Uganda!

Hello all! My team and I are currently in Mbarara, Uganda!

When we arrived in Jinja at the beginning of the month, we noticed that Uganda is much more modern than Kenya…there were two story buildings, paved roads, a roundabout…hello society! We spent a day in Jinja bungee jumping and rafting the Nile River! It was a crazy day! God's grace was all over my raft…our all women raft was supposed to be the mild raft but we ended up being the most wild raft of the day! Long story short, we went over an "unraftable rapid," a class 6. We had no idea what was happening or that we weren't supposed to go down it. Suddenly, we heard a whistle being blown and looked back to see our guide had chucked his paddle and was grabbing at reeds to keep us from going down, meanwhile the look on the faces of our squadmates (who had gone down the safe route) was sheer horror. They said that we totally disappeared under water for a few seconds, then bobbed back up. We looked back to see what we had just gone over…it was a waterfall…like, a real one! We were excited to have been through it & survived without flipping but later found out that if we had, it would have been bad. The water was so high that the rapid there creates a washing machine effect and would have kept us all under. We rafted two more class 3 rapids and then the final one was a class 5. We flipped on the last one and I was underwater for what seemed like eternity! After going through all that, I felt like I could do anything so bungee jumping wasn't too terrifying. It was a big day and full of God revelations – which i'll have to save for another blog! 

After Jinja, we made our way to Mbarara. Even though Uganda is generally more westernized, we are staying in a small town just outside of Mbarara called Ruti without power or running water in our house.

We are living with Pastor Solomon Carter, his wife Lily, and their 4 month old little girl, Sufficient Grace, or "Sophie G" for short. Pastor Solom scheduled this month to be "outreach month" for the church so we are staying very busy this month. We are doing crusades every Thursday, Friday & Saturday, as well as preaching in Sunday services at Promise Christian Church, speaking at local schools and universities and spending time at a rehabiliation center for disabled young adults. Our time here has been very productive! Women in the church even volunteered to come do our laundry and make all of our meals so that we'd have more time to do ministry work – that has been such a blessing and humbling experience! 

Specific things to pray for:
– Physical health – several people on our squad have been down with malaria, typhoid & bacterial infections. 
– Spiritual & emotional health – that God will continue to pour into us as we're pouring out to the people here
– Open & receptive hearts in the people of Uganda and Rwanda
– Continued patience & understanding as we are living in close community with one another & our contacts
– Finances for the whole squad (I still need $2,322 to be fully funded)
– My computer – it stopped working last week so I have been unable to write blogs (before coming to the internet cafe) & post pictures or video. I might be able to have it looked at once we get to Asia.

I'm going to try to borrow someone's computer this week so I can catch up on blogging & post some of the great stories & things that have been going on here in Africa to keep up to date!