feel for them. I mean, they have alot of stuff, most of it literal crap, that nobody wants, no foreigner, no local, nobody really wants it at all! And yet they have to stay seated, laid down, standing, whatever next to their stuff for i would guess more than 12 hours a day, just in case someone happens upon their stand instead of someone elses and happens to wants something that they have for sale so they can make money to eat that day. That is their life! They sit and do nothing, and they dont have days off, i'm not sure where they get this stuff. [Side note: this has happened twice, where someone has pulled me aside and tried to sell me panties, not really sure if he actually expected me to buy anything] I dunno, i wa thinking about life for them yesterday and it struck me how awful theirs must be. Some of us hate our jobs back home, but what if you didnt have a job and you were forced to sell, mosquito nets, cell phone covers, underwear, etc on the street because you knew a supplier and you had zero other options?

Yesterday I walked past an old man next to his cardboard box of stuff and all i wanted to do was to hug him and tell him there was more than this! That God loved him so passionately and that He wants so much more for Him, but i didnt, because it is so seemingly hopeless, and because in this culture peopel don't talk about private things, about their inner feelings etc.

My other rant about the mundane-ness of life here: Boda-boda drivers. Enter the life of a boda driver, once you manage to get a boda, not really sure how that works, how anyone here has the capital to do so, since they cost about1,000,000 shillings or about 500 dollars. But once you get that far, you need turf. Good luck getting it if you dont have any friends there. There are Boda stages, and of course there is conflict and fighting over who gets what stage, since some stages bring more money, some are already too crowded to make any money. And now you sit there all day, on your boda, waiting for someone who walks by to give them a ride for anywhere from 1000 to 3000 shillings or 50 cents to $1.50. Some days they dont get hired at all, but nevertheless they are out there everyday. Garaunteed if you look at them EVER, they will put their hand up and ask you if you want a ride and you have to say no because likely you are walking. Yesterday as i was walking i was solicited for a ride probably 30 times. Almost every street corner that i gave eye contact to one immediately i was offered a ride. And i guess i have no room to complain about them asking me for a ride, but imagine their lives, they need to be the first one to ask a passerby for a ride so they can garauntee they get to give the ride and not anyone else at their stage. But most of hte day they sit, and do nothing.

I'm sure alot of you have heard how hard it is for a black guy in new york to pick up a taxi, or some of you know personally. The thing that pisses me off here, is that it is easier for a white person to get a boda to pick them up than a black person. And maybe it's because they know if we are here we have money. But still that sucks, i mean it's the same thing, except i am the minority and yet i'm still privelidged for some reason.

That leads me to my last point today, in the past week about three peopel have attempted to rip me off, simply because i am white. And while each time it was over a very small amount of money, after awhile it gets old. After awhile I just wish I didn't get screwed over becuase of my race. Like peopel giving me wrong change on purpose, or telling me one price, when i know that's not the price. I mean again it's not much money, but i think if you were to charge someone more money in the states because of their race there would be a public outcry.

All that to say, that the Lord is sovereign over the people here, over their lives.
"Here is what I have seen: It is good and fitting for one to eat and drink, and to enjoy the good of all his labor in which he toils under the sun all the days of his life which God gives him; for it is his heritage." Ecclesiastes 5:18

This I pray for my sake:
"...Give me neither poverty nor riches --
Feed me with the food allotted to me;
Lest I be full and deny You,
And say, "Who is the Lord?"
Or lest I be poor and steal,
And profane the name of my God."
Proverbs 31:8-9

When you get away from Kampala road the city is surprisingly calm and beautiful, it almost reminds me of home, hard to believe life is so hard here for so many people...

...Pray for me this while i am here, "I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me -- the task of testifying to the Gospel of God's grace." Acts 20:24....cuz it's easty to get a little tired

the weekend...an adventure? kind of

2006-06-19T08:23:00.002+03:00

Hello,

So the weekend, was good for the most part. The plan on saturday was to go to Mabira Forest somewhere on Jinja road between Kampala and Jinja (East of Kampala). So we got on a taxi headed for Jinja and told them we wanted to get off at Mabira, and of course they said "ok". Well as we keep seeing signs saying we are getting closer and closer to Jinja we start to wonder if they've passed it up. So we get the conductor's attention and realize we're about a mile on the other side of where we are going. We get out, and do the completely normal Ugandan thing, which is pee on the side of the road with lots of cars going by, haha.
We pick up a taxi going the other way and tell him we want to go to Mabira and he tells us it's 1000 shillings which is a completley ludicrous price for such a short distance but i think none of us felt like arguing and we all gave in. This taxi though was already completely full, so by the time we got in it was ridiculously packed. So apparently this guy thought that what we meant by Mabira forest, was a sign that says mabira forest with an arrow on it and 3.5 kilometres underneath, which we didnt realize till we got off the taxi and paid.

At that point we gave up and just walked the rest of the way there to blow off some steam, at least in my case.

The whole way there on the taxi and during our walk i was listening to some sermons by N.T. Wright, who is supposedly the foremost scholar on the new testament. Since I've been here Alan has introduced me to the novel thought, which isn't really so novel at all, to look at the gospels and the rest of the bible for that matter in context. Like, understanding jewish culture and the way it was then and applying it as such, then the exegesis occurs when we take that whole applicatoin and compare it to our lives now, not just take the letters that Paul wrote and directly apply them as if they were written to us, although there is alot of valid stuff in doing that. When you know more about the culture surrounding the letters and gospels and such, you see that for example Jesus parables have alot more depth than one woudl think and it makes alot of things make alot more sense, and thus can lead to alot of controversial thoughts, but i'm not that far yet into it, but the whole thing is called hermeneutics and it's fascinating to say the least.

