Third time a charm!

Well here I am back in Kampala. It was an uneventful flight from Houston to London. I had a 10 hr layover so decided to take the "tube" ( underground) and visit some of my old haunts. Back in 1977 I lived in London off and on for 6 months. Yes, I am that old :-( I enjoyed seeing some old sights with new faces like Picadilly Circus and the fountain in front of Buckingham Palace. The queen sent her regrets but was not able to have tea with me that day. After much walking with the autumn leaves swirling at my feet I wound up in fashionable Knightsbridge. I enjoyed getting lost in Harrods and spent a while wandering in the vast and amazing food hall.

Back on the plane and another 10 hrs arrived in Kampala at 7:15 am. So tired. thought I would fall into bed but there were problems with my car that was still in the shop getting fixed. I think it was somewhere around 3pm when I finally took a quick nap. It took 3 trips to the mechanic to fix problems and three trips to the internet store to be able to get online. I realized quickly that I was back in Africa. The simplest of things can take a long time. I wish it would only take 3 times to light a match. I think 20 is average. The only saying three strikes and you are out does not apply here!

My days have been busy getting ready for the team arriving early monday morning and preparing my own things for 10 days in Sudan. More later as time allows.

New day

A new day dawned last Wed. 3rd. This day marked the beginning of my time as being the only Aid Sudan person in Uganda. As I write this a week has gone by and I'm still alive! Problems come and go and I find it's a testing time to see how hard I will lean on God when he's the only one here with me. You can't imagine the things that can happen here or not happen as the case more often is. Power outages, cars that wont work,computer mix ups,deadlines to meet,workers to help just to name a few, but my heart is gladdened to know that help is on its way come Aug 21st (yeah!)

Comedy of Errors

Tues night was Bible study as usual. What was not usual was the location. One of the Koreans, Abraham, wanted us all to come to his house. He likes to cook so he invited us at 6:30 for supper.I send out text messages to everyone the day of and remind them of the time and which chapter we are studying so that hopefully they will read in advance (hopefully being the key word) I never hear back from anyone so you never know if they got the message or not or if they are coming. The reason for this is the cost of airtime. They don't want to waste their minutes or shillings. Well anyway I set out for Ae Soo's house ( Korean woman) as she told me to meet there. As I was getting ready to turn to her place she suddenly appeared on the main road and waved us into Abraham's place. No problem. Abraham had the table set with Korean appetisers. Meat patties with yummy herbs and spices and also mushroom mixed with egg that had been fried. Next we were served a huge mound of spaghetti and washed it down with cold South African Rooibos tea! It was a great meal and sweet fellowship. We all then moved to the sofa around the coffee table. I brought out the Zucchini cake from my place, but everyone was still full from supper. We got started with our study from Genesis chapter 25. When I began with this group back in May I jumped in on chapter 17. We are slowly, but surely moving along. We were about half way through when I got a phone call. One of the ladies who is Sudanese called and said she was standing at my front gate. Her English is very difficult to understand, especially on the phone. I was trying to figure out what to tell her. Sweet Abraham said he would go and get her. So off he goes and we just sat around talking until they came back. Unfortunately no sooner had he gone than the electricity went out. We didn't know where the candles were but found a flashlight so we weren't in complete darkness. Abraham was back quickly and we were able to continue. It turned out the Sudanese lady was at the hospital and thought she would come to my house at 8pm and I would still be there. Something was lost in the translation of the text message:-( We finished by praying for some difficult issues that they are going through. Thank goodness there are no language barriers with God.

Economy

I watch the BBC and try to keep up with U.S. and world news. Things are bad all over it seems :-(
The economy is not doing well in the U.S., my homeland Australia and here in Uganda. Last Sunday night in the heart of Kampala there was terrific blow to hundreds of merchants who sell their wares in a huge market called Owino. I have posted blogs about visits here in the past. Apparently a fire started somewhere in the market area and traveled quickly destroying hundreds of stalls/booths. Reports say that there was another fire about 2 years ago and the vendors got loans then to help them rebuild their businesses. They have not paid off those loans yet so will definitely not get any new loans. This means they now have no source of income, no goods to trade and no bright future on the horizon. Sometimes when you feel like life is hard you can always look around and see so many who have overwhelming burdens to bear and your troubles seem smaller. Thank goodness we have a God who is bigger than the sum of all our problems.
I have included a photo of the taxi park I have referred to before. It's just a block away from Owino. The congestion here is similar to the atmosphere inside Owino!
Well I wanted to send a photo along but after 3 days of trying to upload the photo through the blog site I am still unable, so I'll keep trying. Check back later to see the photo. Thanks for your patience. Mine is getting strengthened! ***Update*** figured out the file I was trying to upload was too big, so I shrunk it and here is the picture of the taxi park as promised! Yay!

