I'm going to try to keep this a teeeeny bit shorter this time, partly so that you don't have to read so much but also because I've been rubbish at keeping my journal up to date this week! Things are insanely busy here; it's hard to find time to fit everything in and to find the space in the day and in my head to write properly. I'll go day by day again and try to include most of the exciting stuff :)
Monday 28th - DAY OFF!!! Yay :) Internet as usual, some shopping at Garden City... We realised that there's a beauty treatment place there, which we might go to the day before we come home so we're all pretty when we see people again! My head and nose were still pretty bad today but I keep surprising myself because I'm more resilient than I give myself credit for! I've been brave so far, considering I'm normally such a wuss.. Awful traffic on the way home, it was exhausting just sitting in the matatu for that long with the bumpy roads and dangerous driving. I pray all the way home when we're on one of those things!
I found a "secret" place to go and do my writing and chill out today - it's in one of the pig stys at the back of the house! How funny?! It's pretty clean though; I'm going to sweep it out and buy a Ugandan mat to put in there. I took a cup of tea and my notebook and my speakers and just sat for a while. It was lovely :) It's in the middle of lots of trees so it's very peaceful - just my sort of place. I'm not sure it'll take the place of the bench on top of the hill at home though... Thank you God for keeping me safe today and helping me be brave enough to cross roads without panicking :) Help me not to worry about applying for uni; I know things are in your hands.
Tuesday 29th - "I am insufficient in all I will face today. I insufficient strength to resist the temptations that I'll come up against. I have insufficient wisdom to make the decisions I have to. God, I am entirely dependent on you today." We visited Mama Claire and Mama Joshua today to learn how to weave and make African crafts with them. It was very cool but I was totally rubbish! Good times... We're thinking about making a website and catalogue with them for their business so we can market it back home and help them earn some more money, cos they're struggling a lot at the moment. They make mats, purses and bags, really beautiful things. We went to a local tailoring school at 4 where we met some young women who are being trained in sewing etc. That was a bit different! The translator there wasn't good, asking us lots of stuff in English and not translating for the girls so they were a bit excluded. That's exactly what we don't want, because we want friendships with these women so we can help them practically in the difficulties they face day to day. They expected us to share something from the Bible, which we weren't aware of, so I had to do a random spiel from Jeremiah 31 - there's nothing like an unexpected challenge to stretch your faith!
I also tried on a gomez, which is a traditional Ugandan outfit for women here. It has p
ointy shoulders... In fact, here's a photo! I look very beat up in it (awful actually!) cos of the accident, but try to ignore the bruises and cuts etc :) The girls found it hilarious and sang wedding music; apparently people wear them to get married! We had an awesome prayer time tonight, just thinking about the kids work and how passionate we are to see some changes in the community. There's so much to be done and we need wisdom to know how best to serve the kids and young women particularly here, and how to make sustainable changes that they can continue for themselves once we leave. There have been things here that have broken our hearts, things that have given us hope, things that have challenged us in our faith and showed us how we need to take more risks for God.Wednesday 30th - Taught at the disabled school today :) This week we split them up into younger and older kids so we could spend an hour with each of them. It worked SO much better! We did the story of Moses parting the Red Sea and got all the kiddies to act it out and help us tell the story. The younger ones love craft stuff, but we're quite short of resources so there's only so much we can do with them. The older ones are harder to reach; it's difficult to get the balance of telling the story right so that they get a deeper understanding of it but also aren't patronised because of the age range. Please pray that we'll get better at doing this! They love the Balloon Game (that's a definite favourite) and dodgeball though, so if the worst comes to the worst we can just fill the time with that! In the afternoon we had Bible Study again - I led that on Revelation 4 and it seemed to go well, so I was happy! :) Very different to what we do at home, so it was a bit of a leap into the unknown... We get a lot of that here!
Was quite homesick today. I've been missing normal doughy white bread and cheese... cheddar cheese...... I miss going out with friends too :( I just want to go out and not have to worry about being groped by random African men, proposed to, accosted to buy stuff etc etc.. I really want to go on an underground train, know where I'm going and not nearly die in the process of getting there!!! I miss my family :(
Thursday 1st - Taught at Gilgal school today :) It went really well because we actually managed to plan properly this time! We knew what to expect. The youngest and oldest groups are the easiest because telling the story is easier to gauge and do flexibly. P5 and P6 are the 11-13 year olds, and they're the hardest mainly because the age range goes from about 10-18 in that group. It's almost impossible to engage them all and get the messages across that we want to, but we're going to keep trying new things till we find a way. Games, a Bible story and trying to get some English in there is the best way to do it I think.. The groups are just soooo big, it's a challenge but we'll get there. The kids are fantastic across the whole school, esp in P7. They're a great group cos we can really relate to them and share with them as friends, plus there's only about 20 of them at most. There's a girl called Sarah in that group who's a little star :) She's so loving and generous with herself and her time. She carries our bags back home for us, bothers to talk to us as real people, not just "the white people." She's a real blessing.
There was some terrible news today. The lady who lost her baby last week is called Nakato. She had another little son, who was very ill - we could tell just by looking at him. He had a skin disease, swollen stomach and joints... He didn't even have the strength to cry. I stroked his leg when we were at his house to try to stop him crying. He died at 1pm today. It is indescribably difficult to see a child, to feel an element of pain for that child, then to hear that they've gone, just like that. Died for a probably preventable reason. I have been really angry about it, deep down inside. I hate the fact that we see this, we have to look death in the face, and we can do nothing but try to comfort the people who are left. We went to offer our condolences again like last time, and again we saw the body. The pain in the mother's face was so evident; it was terrible. I can't describe it. It physically hurt me to see her with his body, the second child that she's lost in a week. If that's how it felt for me, I cannot imagine her pain. I wish we could do something, but all we can do is pray and cry with someone. It tears me up that children here die so easily when they're all precious and they should all live to be as old as I am now and far beyond that. Why should I be alive just because of where I'm born? I'm no more important than them.