That was a side note, but finally we got to Mabira and hired some bikes and rode the worst bikes on one of the least maintained bike trails i've ever been on. Yet it was still a good deal of fun. I think it at least will hold me over till i get back and can ride my bike on some Austin trails before i head back to school in the fall. Or maybe it just whet my appetite and now i absolutely can't wait for that when i return.
The trail took us through a village at the end, and it's always a spectacle for kids especially in more rural areas here when muzungu's come through (especially when they are zooming by on bicycles!). Eventually after taking the bikes back and paid we ended up taking a wrong turn and walked through the main road of this small community and you wouldn't believe how excited all these children were to see us. All wanting to hold our hands, and of course saying the only thing they know in english, "Hi muzungu how are you?" and answering themselves before we get a chance to answer, "I am fine!" It was awesome though, as is typcal there were even naked kids following us too, or abaana abareere (naked children), HA I am learning words!
So we had our first experience with I guess this culture's very unobtrusive begging. And we learned that when someone starts following us and talking to us and trying to show us around we need to say, "We don't need a guide, thank you," because this man started trying to teach us the names of things that we didnt need, all we needed was some time to look around to find bananas and water for lunch, but eventually he just said, "what about me" and Mark gave him 500 shillings so we could run away and get on a taxi. People never come right out and say what they want, or if they do, they wait a very long time after making alot of conversation, as if the reason they came to talk to you in the first place was really an afterthought, in a way it's cool because this culture is more friendly, but appealing to my american nature, it can be annoying at times because we live in a very fast paced, what do you want kind of world.

On the friendly side of the culture though if i was to refer to my entire extended family as a local here, i would say that i have lots of mothers and fathers and brotehrs and sisters, grandmas and grandfathers (or Jaja's). Cousins are sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles are mothers and fathers, etc. Whereas friends of the family or just older people are your auntie and your uncle. And that carries over into reality too, like if you are a woman (omukazi) and your sister died, then you are responsible for her children as well as your own. One of the ladies that works at our house has two children of her own, and three of her sisters.

Oh, I have not yet mentioned the whole DVD copyright, mess they have here, well not mess i guess, I'll even call it amazing. There are tons of stores, streetside vendors, hawkers, etc that sell compilations of lots of different movies. On saturday night i bought a dvd with all four harry potters, charlie and the chocalate factory and some other movie ive never heard of for 10,000 shillings (6 dollars), as well as an adam sandler 6 movie compilation for the same price. I am not really sure how all of you feel about that, but it is what it is here and i'm going to take advantage (however poor the quality of the movies actually are).

So Mark and i went to the dvd shop and just to walk through Kansanga, Kabalagala and Muyenga as a change of pace, and man i'm going to be in amazing shape when i get back from walking so much! But he stays at my house and we really click alot, he reminds me alot of Jspence personality wise which is definitely a compliment for either of the two i think. So we walked around alot and ended up at the international hotel to see Ghana destroy Czechoslovakia in their match (naturally all people here cheer for all the African teams before any other team, and it's just really exciting here because all the people are so into it!). On that note forgot to mention Alan (whose personality reminds me of Andy Marks--again compliment to both) accompanied me to Heritage international school where we played soccer with Steven (our day guard and beast of a man), Paddy, and Kizito, as well as some other guys. I guess needless to say abadugavu (black people) have more stamina than abazungu (white people) do, or at the very least these guys are in much better shape than we are as far as aerobics are concerned. As was made evident on the football pitch, but it was fun nevertheless.

Sunday morning we attended Ggaba Community churhc again and they ahd a guest speaker it didnt really like much, but the worship was good as ever. Afterwards I had my first experience with Ethiopian Food, man five guys ate for three dollars a piece and couldn't finish the food we had, and eating with your hands is always fun. It was actually really surprisingly good. I never knew that an Ethiopian looked so much different than say any other African, but you can really see the Arab influence on their facial structure and skin color.

Last night we watched the Brazil/Australia game and watched Australia get the tar beaten out of them at the house that our friend Henry is house-sitting for, ironically an apparently ridiculously rich Aussie family with a three tiered front yard/pool table/satelite tv/inverter so they can watch tv with no power, and an amazing view of lake victoria from the balcony upstairs. <---All of which is completely ludicrous for a missionary family, but i won't say much more about that. We had some pizza and just chilled.

I also met a guy whom Henry had been hosting thta had been living on Langira island, an island just 2 hours south of Jinja with no power, no running water, completely primitive doing some medical stuff, that we had heard about before and really wanted to visit one weekend, and so now we have access to the contacts so that we can do so!

Ahhh, I'm so excited i'm finally really leving this city, we go to Kitgum, or close to there on friday morning!! get excited!!

By the way, for those of you that read this, you can feel free to leave comments, it's ok if i dont know you, i'd love to get some comments

Amanda: thank you so much for that message, you have no idea how much that brightened my day when i read it this morning. I do agree, we need to have somthing more meaningful than a 2 second conversation and so we can call ourselves better than facebook friends, so we shall work on that in the fall. Just invite me to hang out with you guys again i love all your friends, tell kieth and mateo i think they are freakin tight!

Dad: Sorry i didnt get a chance to email you yesterday, but i'm going to do so today, Happy Father's day at any rate, i hope you had a good weekend and some well deserved rest from work!!

Much love to everyone!!!

2006-06-15T20:26:00.000+03:00

here are some random pics...

This is us sleeping the day we got to Uganda

This is me and the dog that lives at our house Benny and i'm pretending to hit him with a panga... I dunno i thought it was funny

And lastly, i figured jspence, wes, andy, jared, kristin and amber would probably enjoy this one the most... note my facial expression. But hey can you blame us? muzungu's get sunburns easily!

Cafe is closing, ill get back to you guys soon!!

week 3 or is it 4?

2006-06-15T07:51:00.000+03:00

Hello there friends!!

This week has been rather uneventful, but that's been a good thing and in that comes embedded a prayer request! All week i've been skimming through hydraulics and water resources textbooks learning as much as i can about the stuff to help me on tabitha, since my job will be water resources. So on Tuesday i was complaining to steve about not doing any engineering work and he hit me right on the head basically when he said, "There will be plenty of engineering work for the rest of your life, you're in Africa, get outside these walls and do something!" Man, that's what i need God's help with now, a vision. I need Him to show me what i'm supposed to be doing here at all. I mean all my thoughts leading up to this trip was, sweet Uganda, it's gonna be awesome. Nevery did i put much thought into what else i was going to do while i was here.

