Friday, January 19 ,2007

This will be quick because it is late and I need to get to bed so that I will be rested for our trip tomorrow. We are going on our first safari!!! We leave for Queen Elizabeth National Park bright and early tomorrow morning. You can probably google it and find out all you would ever want to know. It will take us about 7 hours to drive there on very poor roads. The boys are very excited and I am sure that I will be too once we actually arrive.

Some other good news: I am composing this blog while online in my own house. We finally have internet at home as of about 2 hours ago. It is very slow, but I will take it. Actually, I should be packing instead of writing this. Our email account was unlocked by Yahoo and we have read several emails. Sorry, I won't be responding until we return from our trip.

Other very good news: We received several care packages from the States that were incredibly appreciated and received with joy and thanksgiving by us all. Actually, I cannot tell you how wonderful it is to get a box and begin looking through it to see what we got. We received packages from Pam's mom, Pam's dad, the Tomaschkos, the Snyders, the Kennards, Lynette Connelly, and the Lowmillers all in this past week. We feel like we hit the lottery. We are amply supplied in breakfast bars and coffee creamer. I will write more later when I am not so tired, but I want those who sent packages to know how much it lifts our spirits to receive your generous gifts. We ate macarroni for dinner tonight and the boys were so excited.

I will learn how to post pictures on our blog site when we return from our safari so that you can see where we live and what our safari was like.

Everything is going well. Ministry has started back now that the university has reopened from Christmas break. You can hear more in about 5 days.

Email Problems (Again)
We have been having email problems again and unable to retrieve emails for over 10 days. We have yet to get internet to work in our home and our Yahoo account has 111 messages waiting to be read. I have been to three places trying to download them, but the account is locked up. So, if you have sent us anything urgent, you should know that we have not seen it.

It’s a Dog’s World

When I was around 18 years old, I purchased a chow-chow puppy. I am partial to all puppies, but I find chows the cutest (with apologies to labs and golden retrievers who I also find quite adorable). My mom is a sucker for cute puppies too, because she really didn’t want a puppy in the house but couldn’t say no when she saw this one. She was a red-orange chow with a black face, and we named her Ginger because of her color. Chows are sometimes known as having a bad disposition, but Ginger was the sweetest dog that we ever owned. However, she was also the dumbest. We could trick her so easily that it became comical to watch. If anyone “meowed”, Ginger would immediately begin snorting and sniffing as she darted around to find the invisible cat. If you complimented the meow with a toss of a rock into the bushes, she would go into full destroyer mode. If she did anything wrong, she would try to hide, but much like a small child, she thought that if her head was hidden that her entire body was also hidden. If she dug up a bush or made a mess, I would find her with her head under my car and her backside exposed to all of us. Actually, her ploy worked, as I would be so tickled by her dumb antics that I would have trouble scolding her.

One of my favorite memories of Ginger is the time she caught a rabbit. She was so proud of her captured prey. She would strut about with the rabbit in her mouth and then bury it in my Mom’s flower garden right outside of our garage. She would dig it up often and prance around with it. The humorous part of this story is that most of the rabbit was flat as a pancake with tire marks. Yep, she caught herself some road kill. I had seen the dead rabbit in front of our house the day before, and she had retrieved it. She was just as proud, though, as if she had tracked, captured and killed the rabbit herself. She also expected us to share in her pride. At this point in my story, you are probably expecting some type of spiritual lesson or insight or wondering why I am telling you this. Right? Well, the reason is that our dog Paska had a Ginger moment this week. It wasn’t a dumb dog moment or picking up road kill; rather, she was proud of something that we were not happy about.