Big smiles

Today Daniel finished recording the last in a series of Chronological Bible stories that will be aired on the radio in South Sudan. He recorded stories from the book of Revelation ( The End Times Track) As you may know the book of Revelation is not for sissies. It's often times hard to understand and there are many interpretations about it meaning. Daniel recorded in English first and then in his own native tongue which is called Dinka Rek. This was no easy task. We were both elated when the last story was finished. I watched a big smile creep on his face as he was standing in front of the microphone in the sound booth. We then captured that smile on the front porch as he was leaving.
Daniel will be returning to his college classes here in Kampala next week and will be back a little later to record the next set of education and health and hygiene lessons. I am currently working hard on the next set of health lessons. I have completed 7 out of 23!

Faces

Life is busy here in Kampala. Some days require a lot of driving around from hill to hill to accomplish daily tasks. There is one particular road/corner that I think I have talked about before. It is a very busy intersection. Waiting time can sometimes be long, especially if the traffic police are directing instead of letting the lights do the work. Somehow the police make a mess of it. Anyway that's another story. Street vendors are in full force along this stretch of the road and unfortunately this is where the homeless and beggars gather. I saw the woman in the photo approaching. My heart breaks when I see the women and children dressed in filthy, tattered clothes, whose lives are reduced to walking this busy, dirty road to beg for food. This lady did not speak English but managed to tell me the baby's name was Simon. I said a quick prayer out loud for the woman and Simon as I handed her a small pack of cookies. God cares for them.

P.U.S.H.

The day started out with a strong sense of anticipation on my behalf. I think I went to sleep last night determined that I was not going to give up, let up or give in until the job was accomplished. The task I am talking about was no small thing. Let me give a little background. As you know from previous blogs one of the team members, currently in Sudan, had to go there without her luggage. I had picked her luggage up Wed. from Entebbe and had it stored with me as I tried to line up a flight for it to go on, along with satellite rods needed to test the satellite system so we could get it functioning. We are aiming at live satellite broadcasting this weekend! Thousands will hear Bible stories, as well as education and health lessons. Two wonderful aviation ministries here in Uganda help teams like ours do what we do. They are MAF and AIM. I spoke with both of them at length trying to coordinate a shipment of 1,000 hand held radios weighing 778 kgs. to be exact, that had been shipped into Entebbe from Canada and needed to be sent to the team so they could hand them out during their time there. It gets quite complicated from here but lets just say God paved the way through incredible obstacles to allow me to get the items cleared through customs in record time and a flight lined up for Sat. morning. The first photo is how I felt early in the morning as all these difficulties came my way. For the most part all the things I had to deal with were things I had absolutely no experience with, like airway bills, way bills( different from airway bills ) transit documents, letter of authorisation allowing goods to pass through the Republic of South Sudan, just to mention a few. One by one I prayed them away. Years ago there was a saying P.U.S.H. Pray until something happens! It works :-) Prossy joined me again for the TWO trips to Entebbe. At one point we had a 2 long steel rods, about 6 ft or 3m long and other pieces that I don't even know what to call them, loaded into the car. They wouldn't fit so we had them sticking out the front passenger window. The Ugandan who helped us load said" you can't go like that you will hurt a motor cycle rider or pedestrian". I said" I have no choice and no time to delay". As Prossy and I made the 24 km trip to Entebbe we prayed over and over for God's protection of the people outside. We also prayed that God would hide us, make us invisible to the police that are on the side of the road waiting to give tickets or get bribes. We saw many police, but I guess they didn't see us :-)
The big smile on my face you see in the last photo is because on my 2nd trip to Entebbe I was able to take the needed, lost rods for the 6am flight on Sat. and this meant everything was a GO for the trip.
As a side note, I had to wind the passenger side window completely down to fit the large rods I had earlier carried ( these were the incorrect rods) I have had trouble with the window getting stuck so like every good missionary I had duct taped the control button on the passenger side so no one would let the window down all the way. We drove back to Kampala for an hour and a half at 10pm with the window all the way down. By the way don't let anyone tell you there is less traffic in Kampala at night. At one well known round about there was no less than FIVE lanes of cars in the round about all the way around. I had to turn the engine off and sit in the round about circle until the policeman who was difficult to see over the cars and in the dark blew his whistle to move the cars on. It was a sight to behold. When I got home I tried once more to raise the window, but nothing. Feeling completely exhausted I decided to tackle it in the morning. Saturday morning I went out there with 2 screw drivers to try and figure out how to take off the door panel and fix the window. To my surprise the window was already raised about 4 inches. I was shocked. I then thought I bet its stuck in that position now. I went back to the drivers side window controls and raised the lever and up came the window, smooth as silk. God fixes broken lives and hearts AND broken windows.