So please that's what i need, some direction, I was talking to Mark last night about eMi and really we exist to help other ministries do their work, but we dont really have a ministry in ourselves. So it's like a mission organization w/o any guidelines or structure which makes it a lot tougher, but probably better since I have alot of freedom and leeway to do what the Lord wants me to. But therein lies the problem, if I have a lot of choices, or in this case infinite choices it makes it easy to do nothing since the possibilities are so vast, so pray that god would show me, or that he'd open and close doors as he sees fit, because i really want to leave an impact here on someone, not for my sake, but for His, and i can only do it with His help!

Aside from that I was going for a walk yesterday and when i went outside Kizito and a group of guys were playing football and so i went and grabbed some shorts and played with them. You definitely get made fun of alot being a muzungu, or at least i think i do. I heard the word muzungu every five seconds, and haha i probably think i'm funnier than you guys will, someone on the other team was trying to trick me by saying muzungu to get me to pass it to them, so i said, "omusajja omuweru" which is another way to say white man, and i thought it was hilarious, and so did the whole group of guys.

Also I asked mark to take some pictures of the match and i think the lighting was bad so he took a few videos instead, and for whatever reason i played horribly yesterday and he managed to get a video of every time i screwed up (thanks Mark!), so you guys back home can look forward to seeing those and laughing at me if i get the time together to make a slideshow or something.

So i've definitely realized how isolated we are in this building and it's kind of sad, I can wake up walk to work, work all day, eat dinner, then walk home and go to sleep, And it's lame! I've realized how much i need to get outside these walls every day, so hopefuly i'll be making a point to do so for the rest of the summer.

The office has been relatively quiet lately with people coming and going. Steve, Alan and Erica went to sarotye over the weekend and got back monday night and James and Josh left for Sudan this Monday and won't be back till Friday.

Today at the office will be a day of prayer, and a needed break from reading textbooks! So lots of singing songs and praying and talking and goodness, O He is good!

Check out Isaiah 35 or Ezekiel 47, good chapters about what we have to look forward to!

Here's what I got to wake up to this morning:

today was so good

2006-06-11T21:46:00.000+03:00

I finally found a church that I love, that speaks to everything I want in a church and i'm sure more. The only reason we even went to it is because we knew the pastor because we took a trip to an orphanage that is owned by the church that past eMi people designed so we could get a look at the end result. And a girl named Jessica who is leaving the country whom we met two days ago wanted to go see it since her church back home will be visiting in and helping there in July, and she's been coresponding via email with the pastor.

So anyways, we attended the service so we could talk to the pastor, and my goodness it was amazing!! Dancing, Shouting, Clapping, Jumping, Praising the king!!! The peopel there were so excited and that's what i've been missing from back home in the other churches i've been to. This will definitely be the most charismatic church i've ever attended, and i'm very excited about that and what God will show me. But to start the service sweaty because i'm so excited about God is absoultely amazing and I was fed today in an amazing way!

It's called Ggaba Community Church (pronounced gaba) and is about a 300 shilling (20 cent) taxi ride from my house!

God has been opening my eyes to future possibilities while i've been here like never before. I mean i've been pretty content with not having a clue what is going to happen after my undergrad, which is two school years away, but i'm seeing maybe grad school is a possibility? maybe work force to get experience to come back here with valuable knowledge to do what i'm doing now for a two year commitment, maybe travel america, or the world for that matter, meet people, learn cultures, I dont nkow, i mean i guess this sounds really random but i've felt like my eyes have been opened a bit and i'm just really excited for everything the Lord has in store for my future!

I wish I could sit down with each of you guys and talk to you about all the things swimming in my head, from my complaints about the government, to the hurt, to my complaints about americans in general, to my complaints about christians in general, to the beauty of this place, all the little things i can't remember now but i'll remember later im sure, all over and back again!

We serve an amazing God and i urge you to pursue Him daily in His word, and in prayer, trust me, it will change you, and He's worth the daily devotion, heck He's worth the secondly devotion so i encourage you my friends to give Him every bit of you, every choice, every second.

Don't you love it when you find yourself praying things and have no idea where they came from and you realize that God put that prayer in your mouth/head and that it's exactly what He wanted you to say to Him? This morning i was praying just a quick prayer over breakfast and the day and i found myself saying to Him, "Lord I cannot wait to see what you are going to show me today," and man, he showed me alot. But I feel like that's a great way to start your day, or at least for us to be more child like in our approaches to Him. To approach His plans/wisdom/beauty with a sense of childlike awe, like a baby that just stares at things because they've never seen them before, or they can't remember when they did and they are absolutely enthralled. Four of us were on a taxi today (which by the way had 20 people in it) and there was a baby in a womans lap next to us and she and i just stared at each other for a long time, and I feel like that's a perfect example of when Christ said, "the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these."

So seek him as children!! Learn to quit being so darn grown up about your approach to him, i feel like that just makes it to religion-ish and less spirituality-ish and too self-righteousness-ish and not enough jesus-ish.

Love you momma, call me anytime, you're gonna have to work hard to use up that 50 dollar card on me!! and for those of you that have not texted me/called me/whatever, I have a cell phone here and you can feel free too!! I mean calling is expensive but i garauntee texting won't be more than twice or three times as much as texting back home, so please do so cuz i'd love it! (just let me know who you are since i dont have your numbers saved)

Andy why haven't you responded to my email yet? i want to know what's going on

Same goes to you Jspence I miss your silly little face

Dad, you can get international phone cards online at rates of like 15 cents a minute and if you'd like to call me you can call me at (this goes for everyone for calling/texting)

PHONE NUMBRO: 011-256-774-067-523

ok goodbye kiddos, talk to you soon!

2006-06-10T11:38:00.000+03:00

Hey there kids,

I want wow, this morning i had the first sweet quiet time with the Lord in awhile, and man it was good. For whatever reason i was led to 1John and man he spoke directly to my heart through that.

"Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God." 1John 4:1-2

"For whatever is born of God [those in Christ] overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world--our faith. Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?" 1John 5:4-5

"And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. These thigns I have written to you that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God." 1John 5:11-13

We are saved!! we are born of God and therefore, our faith (which is given to us by him) overcomes the world, i.e. "Greater is He who is in us than he who is in the world"

And the time was even sweeter, what a wonderful way to start the day with him!!
ok we are leaving now so i will post more later

God bless my loves, I am praying for you, continue to rock it hard for God!

satan is bad and god is good

2006-06-08T20:50:00.000+03:00

So guys, i really need your prayers and i think all of our office needs your prayers against the enemy's attacks lately. Well let me go one step further and say that Christ said "take heart for I have conquered the world." meaning that we have authority over satan and all power of darkness and so when you pray please say something to the effect of, "in the name of christ i cast satan from their office and from their lives" this is key, he said anything we ask in his name he will give us, so please pray that in his name. But the reasoning i guess is i've been in a horrible mood for two days in a row, i'm good now, but wasn't earlier today.

I guess it's just the thoughts i've had in my head or the words i've wanted to say have been so negative and thankfully i've held my tongue, but i hate that feeling of just wanting to find something wrong with everything that's going on, and to blame people around you for any little thing. So that's me, and add to that two of our staff members have been a little sick lately, and one of the staff members is in a play and has been going to practices alot and has been getting i dont know how little sleep and satan has been really attacking him as well, but we can always use more christ.

As i guess our own little pet project a friend of our office (who is a muzungu as well) introduced us to a lady called Evelyn. We walked from a gas station in Kansanga (which is a suburb or kampala near the house we live at) and saw the major flooding problem they experience there. Basically this little bitty creek bed majorly overflows everytime it rains, because it's the only pathway for the water to get to the swamp further down"stream". It's quite a project, since everytime it floods the water gets about two feet up on the houses nearby. We hav eno idea what this will require, but we will probably need to come ount when it rains to at least see how big th problem really is. Although this sounds like an amazing chance to really get involved in the community around us rather than just help lots of neighbouring ministries

ummm...

2006-06-07T20:02:00.000+03:00

Hey there friends,

I will admit today and yesterday were trying and tiring, and i've not had a good attitude all day long. You know when you know what you should be doing and yet choose not to for whatever reason? well today i just felt like crap from about noon on and really didnt want to chagne that feeling...

...Nevertheless I want yall to know what's going on

(by the way, i get made fun of every time i say "yall", and I even use it when speaking with locals, and as of yet i think they figure out what i'm saying cuz none of them have asked me to clarify

well before i get serious, check out how nice the beard is coming in....or not

We spent all day yesterday surveying for the Music for life thing i talked about in my last entry. I enjoyed it alot, and picked it up pretty well. The goal was that Mark, Alan and I woudl be able to survey all of Tabitha project by ourselves, and i'm pretty confident we can do that with the knowledge we have. It was actually fun too, to get to meet the people we are serving and do something a little more tangible than computer work.

So we get back and find that someone has broken into the house that three of us are staying at. Which definitely put a damper on a good day. Although all taht was stolen from me was a pair of shoes. I guess it was just a downer to have someone do that to you, especially since they'd have to have know we weren't there, meaning they've been watchign us. It's also a downer that we are here to help people in this country and all this person sees when they look at muzungu's is $$. I mean we are, like the poorest american is still rich here. So the fact that someone broke in and came into the house was worse than actually getting things stolen.

The owner of the house (Chad Gamble) is our director and went back to the US on furlough last friday, and he lost a laptop, a dvd player, and a stereo during the theft add to that he had malaria when he left and he was flying into california and probalby very tired when he found out about it. So he needs some encouragement and prayer more than we do since he lost more.

Add to the scary factor theft is taken so serioiusly here that if someone breaks into your house they are most likely willing to kill rather than get caught and go to prison forever. But not to worry mom, they are hiring a day guard to work at our house for the rest of the summer and he's the brother in law of the day guard here at the office, and i think we'd trust our day guard with anything, even children. So i'll be safe.

So i guess....obviously on my heart is to pray for peopel so desperate they feel they have to take from people to get what they need, whether it's this guy or someone else...i dont know...

Today we went out to survey again and got some done and were about to set up our third control point (by the way i discovered how much fun being rod man is), and it started sprinkling so we got all the equipment and left the tripod so we coudl set up quickly when it passed. We sat in the car for a bit and it got worse so i volunteered to go get teh tripod. We were about 30 feet from the tripod and it took me about 20 second to get there and back and i was completely drenched head to toe. Don't really know the point of this story, and i guess you guys can sense the stale tone of this whole post which is likely stemming from the mood i'm in.

Oh well it's about 830 PM and i'm gonna go home now and go to sleep, I promise to get back to you soon with something better than this one.

Wes and Amby---i'll email you soon!!

much love from africa!!

what i'm doing

2006-06-05T08:21:00.000+03:00

I first want to apologize for the fact that i've not been able to post any pictures, but we are on basically a dial up connection at the office and it woudl take way too long to get one up, but I will soon. It's actually kind of cool, since there are no real land lines here, our dial up modem is actually a cell phone basically, but for whatever reason is still just as slow as a normal dial up connection.

But the real reason for this post, i figured you guys woudl like to know what we are actualyl doing here, and i guess this summer's actual project...well here goes.

Originally we were going to design a campus with fundraising packet and a full set of phase 1 construction drawings for "The African Children's Choir" and the project was called "Music For Life". Sadly that has been moved back to the fall since our team is so small this summer, it kinda sucks cuz that sounded like an awesome ministry to be working with. Basically the choir finds tons of kids all over Africa who can sing that are typically in horrible living situations. They go on year long tours aroudn the world and when they come back they are basically "westernized" and have a hard time melding back into the culture here. So that project was to build a campus and dorms for the kids so they coudl get schooling here, and be slowly reintroduced to the culture and the way of life back home.

But since they moved that project to the fall, they moved up a project that was slated for the fall to about two weeks from now. It is called "the Tabitha project", and is on a site somewhere outsided of Kitgum, Uganda. Kitgum is northeast of Gulu (the city where all the invisible children are), and we will be staying in an IDP camp for the week that we will be there. Sadly Uganda takes an even worse turn than those of you who have seen the invisible children video would think. Not only has the LRA (Lord's Resistance Army) completely screwed up the situation for the kids up north, but the IDP (internally displaced person) camps are places guarded by the government's army full of people that have been displaced as a result of the LRA's movements for the last 20 years.

insert rant here:

The sad thing about the situation here in Uganda, and in Darfur, and insert any horrible crisis situation in this part of the world that has been going on for a very long time, is that the western governments will never do anything about it. The reason is economics. There is no western money in this area, and therefore all this chaos here doesn't affect the US economy or anyone elses for that matter. And sadly since the economy isn't affected in any way by the mess here, no one in a position of power can justify fixing the situation over here.

end of rant.