The boys are still out of school so I had taken them to go swimming for a couple of hours. When we pulled back into our gated compound, Paska did not greet us in her normal manner. Usually, she is standing at the gate, sniffing the air, and running around our car waiting for us to get out. By the way, she is a really good dog and has quickly adapted to our family and adopted us as her own. Anyway, this time she was acting differently, and I immediately noticed. She wasn’t at the gate but was running in the yard. She also had a different gait and a prideful strut in her walk. I could tell that something was different but I had no idea what. When I got out of the car, Pamela greeted me and was acting equally strange. She had a sheepish grin on her face and was acting odd. She began to speak in low tones so that our sons would not hear (nor loud enough for me to understand either). Finally, I understood…Paska had killed a monkey. It was a vervet monkey and had been visiting our compound for two days. The boys were so excited because we had been hoping to see monkeys since our arrival. He would usually perch himself upon our wall for a few minutes and then run off. Apparently, he got a little more brave while we were gone and came all the way in. I still don’t know how Paska caught him, though. We have several trees and I would have thought that a monkey could get away from a dog. Unfortunately for the monkey, Paska is very fast. I really told you this whole story to let you know that our dog is a monkey killer and that no monkeys visit our compound anymore. It also brought back memories of my dog Ginger being so proud of her rabbit. Paska was just so pleased with herself. However, we didn’t allow her to prance around with the monkey and instead threw the monkey in a nearby swamp. It was really sad to see the poor thing. This incident also made me think of something else.

I have owned several dogs including two collies, a stray sheepdog, a stray husky (both strays were brought home by my dad), and a rottweiller in addition to Paska and Ginger. All of the dogs were males, except for the latter two. All of my dogs have done dumb things and gotten into trouble. However, the males always seemed to know when they had done wrong and walked around with their heads hung low. Sometimes acting suspiciously even before their crime was discovered. Only my girls were proud of wrongdoing. Is this a female dog trend or just two separate incidents loosely connected across continents?

I expect that this trivial blog will draw more comments than anything else that I have written.

Happy New Year!

I wrote “2007” for the first time today as I cashed a check at the bank and it felt so odd. Wasn’t it only like a couple of years ago that so many people were concerned about Y2K? 2006 was quite an eventful year as we spent much time in preparation for our move to Africa and have now lived here for 4 months. We continue to adapt and get more settled each week and keep hoping that it will soon feel like home. There are many times that I think that this will never really feel like home, but we continue to meet many Americans who have been here for 1 or 2 years and call Uganda their home.

We look forward with much anticipation to what this year will hold. We have several goals that we hope to have accomplished by this time next year. First, we hope to establish a Christian student center at Kampala International University and be heavily involved in daily ministry there. Secondly, we hope to identify a place and a group of orphans so that a children’s home can be in progress. Thirdly, I hope to have at least one business idea up and running by this time next year. Each of these individually is a pretty lofty goal for Africa, given the slow pace and inefficiency, so trying to accomplish all three might not be possible. If God wills it, then it will happen. Oh, and I am trying to get started on writing a novel. I think that is enough to keep us busy.

We have many things to update you about so this will be a lengthy blog.

Visiting Gulu Children: We have told you previously about our new friends from Vancouver, Canada. The Jones family has four boys who are almost identical in age to our four, so we have a great time together. The Jones run the Uganda Jesus Village (UJV), which is an orphanage here in Kampala, and took us to visit it in the middle of December. We were immediately drawn to these children from Gulu. They are orphaned as a result of the war in northern Uganda and southern Sudan with the LRA (i.e., what the documentary “The Invisible Children” is based on) and also from AIDS. The children range in age from 3 to 14. They sang songs for us and performed some traditional African dances. We were visiting them to get a better idea of sizes and ages so that we could return later with Christmas presents. This was an excellent opportunity to begin to give our boys a better vision for why we left America and came to Africa.

