This is just about the first time I have felt like or had the energy to get back on my blog since I got home from Uganda. This particular trip has been the most difficult trip to readjust from and just back into just the normal routine of things. I got sick just about the day I walked into my house (and am still recovering), then Deborah got sick yesterday (and she is still recovering) so I never could distinguish between jet lag and sick lag. I could probably have seen this coming as I spent every ounce of energy I had in Africa over that 10 day period.
It’s more than that though, it’s a deeper connection made with some people literally half way around the world, and our life in my cultural context doesn’t give you any time to “adjust”, it just keeps moving forward at breakneck speed. There is nothing wrong with life over here any more than life anywhere else, ever single place has it’s own struggles, and often they are almost identical in nature, we just always think they are different because of the lens we look through every day.
Today’s Friday Feet comes to you from Kampala as we waited with the gals from Sixty Feet to go inside the second children’s facility in Kampala. I took those shots above that day with this post in mind, even if the two K’s (Kelsey and Kirby) didn’t know what I was doing, and honestly, I can’t remember which K’s toes are shown below, I think they are Kirby’s. What was really amazing to me about life over there is that almost everything we did was either preceded or followed by some kind of worship to our King, and it was often 60-90 minutes at a time, and it didn’t matter what day of the week it was. They just hauled the drums over, dropped them down and we were good to go.
I know Sixty Feet’s ministry name has to do with number of feet deep not actual toes and shoes, but it works for my Friday Feet today, thanks for being such great sports and for the work you two are doing over there Kelsey and Kirby.
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We have just about two full days left before we head back home. Today, at least I was thinking, was supposed to be a little easier than yesterday, but as when you try to plan for God, he often has different plans. This was by far the hardest day we have had, and as we met tonight we struggled with what we saw, and ultimately had to give it up to God and go to bed. There were 7 of us (out of the 9, the other two went to the University today) that went to the 2nd and 3rd children’s facilities today and when we got back to the guest house I think we all felt beat up and worn down. It was such a night and day difference between yesterday and today. We have compared and contrasted with each other for hours, struggling with what we can do, what we can’t do, and what we have to just give up to God and be ok with.
The photos in this post were only taken at the 1st place we went to today. The second place we went to we were told the government would not allow any photos within the facility, and for the first time, in perhaps years, I really had no desire what-so-ever to take a single image away from that experience. It will be forever burned into my mind as God showing me what His heart breaks for in this world today. With my camera stuffed in my backpack I was immediately taken out of my own comfort zone, behind the camera, and shown the realities and challenges our world can deliver. I’m grateful for that opportunity and I think I will learn from it for a long time to come. There were several team members who suggested that I write a short post and not put up any photos at all to correlate to the experience we had with the second children’s facility, but that was really only half of the day today. So, the other half of our day is shown in the photos in this post, there were none from the second half of the day. I love the shot of Amy Frye at the top. I think that pretty much sums up the day, but we are thankful for God’s love and that he is in charge.
The other two members of the team, Probakar and Emile, went to the University today and had an incredibly positive experience. Probakar was able to give a guest lecture to about 100 students and Emile explained her process of making clean water from sale and light. They brought back many new connections for future work that can be done and had a very positive and uplifting day.
We took away several positive individual stories from both places, and we have planted many seeds for our local partner church in Buloba or Gaba to pick up the work where we just barely got started. The team is really looking forward to tomorrow where we will go across Lake Victoria to Bethany Village Orphanage and then on to Buloba in the afternoon where the ladies will share with some of the woman from Buloba Church and the men, plus Amy Frye, will install some rain catches.
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Today was an unbelievable day. I hate to keep repeating that over and over again each day, but I don’t really know how else to describe it in actual words. I have broken sentences, incomplete thoughts, and it’s 1:30am right now and I have to get up in about 4 hours for probably the most emotional day of the trip, so I know below isn’t going to be perfect, but you get the idea.
Today we started off with worship at Gaba Community Church. Church started at 8am (not sure when it ended) with their intro praise and worship. We stayed for an hour before we had to leave for Buloba Community Church and worship with our friends in Buloba. Church in Buloba went from about 9:30 until about 1pm. It was great to have the privilege of being able to worship with these two churches today. The worship experience between the two churches is actually pretty different. Gaba is a westernized worship (at least the one we go to is) and is very similar to our own church. With the concrete walls and ceilings and all open windows though the praise and worship sounds like it should be heard for miles, and probably is. After Gaba we were hurled down to Buloba by our famous NASCAR-ish driver, Fast Eddy, and arrived for bible study around 9:30am, with church until 1pm.
After lunch the team traveled around the area to visit several different homes that have sponsor children. This was a very humbling experience and extremely difficult to explain. This was the first time I was able to go into the homes of specific families and there really aren’t adequate words to describe the feeling you get from walking into someone’s home like this. The families are so excited to see us and spend some time with us, and that just amazes me. The three homes we visited were very emotional and one that just stands out (photo below) is when Bart got to visit the home of his sponsor child and pray for and with his boy’s mother. It’s the photo below of most of us packed into a space of about 4 feet wide by 6 feet long. I was using an 8mm fisheye lens so the photo in this case doesn’t do the situation justice, but it was as good as I could do in this situation. The photo above was probably my favorite photo of the day and that photo was taken with April’s sponsor family home. I love that shot because of the expression on April’s face but we had a little more space to shoot so I was able to capture a more natural light image.
