Hey guys!

So I’m officially on the ship now!  It’s been a long couple of days of travel and orientation and I will share shortly on my time so far…but I wanted to share a bit about my last week in Uganda!  Seriously, when I was there I felt like the time was going slowly…but in fact, it flew!  And there were some definite things that stood out in the second week…RANDOM thoughts…but here they are:

1)   Was able to help out at Ekisa in drawing blood on just about all the children there.  I’ve never been ‘trained’ in Canada to draw blood on children OR infants for that matter…but now I can check both of those off my list…Hah!  I’ve also proven myself very good at pinning children down for blood work too…so if you need someone, you know who to call.

2)  I wrote about a boy named Isaac and his dad in a previous post…and Isaac is now officially an Ekisa kid!  So he’s being cared for at the home by the momma’s and volunteers…good and bad news I suppose…but he’s looking well…)

3)  Was able to visit Calvary Chapel in Kampala twice during my time there…it’s a church planted there by a pastor from the States.  They have a Ugandan choir that leads worship and (for the most part) you feel like you’re at a Kirk Franklin concert for worship…minus Kirk Franklin of course…if you know who that is…

4)  Lots of power outages in Jinja…don’t remember that from years past, but it was both frustrating and kinda simple and nice…

5)   At one point I remember sitting in a van in the middle of a village of very poor children leafing though an Instyle magazine thinking how vain our culture is and how I fall right into it while living in North America…It was the weirdest and most interesting thing to see/experience…

And my last thought!  I was able to take a few trips out to Mpigi from Kampala to visit the kids there.  And truthfully?  I love these kids.  They are smart and funny and most of them are completely hilarious.  I just love them.  And I always enjoy visiting with them because it’s so peaceful up on the hill where they live.  It’s quiet and life is simple and there aren’t any ipads or laptops or telephones ringing off the hook.  For the most part, It’s just the chickens and roosters and breeze and there’s children playing soccer and net ball.  And they eat food that comes straight from the backyard and eat it with their fingers…It’s just the most perfect little community and I’m so thankful to have been able to see it upfront as much as I have…

Anyhow, here’s photos from Mpigi…

Mpigi town from my hilltop guest house…

Momma Paige and Harriet…sat and chatted with them a while waiting for the kids to get back from school…

And some kiddos…I shouldn’t really call them ‘kiddos’…because they’re all getting SO big!

And some more momma’s…

And some more of the kids…

Wearing my things….

And this sweet thing little thing…Her name’s Juliet and she has the softest, cutest little voice now!  She’d whisper to me in Lugandan and I’d reply in English and then she’d speak in Lugandan and I’d reply in English and we’d go on like that for a while…non-sensically speaking to each other…

And I also sat across from her for a meal of matooke…hadn’t planned on eating with the kids and ate before I visited for that very reason…but one of the momma’s sat the bowl in front of me…what can you do?

There you go! Next post will be about the ship!