Visiting property for a children’s home: After visiting the UJV, we went to view property that could be used for a children’s home. (I have started using this term more since orphanage is rarely used in Africa, even thought that is what it is). It was about 15 km outside of Kampala and has been used in the past as a refuge for battered women and children. It had a very large chapel, classrooms, office space, a large kitchen, a sewing room (with 13 sewing machines), bathrooms, a medical clinic, and some other buildings. It is located on 12 acres and has adequate space for more housing as well as a garden. This would be an ideal location to build houses so that the children could live in a family atmosphere/structure. Everything else is already in place and it could be used immediately. They are asking $225,000, which seems like a good price, but I am not sure yet. If this were in Kampala, it would probably be well over $1M. Once you move out of the city, prices drop quickly so we need more advice.

Christmas Day: We were very concerned that Christmas could be a sad time since we were spending it apart from our family. However, God was gracious and we had a good day. We gave the boys their African gifts, which they really liked and continue to enjoy. We then went to the Uganda Jesus Village to give gifts to the 58 orphans and the adult workers. Each person was presented with a wrapped present and a personally decorated card. We gave mostly clothes and books, with some jewelry and other items mixed in. We got a laugh out of seeing one Ugandan boy wearing his new NY Yankees hat. It was a blessing to give these children gifts and see the joy that it brought. We also took them homemade cookies that had been decorated with icing and sprinkles. We had enough left that we were able to give some out in our neighborhood. We started by stopping six children, but soon there were 30 or more children coming from everywhere. God multiplied the cookies much like with the fish and loaves. Somehow, we had two cookies left after all the children departed with smiles and green icing on their faces.

New Year’s celebration: For the first time in as long as I can remember, I celebrated New Year’s without watching any football. I hope this is not a tradition that I will continue. We spent New Year’s Eve playing cards with three of our friends and then watched from our upstairs balcony some fireworks being shot at a nearby hotel. New Year’s Day was spent at a cookout with our next-door neighbor, who is a Minister in the government. We met some people of status there, including the man who is conducting the peace talks with the Lord’s Resistance Army in northern Uganda/southern Sudan. It was quite interesting to hear what is taking place there. It was fun day of meeting new Christian friends and seeing what the body of Christ looks like on an international level. We sang hymns and songs and had a very nice time. I keep wondering why God is putting us in contact with people of such influence in government and business since it is happening frequently without us seeking it.

Addison’s birthday: Addison will turn 7 on January 7th. He is quite excited and has been counting down the days for about a month.

Internet at home? We are hopeful that we will soon be reconnected with the world from our home. The local internet provider finally received their modems and we purchased one. We still have to wait 48 hours for them to activate it, but at least we have the hardware. It will be so nice to have daily access to email and the internet. For example, I just heard today about Suddam, and had no idea that anything was going on until I overheard someone talking about it. We also keep getting further and further behind in our email responses and blog updates.

Safety: Our dear friends Billy and Joanna Coppidge were in a dangerous accident last week, but thankfully not seriously injured. The Coppidges are the couple who took us in their home when we were homeless for a weekend. They were driving in a busy section of town when a train struck them. There was no warning and it was on a track where I have never seen a train before. Their car was destroyed, but they escaped with a few stitches and sore bodies. I was almost hit by a train about a month ago myself, and was alerted by a pedestrian only seconds before it came. This was just another reminder about how dangerous driving can be here. Almost every time we get in the car, I pray for safety for us and others. I have come so close to striking pedestrians on so many occasions, that it is only the grace of God that we have not hit anyone. It is especially dangerous to drive at night, and we try our best to plan so that we can avoid driving during the dark hours.

Blessing from Knoxville: My sister Michelle gave us some money at the end of the year, and we decided that we would use it to buy our boys an inexpensive pool table. This is also something that we can eventually transfer to the student center, once established. For now, it is in our home and getting lots of use and bringing much joy.

Monkeys in the yard: and I am not referring to any of our boys. We had been told that monkeys come into our compound, but in our two months in our house, we had not seen any actually in our yard. We had seen one once outside our gate. This morning, however, we saw a monkey in our compound. Unfortunately, our dog chased it off before we could get any pictures.