5Crawfords

The taxi is here and we’re leaving for the airport in just a few minutes! We are so excited the time has finally come to head back to visit with so many people we have missed this past year. We love you and can’t wait to see as many of you as possible very soon! Please pray for safe and smooth travels – and for sleepy boys! :) The matatu (taxi) just arrived so we snapped a quick shot of the travelers! USA here we come!

We thought we should follow up our last post with some of what has happened since the waterslide incident on the 1st. First of all, we want to thank you all for the outpouring of love and support and nice words that have been sent our way by comments on the blog and emails. Thank you all so much for your kind and encouraging words - it was so nice to have the support and prayers of so many of you as we worked through the whole ordeal. But I also wanted to share some of what we've done since then to help ourselves work through our feelings and also to hopefully help out a little. On the Sunday after it happened, we decided to have 'home church' so we could talk through it with the boys. They had a lot of questions to discuss. Jonah had a hard time, after seeing Buhdro's dead body, reconciling the idea that his soul was still alive and now was in Heaven (I can understand where he's coming from, as the idea that this person's soul is still alive just moments after ...

I don’t know if it’s too soon to be writing about this, but maybe it will help us work through some of what we experienced yesterday (New Year’s Day) – as our day culminated in us frantically, but sadly, unsuccessfully trying to save a 5 year old Ugandan boy’s life. This is what happened. Yesterday morning, we had decided to take the boys to Didi’s World (the local amusement park) later in the day when the water slides opened at 1pm, but until then we’d take what’s become our usual trip to go swimming at the ARA (American Recreation Association) since it’s so hot this time of year. As 2:30pm rolled around at the pool, we almost decided to skip the waterslides since we knew it would probably be busy and we were having a nice time at the pool. But the boys had their hearts set and we had promised as long as the weather held out, which it did. When we arrived, we paused at the ticket gate because we could see that the waterslide ‘pool’ was packed, the water was a disgusting gray color tha...

Our Christmas tree, complete with Jonah's Lego 'Holiday Train' and tunnel we had built for him here! Small presents mailed from Grammy and Grandma completed the ensemble! If I had to choose one word to describe our Christmas this year, it would be ‘different’! Everything from the weather, the people, the events, to the absence of livelong traditions made for a very bizarre holiday. But, though missing family was at an all-time high, there were some bright spots. Here’s a picture story of how our Christmas went down, 10,000 miles from home: Christmas Eve started as a typical day, with me heading to town to pay our (astronomical) electric bill and Alisha and Dani baking 15 loaves of banana bread to pass out. But as the day wore on, it became more Christmassy. We started by driving around to pass out some of the loaves to a few local neighbors we've come to befriend one way or another... Christine, who runs a nearby shop that we frequent a few times a week to get such stap...

Well, God has answered another prayer, as we are now in possession of all 6 passports with legitimate visas!! I went to immigration this morning right as it opened and no one else was there. So I went in and the lady who had me take a seat was trying to set the time on a little clock her boyfriend (who was working in the same room nearby) had given her for Christmas. I didn't want to appear too obnoxious, so I kind of nonchalantly offered to help, which she was grateful for. So she found the two passports and gave them to me while I 'fixed' her clock. After I handed her the clock, I explained the dilemma and showed her that Alisha's new Special Pass was expiring today, telling her that we were leaving in 4 weeks. She said, "Oh, then I'll give you a visitor's pass for 30 days." I said, "Can you do that?" So she stamped her passport and verified that 30 days was enough, I said, "that would be great", she signed it and that was that. U...

Before we arrived back in January, we had the paperwork submitted into the Immigration office here to get my work permit approved. However, eMi’s registration here in Uganda was set to expire in July, so the office had to prepare a pretty extensive application to reapply for NGO status (non-governmental organization) – includes a financial impact study, a report of what we’re doing and the local staff we employ, amongst other things. This NGO renewal was submitted in May. Consequently, when I applied for a 2-year work permit in February, I was told that I could not receive a work permit that outlasted the NGO permit so after months of delay, I was granted a 6 month work permit that actually did extend beyond the NGO deadline into October). Graysen has turned into Mr. Make-Believe. He loves to dress up like he's Peter Pan, or Cap'n Hook, or Santa Claus. The funny thing is, the difference between any of the custumes he chooses are virtually indistinguishable from each other! He u...

In Africa it's customary to say, "Where do you stay?" instead of "Where do you live?" I (Alisha) got to thinking about that a bit. Back home it seemed I just expected to see the same people at the boy's schools and at church week after week. We're really missing my niece Traci now that she's on her way back home. (Traci - Dani's sister - is on the left) She was here about 6 weeks and it went by too fast. She was great to have around and it was a big treat for Dani as well. But here it is a little different. Many families come here for a commitment of just a few months or maybe only a couple of years. Then one day, they are off to another country or back home to start a new chapter of their lives. That's what made me realize: while people may "stay" in one place for a time, there is no guarantee that they will "live" in that place for very long. Accepting this new sense of "normal" has been a big challenge for me....