After the home visits we were scheduled to go speak with the high school students at St Francis (a school we played a ton of soccer at on the last trip). We were going to speak to the students in this job fair type lecture but instead of being there for a 30-60 minute stay we ended up there for several hours. The last shot below of Prabhakar shows the very last speaker of the day and it made the day. He had these students in stitches but gave them some incredible advice in only the way a university professor could do. He was definitely the ringer of the whole day for these kids.
Tomorrow is going to be one of the most difficult days of the entire trip and we will all appreciate your prayers as we head over to work with 60 Feet ministries in a children’s prison in Kampala. I’ll explain it more later but the is the culmination of a long process that has been prayed over for months. We all prayed together tonight for tomorrow, for the strength to go through this and still be light and salt to everyone we meet. For now, I hope you enjoy some of the photos of the day. The images here represent a snapshot of the day and pretty much the entire team individually picked out these 14 images. I know there’s a bunch here but it’s hard to narrow down 2,000 images into 14 and have it truly represent the day. Thanks for your continued prayers for all of the team, I do miss seeing my family, as we all do, but everyone is doing well. Deborah, there is one photo below (not of me) I included just for you, can’t you guess which one? Love you!
The plan is for us to do a post tomorrow with images from the children’s prison, but right now I just don’t know what that looks like at all.
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Our first full day on the ground in Buloba is just now coming to a close. Everyone is in bed, probably fast asleep at this point (it’s about 10pm here), and hopefully gaining enough energy to last the full day tomorrow down in Buloba. So, I know this post is going to take forever to load on some slow connection but I just couldn’t eliminate any more images than I posted here. In total I think I took about 5,000 images, and for my repeat readers here I tried to make them as unique as possible so I didn’t just show the exact same thing as last time. Keep in mind as I write this post I am barely able to keep my eyes open, so I know it’s going to packed full of typos, but it will just have to be so this time.
A small note about the timing of everything over here. I always get questions about when I will be posting, because the timing seems so odd. I post in the airport and all that and then… nothing, for what feels like days over at home. We arrived last night into the guest house from Entebbe airport at about 1L30am and we were all asleep about 2am. No way I could post last night, and then today, we got up at 6am (yes that was about 3-4 hours after we went to sleep) and headed out for the day. We got back tonight in time for dinner, then I did a quick edit of the images and here we are at about 10pm. From this point forward, I will hopefully get to post around this same time for the next few days. Today’s photos ended up being Amy Frye day just because of the specific interaction I was able to capture, but each had their turn in the camera spotlight.
Today was great in so many different ways, and as we met after dinner to discuss the days events we discovered how tired we all actually are. Today was to be our orientation day to understand, yes, we are in Uganda, and it ended up being a day crammed packed full of God’s love. The day started off with a walk over to Gaba church where we were given a detailed tour of the Africa Renewal Ministries (ARM) buildings facilities and classrooms. The guest house is located on Lake Victoria, in Gaba, basically right next to Gaba Church and ARM. The shot of Amy below with arms wide open is shot on the balcony of their office.
Next up was a trip into Kampala for some administrative duties, and lunch, and then we headed out to Buloba. I’m grateful that since this is my second trip the ride and culture shock going into Kampala was basically minimal for me but those who hadn’t been were trying to comprehend what they were seeing, hearing, and smelling. When we arrived in Buloba we had the customary (i.e. extended) greeting and prayer at Buloba church and then we proceeded to visit the well and haul water up from the old well. For those who hadn’t been yet, doing this routine of going to the old well was and will continue to be a very important part of our welcome to Buloba. There just isn’t anything other than the experience of carrying 50 pounds of water 2-ish miles, which can explain why the other well was so important. It was pretty impressive to see Amy carry 50 pounds of water up these hills, but if she can do it I’m not sure who couldn’t.
After that we watched Emile do her water experiments with the local ladies. Through a simple process of making water into a chlorine based water with a solar panel and some salt, she showed the ladies how they could use this water to disinfect various pots and pans, bathrooms (per-sa), and do so in a very simple and inexpensive way. We did spend some time visiting with the children and meeting some of the sponsor kids before heading back to Kampala for dinner, and then here we are.
A quick explanation of some of the photos below. The first shot was for Bart, who seems to have a facination with the roosters here between wanted to eat them and keep them as a pet. That photo is standing at the gate of our guest house looking out to the main road in Gaba. Amy is not actually calling rain to fall in the next shot, she is directing the boys singing hymns about 50 feet below here. The shot of John Dow with the Water Buffalo, steer, cow, thing (it was big and had horns and looked like you could probably eat it) was John saying as we are watching the explanation of the bore well, check this cow out, and the shot of the shot of Emile is her performing the experiment for the ladies.
All in all a fantastic day, and an overwhelmingly exhausting one to boot. If all goes well I will post again this time tomorrow, but power is very limited here it seems, and I may or may not have a battery, time, or the energy, so if not tomorrow, the next day. Thanks for all your prayers. It is greatly appreciated by all the team members.
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I wish I had hours and hours to explain what we did today. I really can’t even yet comprehend what we did but I know we played a TON of soccer with the kids (some very big and fast) today. We started out at the Bethany Village orphanage which was an amazing place with amazing people. It is already almost 1am here local time so I am going to have to just post a few pics and call it a night. Wish I had time to post 100′s more.
