A Day at Emma's Preschool

I was invited by Emma's preschool teacher, Mrs. Burrell, to go and talk about my trip to Africa today. I put together a short slide show (since they are only 3,4 and 5 year olds and their attention span is short) and told them all about the schools, the orphanage, the market, about how they do laundry, go to town on a boda (motorcycle) and how the widows baked in a mud oven. To my surprise they were very interested in what I was telling them. I thought I would loose them after a couple of pictures, but they listened very attentively to me for about 30 minutes. Of course, they had to interupt several times and tell me something about themselves that usually had nothing to do with what I was talking about.

They are all so cute. Some of them met me at the door and gave me big hugs. I felt a little like I was back in Uganda! I took the little home sewn dolls I had bought in Uganda for Emma and Ella with me and the girls all wanted to take turns holding them. I gave them some time to ask questions and they had some pretty silly ones, as you could imagine, but just getting to spend time with them was so much fun. I know it meant a lot to Emma that her Grammy came to her school and talked to her friends.

After we were finished we all gathered around and took a group picture.

Sara came and took the pictures. We all had a great time together! Thanks to Mrs. Burrell for asking me to come and share.

All Day at Church

We had a full day at church yesterday. We started our Spring Bible Conference with Pastor Terry Hunt. He has already challenged us with some excellent messages. At 1:30 there was a baby shower that I was a hostess for and before that was completely over, we started our Team Uganda mission report at 3:00. I was very excited to see the dining hall packed out with people that were interested to hear what we had experienced while in Uganda. We all had a great time sharing what we had seen and heard and how God had moved. It was really hard to condense it down into a couple of minutes each, but we tried to relay the most important things.

Justin and I had a real interesting time trying to put the video together for our report. For some odd reason they picked us for that job and we neither one knew what we were doing. We started early Saturday morning with a program called Roxio then we decided maybe we needed to just use power point. When Brad and Marshalene came to pick up Hunter that night, she tried to make heads or tails out of what we were working on. I think it might of even overwhelmed her at the hodge-podge we had come up with. She ended up saying " well if you still need help in the morning, we will see what we can put together." I finally gave up and went to bed and Justin stayed up for quite a while working on it. We started over several times and finally ended up with the Roxio photoshow we started out with in the very beginning. It ended up being about 20 minutes long and everyone seemed to enjoy it. If you are interested in viewing it you can click on this web-site: Team Uganda 09 . We didn't finish visiting with everyone until 5:30 and I was supposed to be at choir practice at 5:45, so why bother leaving!

After evening church we were invited to have Q & A with Pastor Terry in the dining hall. Just a few stayed and we had a very interesting discussion that got pretty deep. We didn't get home until almost 9:00. It was a great day and I enjoyed being at church all day.

Today after school, Holly will be coming over. We try to meet once a week to share together. We just started a new book called Wise Up! Experiencing the Power of Proverbs by Rebecca Ingram Powell. It is for 12 to 13 year old girls dealing with questions that that age girls are asking. I love our time together, and have really enjoyed being a mentor, but this is a challenge for me because I have decided I would do the memorization part with her. I am trying to memorize Deuteronomy 30: 15-20. You may think that is just 5 verses, what's the problem? Well my brain doesn't retain things like it used to! So all morning long I have been repeating and repeating the first part of the verse. WHEWWW!! I WILL MAKE IT! I WILL! I can do it! I just have to keep telling myself that.

Uganda was a fantastic experience!

We have been back for a week as of today. I had such a wonderful time. It has taken this long to get back to normal. I keep waking up at 3:30 a.m. feeling hungry. Translated into Ugandan time it would be about lunch time. I have also had a little trouble with nausea. I don't know what that is all about. Today was the first day I really felt good. It was good to get back into my regular schedule.

We as a team captured over 3500 pictures that we have had to sort through and it has been so much fun looking through them all and reliving the memories. I will share a few of the highlights that really stuck out to me. I think my favorite thing we did was visit the Amani Baby Cottage which is an orphanage with about 45-50 orphans from new born to 5 years old. It was a nice place compared to every other place we saw. It was clean and the children were very well taken care of. It still made me sad that they didn't have a mother of their own. The first time we went, the baby that captured my heart was an 8 month old girl named Josephine. She was adorable and I had a hard time putting her down.












































I never found out what the little girl's name was in the last picture, but we went back to the orphanage a second time so the men could go with us and see the kids and she was the one that got my attention that time. Josephine was taking a nap so I wasn't able to hold her. This little girl and I took turns sticking our tongue out at each other. It was the cutest thing!


She just cuddled right in and was about to go to sleep. Then they told me we had to go. I put her down and she started crying for me and crawling after me. Needless to say I started crying for her too. It broke my heart! I would love to have brought this little one and Josephine home with me. It was very emotional and really hard to leave.
















I now have a fourth son. His name is Alfred. You may notice the resemblance! (He has the same bald head as his Dad!) We were drawn to one another from the first time we saw each other. He is studying for ministry through Next Generation Ministries. He has been ministering to prisoners on an island prison on Lake Victoria. He is an awesome young man and we have been keeping in touch through email. He usually starts by saying "Hi Mum" from your African son.



Another highlight was the Rock of Ages Nursery School. It is a preschool that Betty started for children of prostitutes. It was a very interesting place. Again, these kids were absolutely adorable. I had the privilege of telling them a Bible story about Jonah and the big fish. Betty translated for me since most of the kids didn't speak much English. As you can see they weren't really paying a lot of attention to what I was saying. At least I tried!



One of the touristy things we got to do was visit the source of the historic Nile River and Bujagali Falls. It was beautiful and we were very excited to get to see it. Here is a couple of pictures of Justin and I at the source of the Nile.














I was also glad that Lisa got to go with us. It was so good to get to share this trip with her. Here is the three of us at Bujagali Falls.

That is just a tiny sample of the things we did while in Africa. It is an experience I will never forget. I loved every minute of it and I can't wait to go back. I will try to post more about our trip later. We are going to have a mission report at church on Sunday at 3:00, March 8th and I need to prepare a slide show. It will be fun to be able to share with our friends and family.