But check this out.
"For Zion's sake I will not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest, Until her righteousness goes forth as brightness, and her salvation as a lamp that burns." Isaiah 62:1

So basically, the governments won't and can't do anything about this, but i serve a God that can, and this is further encouragement for that part of the Lord's prayer that gets neglected alot "thy kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven"...Praying for his kingdom to come to earth, that he woudl change this. Only He has the power, and i think it will be impossible for me to return to the US and not pray for something to happen over here.

Back to the point though. The Tabitha project is basically a vocational home for widows up north. To teach them to sew, farm, etc. to give them real marketable skills that will allow them to actually make money since there is absolutely no opportunity for them to work with the skills they have or dont have now. We will be surveying about 23 acres of farmland, and designing the compound where the women will recieve and education and get valuable training for real tangible things. Also this is kinda cool although we're not completely filled in on the details. They want to develop some sort of "credit" system so that when the women graduate they can apply the credits they've earned for various things to things like a sewing machine so they can go out with capital to actually have a business rather than nothing.

Well the work day is starting now, and so i leave you with that...

But God is big, God is massively big. I mean i'm more than 8000 miles away from the States and God is here ministering to my heart, to the hearts of his children here, and to your hearts there. And somehow he knows what we all need, and he provides

We serve an amazing God...

oh man internet sucks here...but i have other things to talk about besides that

2006-06-02T16:17:00.000+03:00

hey there people whom i love!

It is friday afternoon and today has been pretty lax. I've been a bit frustrated since I don't have much work to do yet (like i think i talked about yesterday) but i'll get over it i'm sure.

Last night I had the first nightmare i've had in awhile. I woke up at 522am from it and wrote about it in my journal and i honestly was scared to put it on paper. and perhaps like all dreams they seem less intense or significant about 10 hours later, but I do know that it was a spiritual attack and i've never felt such intense hatred as i did right before i woke up.

So here goes. I was for some reason in the car with a man who was my principal, although i don't have a school principal for whatever reason taht made sense to me in the dream, as typically things do that dont make any sense once you wake up and get a chance to think about them.

So the principal drove me to some house, not really sure where and we were talking, and he convinced me that there is something wrong with me, with the way i am or something. Mostly it had to do with the way I can act at times. As alot of you are aware I tend to be very outgoing, and sometimes downright loud and obnoxious. and i discussed this with the guys here that while being outgoing and having the right words to say and being gifted in speaking is a good thing, it can also come across as a bad thing, and i sometimes lack any tact whatsoever with the things i say. And sometimes I can come across as downright childish, and as my friend Chris Hill has pointed out, I am much more spiritually mature than most people know. and i see taht because i put up this front that i am a funny outgoing guy, and will say whatever i can to be the center of attention and to make people laugh even if it's at my expense.

Anyways, the point of all that is that I know where I am weak, and the things i need to work on, and the "principal" served to discourage me to the point of tears in my dream, i mean he made me really sad, i've never thought about emotions in a dream, but it definitely happened last night. So he convinced me there was something wrong with me and that he wanted to fix me and he had a cure. I protested alot because i didnt want to believe something was wrong with me, so even though discouraged i still knew that that i was created this way for a reason.

One last time i told him i wasn't sure about a cure, and he pulled out three syringes and horrified i said, "you're not going to give me those yoruself are you?" And he tackled me and i was seemingly paralyzed while he stabbed the first syringe into my right chest, and proceeded to pump the plunger on the syringe over and over again. I remember not knowing what to do other than to look on horrified as my breathing became more labored and quick. Oddly though it didn't hurt, but i was shocked to be sure.

So at this point i feel completely defeated, that the person i once was has been changed forever and there is nothing i can do to be me again, i am now whatever he wants me to be. and he raises the other two syringes and drives them into my right cheek and my left forehead. Again all i can do is be completely shocked as to what is going on, and feeling completely hopeless as to what i am supposed to do. He proceeded to pump the syringe in my cheek to make sure everythign got into me from it. and then he stopped and let me get up thinking everything is over.

I turned my head to the right and saw a man with a paper bag over his face handing a gun to me. And I heard the "principal" say, "now kill yourself." I woke up immediately after but not before i first felt more hopeless and lost and hated than i've ever felt in my life.

I witnessed two aspects of satan last night. His attempts to disguise himself (as a wolf in sheeps clothing) and to sweet talk us, convince us of things that are completely counter to the teaching of God (he is an accuser and a liar), and then his completely intense hatred he has for children of god, and for that matter all humans.

I wrote last night as i've been writing in my journal how dry i've felt lately, and how much i've needed the Lord. Well my barbed wire cut turned out to be worse than i thought. Im no doctor, but i think it might have even been deep and wide enough to have required a few stitches. But the point is i woke up around 3 or so to go to the bathroom and it hurt, but it wasn't until i got back into bed that it got bad. The pain went almost all the way through my foot, as if the barb broke off in my foot and it went almost all the way through. It was awful and i was worrying about every possible thing, what if it did break off, what if there was some crazy african bacteria or virus on it and i'll have to get my foot amputated, what if i have to have surgery while im here, etc etc.

So i finally stop, and put my hand on my foot, and begin to pray for healing. And amazingly almost all the pain is gone right now (5pm my time). That is the lord healing if i've ever seen it. I really believe that it was bad and that there was something that coudl have harmed me more, but that the Lord did heal me and honestly i dont even feel like i need a tetanus shot, because i'm trusting him in this that he did heal me!!

How encouraging to be attacked by Satan because I am here according to the will of god, and that God actually healed me. This morning I woke up feeling closer to him than in a long while, He is so good. And every friday morning we do some worship time/whatever/sharing time, and i volunteered to play guitar and lead it, Well it ended up as just songs the whole time, and i love leading worship cuz i get all sweaty, and regardless of my attitude at the beginning He changes my heart. and so he did this morning...