Friday 2nd - Theological training at the Bambejja project in Kampala, then the Oasis staff team meeting. A very long day, with lots of travelling. We're all exhausted by the time we get home! The matatu rides are so long and bumpy... The theological training isn't great to far, it's a bit boring and not very helpful! But we're trying to just get on with it and learn as much from it as we can. We met a guy called Carlos and his brother Steve to talk about holiday stuff this afternoon :D We're going to have the best holiday EVER!!!! (Oops, apart from Nerja 09, sorry girls!) We're staying in Uganda cos it's cheaper.. Going to a big lake where we can do watersports, then 2 different safari parks, one in the West and one in the North. As we travel we're stopping off at other places on the way, like the equator :) Then we're going to Kampala for a day, then to an island in Lake Victoria that has white sandy beaches!!!! I can't wait :D We're hoping it will cost less than 300 pounds for 2 weeks... We'll probably go in the last 2 weeks of January I think. I'm so excited!!!!! I'm still feeling relatively OK regarding the accident, but my legs went all shaky and I found it kinda difficult to breathe when we got to the place where it happened today, so please pray that God keeps me brave and strong :) He has been SO good to the team so far, helping us to bond and form great friendships and he's been with us every step of the way. It's amazing how he provides for us all the time.
Saturday 3rd - Kids club! It went really well, had more kids this week which was great. This week I'm making them all name badges, then we're going to get laminated so they have something special to look after :) Had lots of fun playing games, singing songs and doing craft stuff. They're great kids and a lot of them have next to nothing because they come from quite small homes in the village. BUT, they're so full of life! They're fantastic to be around, I just love them! Sometimes when we come back late from Kampala, we get loads of kids jumping out of the bushes yelling and running at us! It's hilarious, always makes us jump :) We also had our first session of girls group today - this is something we really want to grow while we're here. We want to see more girls coming and them being raised up to know how much they're worth and how much they're loved by God. Women here can sometimes be downtrodden, but Rachael has this great saying - if a man is the head of the family, a woman is the neck and the neck can turn the head whichever way it wants :D how awesome is that?! Classic Ugandan misphrasing today: (Mr Sopp, I know you're reading this and I know you'll appreciate how funny this is!!!) In girls group Rachael asked Becky, who's getting married next summer, "When are you going to make time for the hot love?"
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Classic!
Aaaanyway, before I crack myself up too much about that I'll move onto the evening's events... We were missing clubbing so we turned all our lights off, put some music on really loud and waved torches around and had a rave! It was actually amazing! :D We had soooo much fun, the kids came in dancing and everything! They loved it... Bit of a workout really, good for us! We've introduced clubbing in Uganda....!
Sunday 4th - Church lasted THREE AND A HALF hours today!!!! How ridiculous?! We did our best to concentrate for the whole time but it was pretty tough... We had to go up the front and sing a few songs... We did one Ugandan one and an English one just for good measure! I wanted to upload a video that I took of church but my camera's just run out of battery, how annoying. So all the photos I was planning on putting up here will just have to wait till Friday! After church we did some washing, sweeping and tidying... We're being good at keeping the place tidy bearing in mind how limited the space is! Hopefully Mum will send me out some hangy storage things and some CHOCOLATE (wink wink nudge nudge Mum!!!!) soon... We visited some homes today with people from church. It was totally random, heard some VERY dodgy theology about denominations and stuff. It's too long to explain now (I have to do UCAS stuff!) but basically the church here is very confused about how denominations are split up and teach some weird stuff, backing it up with stuff from the Bible that they take totally out of context. We're going to have to ask some serious questions I think...
And now, as I type, it's Monday and I'm in Makono thinking that this, which I really was intending to be short, has now grown to a ridiculous size. Ooops, sorry people! :) If you're still reading then obviously you didn't mind too much though! It's hot but much calmer than Kampala, so we're all feeling much more chilled out and relaxed than we usually do on our days off. I have SO MUCH to thank God for this week; it's been busy but exciting, full of challenges but also amazing stuff too. I can see the changes he's making in our team and in me as an individual too. I'm learning a lot :) Thank you for all your prayers - they really do make a difference. Prayer points for this week:
- That we'll be imaginative, creative and discerning about how best to teach the children.
- That our themes and main messages for the teaching and girls group would be right for the people we're trying to serve and that we're able to be flexible and just go along with what seems like the right thing to do.
- That we would grow stronger and closer as a team. We know we've got everything we need to fight the battles we need to here, and to come out on top, but we need constant compassion and energy which can be tough!
- Nakato and her family. Please pray that they are comforted, strengthened and sustained over the next weeks and months.
- A little boy called Derek that we met at Sunday school yesterday. His Mum abandoned him, so he now lives with his Auntie. He's 1 1/2 but he's the size of a 3 month old. Please pray for him to be looked after well.
Thank you so so so so much :) I can't tell you how much I'm missing you all but writing this does help me feel like I'm still with you a little bit! Please feel free to write to me or email me; I'd LOVE to hear from you, I really would. It's hard here without your lovely faces around all the time. I'll do my best to reply to whatever you guys can send, if you have time!
Tons and tons and tons of love. God bless :)
Flick x
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