Tuesday, June 19 from Marlea

Tuesday morning, June 18?

Hey everybody! We get back to the States two weeks from today on July 3 and while it will be hard to say goodbye, I’ll be ready to be home. This Saturday, June 23, is Ryan’s 24th birthday and he has to work all weekend so we’ll celebrate later.

The last few days have been pretty busy. Friday afternoon, Irene arranged for Gerald, her 12 year old adopted son (Moses’ late brother’s son), to be picked up from the nearby boarding school and spend the weekend with us. Friday night while sitting at Irene’s house after a big rain, I thought I felt an earthquake for several seconds. Seth said he felt it too. I asked Irene if they ever had earthquakes and she said there had been one about 3 months ago. I haven’t been in one of those since we lived in California several years ago. The next day I searched on Google and found out that there was an earthquake in Congo felt all the way to Kenya (through Uganda) measuring 5.9 at around 8:50 pm local time.

Sunday we went to Musima village for Super Sunday where several village churches get together for their Sunday assembly once a month. It’s a fun time but lasts longer than even a normal village Sunday assembly lasts. We got there around 10 and left around 3. There was lots of singing, preaching, fellowshipping, eating lunch and 3 church choruses sang for us. It was absolutely exhausting, especially since we had Rachel and Tyler with us (Irene and baby Zach stayed home). (One in our group calls times like this “Introvert Hell” and I’m inclined to agree. DJ is the only extrovert in the group.)

Later Sunday afternoon, we met one of our friends, Maanda Wilson, who is a village preacher and has started a soccer ministry for young men. First we went to Bugagali Falls on the Nile where you can go near the river and see the rapids. It’s a very pretty place. Then I got to ride with Maanda on his motorbike out to the soccer field at a school nearby. We met some of the men and took pictures of them playing soccer. Later, we met Spencer and Emily Bogle, one of the missionary couples here (they’re expecting a baby in the next week or two) and Erica Pierson who lived here when Zach did and is back for a visit. We had a fun time eating Chinese food at Ling Ling’s in town.

Last week we started scheduling all the appointments for our last two weeks. I asked David then that, if possible, we would schedule village visits only every other day so we have a chance to ‘recover’ afterwards from those longer days and then spend time meeting in town with people on the other days (that’s also when I get to hang out/hide with Irene and kids and be on the internet). So our first village visit this week (not counting Sunday in Musima) was yesterday to Nawangoma to see a primary school and visit the home of Stephen Waiswa, a good friend who is another of the Jinja cluster village preachers.

Stephen came to Irene’s yesterday morning around 9 to ride with us and show us the way. We stopped at a shop owned by a friend of Stephen at a nearby trading center to pick up some gifts/staples for Meribou, his wife. I bought a couple of chipati hot of the grill for S&L to enjoy just in case it would be a while before we ate again. It’s a good thing. Not long after we pulled off the paved road at the trading center, it began to rain. The dirt roads turn into wet clay in the rain so we slipped and slid around but finally made it to the primary school. It was absolutely pouring but we ran out of the car into one of the school’s classrooms, basically a shed with a tin roof. It was raining so hard we couldn’t hear each other talk so we just looked at each other, the teachers and the children for probably 30 minutes until the rain softened enough for us to listen. We toured the school and then sat in one of the sheds that houses the nursery school and primary one for a little program they’d prepared for the visitors. We heard the school’s national anthem, Uganda’s national anthem and the school chorus sang for us. I can’t describe these school choruses, I’ll just have to find a way to put a video out on our website or something.

About 1:30ish, we headed out for Stephen’s home down the road after the teachers filled our car trunk with gifts of eggplants, corn, tomatoes, sugar cane and pineapples. (We distributed a lot of that after our return to the Source café employees.) Normally, we could’ve driven to Stephen’s house but since it had rained so much, we had to walk. DJ and Lexie had on tennis shoes and hiking boots but Seth and I just had on flip-flops. We all had a very difficult time walking on the road thru the mud/clay. Seth and I ended up going barefoot since one of his most favorite ever shoes tore badly and was ruined and it was too hard to pull our shoes out of the sticky stuff with each step. Anyway, after we finally got to the house, Stephen’s wife and one of his daughters cut the mud off our shoes with a machete and then washed our feet for us and the shoes so we could go sit inside and share a meal. They loaned Seth another pair of flip flops. I really enjoyed the foot washing but Seth had a little tougher time with receiving.

The best part was after our meal when one of Stephen’s sons, Johnson, brought Seth his repaired sandal. Seth was ecstatic! How did they fix it? Johnson said he’d taken it down to the cobbler’s shop and had it repaired. It was like the parable of the lost coin/sheep/son. Much rejoicing! And it only cost about 200 shillings so that’s maybe like a quarter or less.

After the meal and taking group photos of Stephen’s family, he took us to the next house to meet his 94 year old father. Wow! That’s very unusual as you know but especially for a place like Uganda.

Today, DJ and S&L are in meetings and working on loan proposals as well as printing out pictures to give to people. Later this evening, we’re going to the home of Grace and Goretti Nyonga. Grace is the head of the Busoga Bible School here in Jinja. Goretti used to work at the Source. I showed her how to bake chocolate cake from scratch to sell here at the café when we were here four years ago.

David and I go to a village a couple of hours from here tomorrow to meet with a man named James Okumu. David and Zach went to his home in 2000 I think but I’ve never been there or met him. We’ve told Seth and Lexie that tomorrow could be a good day for the two of them to go rafting here on the Nile if they want to miss that village visit.

I forgot to mention that last Saturday we did get to see Danyne Randolph and visit the Amani Baby Cottage orphanage here in Jinja. We’ll go back and eat supper with her and Surj, the newlyweds, sometime next week. Surj and Danyne are good friends of Zach from his time here. We also took a short tour of the Jinja market on Saturday. That’s an experience. It’s like Beebe flee market and Ripley, Mississippi’s First Monday but it’s every day and bigger. It would be more fun if we didn’t stick out as the white ones and could just look around and be invisible for a little bit. Being white also doesn’t help when it comes to trying to bargain for good deals in the market. They always give us the ‘muzungu’ price. Hope things are going well in your world and with your families.

I’ll try to post some more pictures.