"In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, that we who first tusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory. In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory."

Ephesians 1:11-14

the past few days

2006-06-01T19:39:00.000+03:00

I have been writing in my journal several times during the trip that I really need God to break down some sort of wall in my heart. It's seemed harder from about the beginning of may or so and on to dive deep into him. And i've been asking him to change it, although something is there that inhibits my ability to ask him wholeheartedly to change me though so it seems like a catch 22. But i know he hears me, and he has a plan in this, i'm just missing the closeness i've had with him before. Could yall pray for that for me cuz i need it here and now. I need to "gird up my loins" as it were, and prepare for some battle here.

This week i've been tasked with helping to finish up a project report. And i've been doing layout stuff, meaning i've learned how to do some amazing things with photoshop. I've been a little discouraged, since i really have very little autocad knowledge, but i know i'll learn eventually. But for those of you taht know me you know I like to understand what is going on if at all possible. Everythign is slower here though on every level you could think of, so everything that has been planned has been pushed back or moved or something.

Tonight after work a group of kids, and two locals that are our friends (Kizito and Paddy) were playing some football (soccer), and Alan and I went out to join them. For whatever reason here people surround grassy areas with barbed wire, and i definitely cut my foot twice on barbed wire...i think i'm up on my tetanus shots, but just to be sure i'll be looking into get another one. It was good to be active today moreso than just walking two miles to work and back.

I'll update more soon

I miss you momma

Love you all,

Josh

thoughts thus far on poverty

2006-05-28T19:05:00.000+03:00

Aside from all the exciting and amazing and beautiful creation i've been witness to here, it is definitely clear that it will be a little bittersweet here.

I don't think i thought about this very much until Steve (the head architect, and probably the older guy i identify most with, not to mention an old ag Whoop!) really tore out my foundations. I mean we are so indoctrinated and used to the way things are and how things are and should be and whatever.

I guess my point is that in the US we get all up in arms about poverty and about people living in horrible conditions and about how we shoudl help them and how we are going to be crusaders and save the universe and things. And i agree it is bad, and i woudln't want to live in the "poverty" that we have in america by any means. But i guess the thing though is that no matter how poor someone is in america, they can survive, they can get a job however mundane, however repetitive and low paying, and they can buy food, no matter how low in nutrients or how awful or dirty or poor they may actually be...it all pales in comparison to life here. If you are homeless in america you can make enough money panhandling to live, to eat, to move on to the next boring day perhaps, but still alive. And i'm sorry if i'm offending anyone here, and i dont mean to marginalize the extent of the problem in the US, but here it's so much worse.

Imagine you are six years old and live a block behind Gaba road (the road in town known for the furniture made and sold there) which is just chock full of muzungu's, rich westerners, people that have more money than they know what to do with. And you are dying of malaria. You are dying of a disease that is so common in your country that if you had six dollars for a pill to cure it you woudl be fine in three days. And yet you are dying and there is nothing your family can do about it. It is places like this where people actually die of starvation, not just go hungry, but die...I mean i know i knew that before, but i feel like over the course of this summer it will become more and more real to me.

I guess, however bad i think things are, however uncomfortable or distraught, or tired, or annoyed, or angry, or hopeless, or alone, or any condition under the sun...I still have nothing to complain about. Firstly because i have christ, and secondly because he blesses me with much more than i deserve, heck he blesses millions who live in america and dont know him while many who do know him here die in the streets. His ways are higher than our ways and his thoughts are higher than our thoughts, yet how precious are your thoughts of me O god, if i were to count them they woudl outnumber the sand...This applies to all of your beloved, including the downtrodden and forgotten.

i pray they take solace in that...

2006-05-27T17:33:00.000+03:00

Here are a few pictures of london so i can catch you guys up on what we've done. We took "the tube" from heathrow to picadilly circus (english people have funny words) and i think this is trafalgar square here

house of parlaiment

ok here is the office which is where half of the staff stays and one family on staff stays.

this is somewhere in downtown Kampala, you can see two boda's (motorcycle things) and all those white vans are the mutatu's (taxis). btw the streets are backwards here like in england, but unlike the western world driving here is mass chaos, you absolutely have to drive aggresively or you will be squashed. Imagine a two lane road in the states but here you have two lanes of cars and two lanes of bodas squeezing through plus two lanes of people walking on the sides and somehow nobody gets runover and wrecks are rarer than you wuold suspect.

This is the takeout point at the end of our Nile trip. These are grade 6 rapids here (impassible by raft) which is why we got out and walked around. Notice how close the cows are to the ridiculous amount of water moving next to them.

on the left is the four interns starting with alan, james, mark, and me. Then Josh to the right of me is the intern coordinator here and also the head of the construction management here. Going on is abby who has been in africa for a year working with food for the hungry and to the right of them are brian and alec both of which are interns in the colorado springs office who are here for a short term project trip and will be leaving here on monday.

This is all of us after having torn it up on the nile river, getting our boats flipped several times, swallowing lots of water, and getting sunburned. Altogether having an absolutely amazing time.

Right now it's so weird how at home i feel here. Last night we went to see xmen 3 which was an absolutely crappy movie i dont suggest it to anyone, but that i saw an american movie and now i am at an italian place/coffee shop on my laptop with wireless internet listening to the guy next to me talk on a cell phone.

well i leave you guys with that. I set up the time on this blog to match up with the time here in kampala, except here we do not have daylight savings time and blogger doesnt know that so really add an hour to whatever time it is and that is when i posted it local time.

I love you kids

Kelly: you are absolutely amazing, i cannot wait for a hug when i come back and to hear you voice and see your smiling face

Jspence: same goes to you except ill kiss you and tickle you!!

Momma: i love you!!

much love,

Josh

monday to friday

2006-05-26T19:35:00.000+03:00

this has definitely been a whirlwind week. It has been officially termed "intern orientation week" but i'm not sure how much orientating we actually got.

oh by the way i have my luggage, so thanks for the prayers anyone who read this!!

