5Crawfords

So to date, I have been mainly blogging about us and getting set up here in Uganda. I apologize that it seems a little ego-centric that everything I have written has been about us, our feelings, and how we’re doing. Of course we realize we didn’t come here to just transplant our life over here and continue on like it was just a move across the state, but really, all we’ve had capacity for so far has been to try to figure out how we can make our life manageable and sustainable for our family here. Once settled, we figure we’ll then be equipped to begin our ministry here, which essentially will be: first, my job, and second, building relationships with the people around us. But it’s a hard balance to find, to build a comfortable home life while living amongst and even relating to people who are the poorest of the poor. So within reason, we have purchased things that have made our family life manageable, with enough creature comforts to allow us to stay long term. Could we have done witho...

We took Alisha’s dad to the airport last night and said goodbye after an eventful and fast two weeks. What an awesome blessing it was for us to have had him here. It is an impressive list of all he helped us with: from watching and playing with the boys to fixing the locks, buying the boys’ bikes and putting them together, taking trips to town on the boda-boda to run errands for us, lending advice on certain aspects of life like buying our car and appliances, helping the plumber fix our widespread plumbing issues, cleaning our cupboards, fixing the doors on the cupboards, setting up the washing machine, stove, dryer, TV and DVD player, taking us on a ‘day-off’ trip to Jinja that was a much needed respite from getting settled, fixing the guards door latch – and then locking himself in the room after he was sure it was fixed! (me and the plumber had a great laugh about that one!), and so many more things big and little that he did to help. But really, that amounts to only about 10% of hi...

Here are some pictures from our first two weeks in Uganda. The first one is Alisha in our kitchen - looks pretty normal eh? The only thing missing is dishwasher - yuk! The blue tank is the propane for the stove. the next picture is of the boys watching a video in our newly furnished family room. The only piece of furniture we have left to buy is a dining room table and chairs. Also, see the family pictures on the walls in the background? Alert to the Bret Crawfords, the Bart Crawfords, the LaBrie's, and Mom & Dad C. need to get an 8x10 of your family made up and sent to us - please! Mail it mom & dad C. or to the Berry's in Castro Valley as they are sending care packages fairly regularly. The next one is Grandpa reading a story to the boys at bedtime. Note the mosquito netting in the background above Jonah's bed. We haven't really had to use the nets yet, but last night I was itching pretty good so that may change soon. Finally, Brodie and Jonah at Herit...

I'm going to try to get caught up on pictures, so here are some from our travels two weeks ago. The first one is just after clearing through security in SFO! I think we had more in carry-on luggage alone than most people had in checked bags! The next one is of Alisha and the boys with her dad walking down a narrow alley in downtown 'Monsterdam'. The third one is of the boys standing in Central Station in Amsterdam - I swear I've seen this train station before in some world war II movie or something. So I'll try to send more soon, but this post has taken me over 30 minutes! ...P.s. I was the next one stricken with the stomach flu, and as is usually the case, anything floating through the family hits me the hardest. So I started throwing up Sunday night at bedtime and didn't get out of bed until Monday afternoon at 4:30. I'm feeling much better now (it's Tuesday afternoon here) but still not 100%. Also, this afternoon we're buying a car! But thi...

So Jonah recuperated quickly - only a 12 hour bug, albeit a nasty one. Thanks for the prayers. Unfortunately, Alisha's dad caught it last night and must've been throwing up for 4 hours straight. But he too recovered quickly and was back to feeling good by this morning (Friday). I rechecked with the DSL provider here today and the long and the short of it is, the DSL is not going to happen for the foreseeable future. They won't tell you a hard "no" in Uganda, they'll always give you a little biscuit of hope, but the net effect is: "no!". So I am moving on to other options. We'll be able to connect eventually, but the hopes of using Skype anytime soon may be dwindling. :( :( But on that note, we have received new email addresses that will allow us to read and respond to emails offline, and then download and upload messages all at once to reduce the amount of connection time required. So, we're not closing out the other address, but for the time...

(Sorry, since our internet connectivity is as of yet unresolved, my preferred blogging style of ‘picture-heavy and text-light’ is taking a backseat to rambling prose!) Today is Wednesday, February 6th (now yesterday!) and we’re having a rainy day. Yesterday, we had our first rain shower. It started out unimpressively, but quickly turned into a major downpour! I think we got over an inch or rain in under an hour. But it is all wetting the ground – which is good and bad: good because we have been covered in red dust everyday now, but bad because we will now be covered in red mud! It’s coming to the end of the hot season so it’s been high 80’s here during the day and high 60’s at night. So the coolness this morning is welcome in our book! Funny to think you are all battling snow back home, while I’m fighting a sunburn! But the boys started school this week (B&J yesterday, G today). They seem to like it so far. Brodie has met a couple of friends – Garrison and Emma – and seems...

We have arrived! I have not had access to the internet until now – boy do we feel disconnect with the world! It may be 2-3 weeks before we get it set-up at home, so I’m sorry about the lack of updates here at the beginning. Also, the internet speed is atrocious, so it will take me awhile to figure out pictures. And, I had too many emails to respond to (over 50), especially with the slow connection. But thanks for all the nice words and blog comments. But the flight into Uganda was uneventful and all of our bags were waiting for us after we passed through immigration! Chad met us there and had rented a matatu to pick us up – so the driver and conductor crammed all of our bags and us into this little mini-van and drove us ‘home’! We love our house – it really is quite nice. We have 4 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms (2 of which are working!). The first night we were exhausted, so thankful the eMi people here had setup all of our beds for us. Day 1 we spent the morning unpacking all of our bags a...