Uganda YWAM Project (V of V)

Overlooking Kampala - even now, it still feels so weird to me
sometimes to think that this place was our home...and in many
ways still feels like home to this day.

Part V of V

Days 11-14:  13^th – 17^th September

Back in Kampala! There’s so much about this place I love. Yes, it’s a dirty, trafficky, smoggy and crazy busy city, but there’s something about it that is so familiar to me that it feels as much like my home town as any place does at this point in life. The years we spent here will go down as some of the best of our lives, so perhaps I’m a bit prone to viewing it through rose-colored glasses. But the people and familiar places all bring such good memories back that I can’t help but feel at home being here.

The 'boda stage' by our house - some of our old boda drivers
have moved on to become 'special hire' (car) drivers.

The 'Jinja' roundabout - one of the main intersections in town.

A panorama of our old compound.

I got to join the EMIEA office prayer time a couple of mornings.

Monica, our old househelp and dear friend. She's going to
have another baby soon!

Guard Patrick - another dear old friend.

There are hard parts of living here too that I do remember well – the difficulties of completing even mundane tasks such as paying bills  unreliable power, slow and unreliable internet access, unreliable water service – I guess unreliable just about anything that had to do with infrastructure or utilities. There’s also the emotionally difficult side of living here, knowing you’re a million miles from friends and family and live most of the time not knowing the next time you’ll be seeing them.

The Italian Supermarket - one of the primary places we shopped.

While in Kampala for a few days after the project trip, I got to
play in a couple game in the old Euro Football league I used to
play in. My friend Matt has now helped form a USA team!

I also got to join for 'Tuesday Night Basketball' again -
something a few of us started while we lived there.

My good friends Matt and Jade (despite the look on his face,
Jade is very much 'invested in hope' as his t-shirt indicates! He
works with Sudanese refugees and has been doing great work
in that field for a number of years now there in Uganda.)

Strangely, I got to watch the Oregon Ducks (American) football
game on TV at the guesthouse (albeit in the middle of the night!).

There is also an aspect of risk associated with living here too – risk on the roads, risk of an uprising or political instability, risk from theft, and even the very real risk of serious illness. Our missionary friends still living here learned this lesson in a very tragic way this past summer when their 10-year old daughter (who was in Jonah’s class) contracted a deadly strain of malaria that took her life very suddenly. Our heart goes out to our friends as they try to figure out what to make of what has happened to their family, and what possible road forward they should take. Please join us in praying for our friends John and Mimi. They are from the Philippines but have lived in Uganda for 10+ years.

Day 5 for me in Kampala and I’m waiting for the team to arrive back from safari. It’s so peaceful here in this city, and yet I am more than ready to be home with Alisha and the boys. So much has happened while I’ve been away: all the boys started back to school, Jonah and Graysen are at their new school, Brodie has tried out and been ‘signed’ to a new football (soccer) team for the year, Graysen has had two soccer games and scored a goal in the most recent one, Alisha has started volunteering at the church on Monday’s with the ‘Mum and tots’ group, the weather in Colchester has turned cold and wet – it feels like an eternity has passed these past 13 days. Being away from our family is definitely the hardest part of our life with EMI – it seems that so much happens in the two weeks when I’m away on project trips. There’s only two more nights left before our flight out early Wednesday morning. I am really looking forward to seeing those 4 special people. Trips are great, but coming home after a trip can’t be topped!

The 4 people mentioned above, in the car on the way to pick
me up from the train station!

Flying over the Sahara Desert - it's an impressive sight to see.

A view of the Libyan coastline along the Mediterranean
Sea. Benghazi, Libya, the city where the US Embassy was
attacked a couple of years ago, is on the coastline just out of
the picture at the top of the screen near the plane's wing.
It's amazing how small the world appears from an airplane.