So on monday we (Me, Alan, Mark, and James) showed up and basically hung out all day, had our first taste of ugandan breakfast which isn't that much different than breakfast in the states. Also i've learned how good tea is when you put milk in it (sorry i didnt try it in the states nat). So we took naps on the porch in the afternoon and went to eat dinner at Chad and Shanti's house (the director and his wife).

Let me rave a second about the weather here. IT IS AMAZING!! I mean you have power half the time because the electric company is completely unreliable, and nobody has AC's anyway because they dont sell them here and no one could afford them anyway, yet i have yet to be physically uncomfortable indoors. I think the highest it's felt is about 90 with a little humidity, but that isn't the case most of the time. It basically feels like March in Texas...and it's gonna be like that here all summer!

We spent our first night in a lady named Maggie's house (who is gone on furlough in the states).

Ok when i went to Italy in highschool i felt really cool cuz you give them a dollar and you get like 2000 lire, it felt like you were really rich. It's about the same here, roughly 2000 shillings to the dollar and so i changed 200 dollars and got 363,000 shillings...the thing is here though, I really am rich. Like even the most meager of living in the US is rich compared to most who live here. The typical Ugandan needs 16-20 dollars a week to survive (so 5 days a week with 8 hour days, 50 cents or less an hour) meaning i am exhorbitantly rich here. The house our office is in looks better than any house i've ever lived in my whole life, yet the rent is the same as 608 montclair will be in the fall, for a two story, three kitchen, 6 bedroom house, with a yard and a big brick fence, mahogany trim everywhere. Although i'm not sure how well the house is actually built, i know it's very nice looking on the outside.

Sadly the house absolutely must be fenced with razor wire and we have day guards and night guards, and even though our home is obviously not modest, it's understandable why we need this much space and this much security...if our computers were stolen we could do no work here.

It's also really interesting that Kampala has no zoning laws, so in the midst of a bunch of nice fenced in houses, there will be shacks and squaters and little stores etc.

We didnt' get our luggage till last night so on tuesday we went to the market to buy some clothes to hold us over. I bought a swimsuit for 3000 shillings (approx $1.50) and apparently i got ripped off. The market is basically like a goodwill that costs less that you have to haggle at. I forgot to mention that here a white person is a "muzungu" and at the market or any place you haggle for price, we will be charged an exhorbitant amount for things. I also learned that i am bad at haggling, which i suppose comes easier when you actually know what things are worth.

Interactions with Ugandans are interesting and getting easier. typically you will shake hands and keep holding them, and you always go with the "hello, how are you, fine how are you, fine..." and you keep talking to them whilst holding their hands...Those of you who know me know thta's not a problem at all, i just found it very interesting.

Wednesday we went on a "scavenger hunt" in Kampala, until then we'd only driven through briefly since we live outside of the city. The roads here are the absolute worst roads i've ever seen, and every gas station has a "tyre clinic" because tires are changed so often due the the ridiculous amoutn of wear they get on the dirt roads/pot holes/lack of road altogether/trenches from rain runoff/etc. Needless to say it'd be really fun trekking the roads on a mountain bike and they wouldn't make a bad course for that, as far as a comfortable ride is concerned, think again, but i'm beginning to get used to that too. As you can imagine with crappy roads or just a more relaxed mindset here, it is not uncommon for a Ugandan to be an hour or two late to an appointment. The speed of life here is just much slower than that in the states...again you guys who know me know that is definitely not a bad thing for me!

Gasoline costs around $5 a gallon here, and thus public transportation is huge, add to that the fact that no one can afford cars because they are all imported and come with them a 50% tax making them prohibitively expensive.

Public transportatoin comes in three forms: a boda, a mutatu (taxi), or a special hire. A boda is some sort of weird mixture between a motorcycle and a scooter. They are also very dangerous and not officially endorsed by eMi, and thus you are discouraged from taking them. You are basically sitting on the backseat of a motorcycle on the bumpiest, holiest roads known to man, and even though they are a bit softer due to better suspension than in a car, you are not wearing a helmet and from their insane driving habits it is not uncommon to be thrown from the boda!

Next is the mutatu which is the weirdest thign i'v ever seen. They are all vans and all look exactly the same (white with a blue checker pattern down the sides). Each are licensed to carry 14 passengers, not including the driver and the money collector/guy who hassles people to get them to get in for a ride. So needless to say it's a tight fit with 3 rows of four and two front seats beside the driver in a skinny japanese van...which i guess is ok here since no one is really fat. In fact if someone says "hey betty you are looking fat lately" that is a compliment because you can afford to do so. the mutatu's run on special routes and you just get on and off like you woudl a bus and pay 500 shillings (about a quarter).

Lastly the special hires are just guys in cars that park near a stage (where boda drivers or taxis pickup/drop off) and you end up paying about 3 times as much to ride in them, the advantage is they will take you wherever you want.

All that to say we took a special hire because there were a lot of people waiting for mutatu's at the namuwongo stop. Totally got lost in Kampala, which isn't hard because everything looks exactly the same (you will see soon when i get out of the office and can make a post with pictures). It's a sad place there, to see all the little street kids begging for money, all the random people missing body parts or with leprosy asking for money, all the people that can barely walk sitting next to a blanket all day with random things to sell. The theory is that the things they sell were things made in the 80's then put in a giant warehouse for 20 years and then they sent it all to africa for street vendors to sell.

Also everyone here has a cell phone. It seems like the only real advertisements here on buildings are for the three cellphone companies (mtn(mobile telephone network), celtel, and uganda telecom), blue band margarine, bell lager, nile special lager....and taht's about it. But it's cheaper here rather than to build an infrastructure of land lines to just build cell towers and connect everyone that way. All the cellphones here are pre-pay, which gives infinite freedom to use whatever cellphone you want regardless of your provider, which is ingenious and should be picked up in teh states. it's just funny to see something so high tech in a country so underdeveloped.