Lemons to lemonade

Sometimes life is just plain frustrating. Imagine arriving in Africa at 1:30 am after a very looong flight and finding your luggage didn't make it. Well you may say "it will come soon or on the next flight" problem is you are leaving in a few hours for Sudan and there is no time to shop. You want very much to go on the next leg of the journey but there are certain things you just have to have. Team members step up and offer all kinds of stuff from their own supplies. "Coincidentally" extra supplies have been brought to the airport like a fan,snack food, headlamp,skirts, sunscreen, bug spray and the like. You get on the small plane and fly off to Sudan deciding the desire to go and share God's stories is stronger within you than the lack of your supplies. Some days are going to be hard but it will be okay.
Back in Entebbe your bags come in the next night at 1:30. They need to be picked up. That's part of my job while the team is in Sudan. I run errands, receive and pass along team updates and generally run interference for a host of other things. I asked my house helper, Prossy, if she would like to ride with me to the airport. Its about a 45 min drive on a good traffic day. She was beside herself with excitement. You see this woman in her mid 20s had not been to the airport or to the town of Entebbe on Lake Victoria since she was in elementary school. Her eyes were wide open enjoying the sights and her smile made my day. For Prossy, the lost bags turned out to be a great joy. We never know how God will use situations in our lives.

Two Cakes Day!

It's not too often that you get to have two cakes on your birthday, but today was the day for exceptions. I woke up early feeling excited that this was the day South Sudan would become a new nation it was also my birthday. (I'm not telling how many years! ) I watched the BBC for live coverage. They didn't have fireworks but a 21 gun salute. I had fireworks kind of, on my cake :-) A huge sparkler lit up my pretty pink and purple decorated cake with a rice crispy tea cup on top. My friend, Neltia, went all out with the cake decorating. The Sudan cake even had a mud hut on it with the South Sudanese flag flying high. July 9th 2011 is a memorable date. Hip pip Hooray !

Hospital visit

Here I am again back at Mulago Hospital. The building itself is very large. No one seems able to tell me how many rooms or patients. People are everywhere, laying on the floors,walking in the halls and of course many in beds and stretchers. We met with the COME team (Christian Outreach Mission Evangelism ) They work tirelessly 6 days a week trying to meet the needs of those who have no family, no food, actually no support of any kind. There was a woman seated in the office who was there desperate for help. She was holding a newborn. Her employer would not take her back with her child and she had run from her village when she was pregnant as she thought they may try to kill her. She was now wanting to go to her auntie who was her only living relative. She had no money and no way to get any. The overwhelming needs press on you. Where do you go when there is no where to go?
Suffering surrounds you here. We went today to visit 5 patients in ICU. It was much better than I thought it was going to be. The patients seemed cared for by the staff. As we went from bed to bed we got their names from the charts on the over bed tables. No one was able to talk with us, each person lay semi unconscious or had a tube in their throat. We prayed for each by name. There is no more that I can do. I always leave feeling sad and overwhelmed at all of the needs and then somewhere along the way home I got a little feisty. A policeman stopped me. My friends here have been waiting for this to happen. It's inevitable when you are white! I can't even begin to re tell the conversation its all so bizarre. I asked him to give me a ticket (aka receipt) That's the way you get them to leave you alone. They dont like giving tickets because that's more work. Finally he said he wouldn't give me a receipt and asked me if that was okay. I told him I appreciated it very much. I had done nothing wrong. Sometimes they just want you to pay them a bribe. I had a Ugandan lady in the front seat next to me. After we drove away she commented on how terrible that was. Just another day on the roads in Kampala :-)