Monday in Jinja

It’s Monday morning, May 12. David, Jeff, and I spent last night in Jinja town at Bobby and Candice Garner’s house so I’m just relaxing this morning at their house while David and Jeff are meeting with Ricky and Roy about the ISAC orphan program. Irene’s house is about 20 minutes from town and we don’t like to drive here after dark so we decided to stay at the Garners’ after having supper with the Jinja team missionaries last night. There are two new babies on the team since we were here last summer. Emily and Spencer Bogle had baby Adam Nile just about 10 days after we left last year. Mark and Lori Manry had their fourth child, a daughter named Tessa, a few weeks after that.

I’m going to try and summarize what’s been going on since we got here. We spent our first two nights at James and Jemimah Semakadde’s Banana Village in Entebbe, just outside Uganda’s capital, Kampala. They run a guest house there. Last year, we visited some people working at a rock quarry there. That’s when we met a lady, who is not only caring for her seven grandchildren but also her elderly husband. This January with James and Jemimah’s help and the financial support of our family at Vaughn Park church, we started a microloan program with the ladies in the quarry and that village. So it was an amazing treat to get to see this lady again. She no longer spends very long days breaking big rocks down into pebbles. She’s supervising about 7 young men who work for her in the quarry. She’s been able to pay school fees, have water piped to her compound and been able to install windows and doors in her house.

This group of 10 women have already borrowed money once and made weekly payments completing their loan repayments. Most of them have now taken out a second loan for the next 16 weeks. Another loan group has been started from the mothers of a local school there. I really can’t tell you how exciting it was to actually see this woman and see the improvements in her life and therefore the life of several others just through a small loan. (David has all those details about how much and how many and how long and names that we’ll try to put together in a report after we get back home—plus pictures and video.)

We got to Jinja on Thursday afternoon I think. It was great to see Irene. She’s doing well and sends her love and greetings to all of you. After she got off work at the Source café, we drove to her house and hugged on the kids. Then she and I made spaghetti together for supper—she thinks hers doesn’t taste as good as Auntie Maria’s (that’s what the kids call me; she calls me “M”). Friday we visited the market in town. Candice Garner helped me buy some skirts since I didn’t pack very many clothes. Saturday, we spent in Musima village. I’ll send pics of Moses Kirya and Zipporah’s youngest, Johnson, as soon as I can. That was a day of holding lots of babies for me while Jeff and David took pics of several of the ladies who make banana-fiber baskets. It’s always an honor and so humbling to be able to see these ladies with their families in their homes. I really enjoy it. Zipporah cooked for us, of course. We had her special lemongrass tea with chipati for our morning snack. Then lunch at 3 was rice, matoke (the steamed bananas that taste mostly like mashed potatoes), greens, cabbage, and instead of meat, we had g-nut sauce. That’s ground peanuts with salt and water that make a sauce/gravy. It’s really quite good.

Yesterday we went to church in Jinja town. Richard and Ida Bazanoona are just back from the States. They brought me greetings from my sister, Margo, who’d seen them at the Pepperdine lectures (where Margo says Ida especially was a big hit—I can only imagine!) We all took Emily and baby Adam Bogle and Candice Garner out to lunch at Ling Ling’s (Chinese restaurant—Irene’s choice and one of my Zach’s favorites). Apparently it was Mother’s Day but we didn’t know it so Happy Mother’s Day to our moms. I got a note from Z telling me Happy Mother’s Day but haven’t heard from Ryan………..)

Today, I’ve been hanging out with Candice. They’ve only been in their house for two weeks so we bought curtain material for a couple of the houses, ate at Ozzie’s—the restaurant across the street from the Source and talked a lot. David and Jeff had meetings and also visited a clinic that’s helping take care of the families we work with through the ISAC program.

DJ and Jeff and Irene are on their way to pick me up so I’m going to close for the day. I did hear from Z today and he said he didn’t feel the earthquake that hit western China today but some of the buildings in Ningbo did sway some. We also heard there were terrible tornadoes in Okla, Missouri and Ark.

The time is going quickly here. Our calendar is filling up with meetings. We’re doing really well. Jeff wants to stay—and is already planning on coming back in the fall. Oh, two of our friends here, Surj and Danyne, had a baby boy just a few days ago. I haven’t talked to them yet but hope to see them soon.

Ok, gotta go, love you all, marlea