Yesterday was by far teh most fun i've had in awhile, if in my whole life. We rafted down the nile river all day. The nile has several grade 5 rapids (i.e. the craziest rapids can get before they are declared impassable by raft), and we went down alot of them as well as some fours threes twos and ones. Holy crap, it was amazing, every single raft flipped several times on the fives and it was an incredible experience. I love how shane and shane calls all the stuff he's given us sensory candy and yet we still have only seen the fringes of how amazing he is. Well the Nile is a testament to about one of the coolest thigns i've seen that god has made. So much water moving so fast and violently is absolutely breathtaking and I really would like to go again before we leave for the summer. I wish i could have taken pictures while i was on the river, but even they wouldn't do it justice. The boats just get so tossed around and you just hang on for the ride and if it flips you try to hold on and hold your paddle, which i managed to do one of the two times our raft flipped. Also there were two times our guide was knocked off with us still in the boat!

I dont think any description of such awesome power could every hold a candle to how amazing it actually was, but i still believe it was one of if not the most amazing things i've ever experienced.

Today we learned alot about eMi as an organization, it's vision to eventually have 11 overseas offices from it's 4 it has now, and how the Lord has been using it to do amazing things. I've learned that eMi basically provides a place/building/whatever to a ministry to give them the means with which to equip and train others ultimately so the gospel of christ can be spread. The organization only deals with ministries who's end goald is ultimately to spread the gospel however directly or not is to be determined through prayer. But god has done some amazing stuff here and continues to.

This afternoon we were able to go and see the fruition of one of the project trips this office has done the design work on. It was located about a 30 minute boat ride from a city on teh coast of lake victoria, and was an orphanage complete with a school and homes with "house mom's" for all the children to live on, in the middle of the forest, which is basically a jungle (btw I expected more desert like land, but it's incredibly green everywhere here).

True to my stupid nature i did something girl related while we were off in the middle of nowhere. So when we got here monday morning there was another large group of muzungu college kids, which we stick out like sore thumbs here, and we found out what they were doing etc, wished them a blessing, saw a few cute girls, thought nothing of it whatever. So then today we go to this orphanage designed by eMi and see that same group of people there. The same girl is there obviously and we smile etc. I see her walking away and the Lord hit me in the face like a ton of bricks "talk to her". I was blown away, so i tried to shake it but the Lord was working on my heart in a huge way and i knew if i left w/o talking to her i'd have missed somethign and disobeyed him. So i went to try to find her and found another girl instead who said she'd gone to the village and so i told this complete stranger "here's my email, tell this girl who i dont know that i felt like the Lord wanted me to talk to her, and i'd love it if she emailed me when she got back to the states, i'm sorry if this is weird, but i felt liek i had to do this" so that's why i'm an idiot, and i dont knwo what i expect to happen from that since the group is from california, but there it is, and i know lots of you are not surprised by this at all.

We came back ate dinner, shared our testimonies with the rest of the staff and here i am posting this enormously long post.

Counselors: i love you guys and i'm praying for you, i hope god is doing amazing things and i look forward to seeing each of you in August!!

Cochairs: you are so incredibly, each and every stinkin one of you blow me away and I really miss you guys all, i wish you could all experience this alongside me here

Family: I love you guys so much and am so blessed to be so loved thank you for everything you've done to get me where i am, you guys are amazing.

first two-ish days in africa

2006-05-24T09:34:00.000+03:00

Wow,

so i am here finally and i'm sitting in an obsolutely gorgeous house, looking out on over a valley at a hill full of houses with red clay roofs and i can say nothing other than that I am in awe. First i'll talk about my trip though:

So i left houston at 10am-ish to fly to dallas where they told me that my flight from brussels to entebbe wasnt cancelled. Then when i arrived in dallas i was told that it was not canceled so i had the baggage checked all the way to entebbe, uganda. I arrived in New Jersey about 5pm eastern time and met all my fellow interns who recognized my orange basketball shorts (most of you know the ones that i wear way too much) from the facebook picture of me running from the fire in covington louisiana. We talked a bit and hung out at customer service trying to get the whole flight situation worked out. It was finally confirmed that yes the flight from brussels to entebbe was canceled and by the time our flight was boarding we got our tickets changed to fly through london instead of brussels. The flight was from 10pm eastern time to 10am london time (roughly 7 hours...i think) virgin atlantic left much to be desired...apparently the reason the airline gets so much hype is that they have a really good entertainment selection and really attractive stewardesses...but terrible service and horribly uncomfortable seats. Anyways next time they won't be my first choice of carrier.

We spent the day in london and managed to get to town without getting lost and did the fasttrack tour of london on foot, on a sunday, in the rain. Everythign was closed but it was still awesome to see...pictures to come soon when i get a chance to post from an internet cafe and not the networked dial up modem at the office...We left London at 10PM and got to entebbe at 540am their time (we are 8 hours ahead of central time here...so right now it's 947am and there it's 147am) to find that our luggage had not come with us... <--that needs prayer, 5 of the bags are here now, but both of mine have not shown up yet.

So british airways gave each of us 35 pounds = 70 dollars = 110,000 shillings = a ridiculous amount of money to buy clothes here so i'm not naked, although im very hesitant to wear used underwear and haven't gotten to that point yet...so sadly i'm wearing dirty underwear.

it's almost ten which means the staff is about to take us into town (kampala) and we will do a scavenger hunt for most of the day getting our bearings and trying to figure out where everythign is or at least get a general idea in such a huge city with mostly dirt roads and no obvious street signs. So i will update on the time i've been here very soon and more prayer requests when I get the chance in teh next day or two.

Much love to all of you my wonderful friends and family!!!

2006-05-21T20:19:00.000+03:00

most rushed thing ever, five seconds at heathrow about to leave for africa....i love life london was neat, the end ok bye

2006-05-19T03:14:00.000+03:00

hello to all you wonderful people whom i love!!

well it's thursday evening and im almost squared away on packing for the whole flippin' summer, and it was alot easier than i thought it would have been.

I can't believe i leave the country in two days, it's just crept up on me and i've not really been thinking about it much.

I really want the Lord to blow me away this summer and I pray that the man that leaves Africa will be different than the one who will be arriving there on sunday morning. I just want to be broken down, and shaken, and torn up and completely refined this summer for His sake, so he can use me better and so i can be more like Him.

Next time i pick this thing up i will most assuredly be in Uganda, Africa.

Till then...

post number one

2006-05-03T06:09:00.000+03:00

so this blog is so i can post when im in africa, and im not in africa right now so i dont care about it....it's really just there so i can use it later and start giving it out now...

ok bye