6th - 9th October 2009

Hey everyone :)

So this week I've been completely terrible at keeping a journal so this is gonna be a lot shorter and less organised! Hope everyone at home is doing OK - remember you can always send me emails or letters to let me know how you are. It's good to hear from home! :)

Tuesday.... Weaving in the morning again, shockingly I actually managed to do it!!! I now have a red and white pattern that I'm going to keep practising on till I properly get how to do it. I want to attempt to make a purse before we leave... Tuesday afternoon was the tailoring school again. That's the most difficult/interesting part of our programme I think. The translator didn't turn up (!) so that made communication a slight issue! Some of the girls couldn't speak English, others didn't really want to talk, although we met one lovely girl called Mae. Hopefully it'll get better; I think it's something we need to persevere with and just focus on building up some friendship with the girls. It's a relatively new project that they want to expand - they want to make it a proper school for technical disciplines, with places for the women to sleep if they need to. They're trying to get a bigger building planned and sorted out, and want to extend the area that the project serves cos it's the only one of its kind in the region. I was a bit ill on Tuesday, feeling rough. I think a lot of it is down to stress, trying to do a uni application from here, as well as the heat and the amount of energy we're using, running around after the kids and all of that. In the evenings doing skipping and dancing with them really does wipe us out at the end of the day! Homesickness is becoming a bit of a thing too. It's weird but I'm thinking about Christmas a bit, and also Mum's birthday on Monday (love you Mummy!) and it's only 6 days till we've been here for a whole month. It seems like so long thinking of it like that! On a positive note, I've had an African skirt custom made to fit me :D It's blue and it's AWESOME!!

Wednesday - Taught at Lilo this morning, the school for the disabled children. I did the story and the craft, pretty much led it, and it went well.. There were some more kids there who we haven't met yet, lots more mute ones. That seems to be a real problem here, but those children are always the really loving, friendly ones. There's one boy who makes my day every time I see him :) We're slowly learning their names but I'm going to make name labels for all of them to make it quicker and easier; doing stuff like that is a great way to serve them. I love the small things you can do :) Some of them can barely breathe cos they get so excited when we wave at them!! That's all it takes, just one small wave. Amazing really. We've decided on an overall theme for our teaching while we're here, which is who God is and what that means for us, so we have a different word for every week. It's really exciting having a vision for our time here like that! We're doing a series on women in the Bible for the girls group on Saturdays and also want to do that in the tailoring school once we've got some friendship sorted. We're thinking about the best way we can start a choir and a boys group too cos it's difficult to engage with the boys and we need to offer something more. There's a lot happening here, you can really feel things are moving forward especially for the kids and it's a privilege to be a part of it, even though there is still a lot that needs doing! Lots of need and not enough time to meet it all ourselves. Ellie led Bible study this evening and it was awesome :) We were kept awake for a good few hours by a thunderstorm too; lightning was literally lighting up the whole entire room. We have a corrugated iron roof, so the rain was making a huuugeee amount of noise!

Thursday - AWESOME DAY!!!!! Gilgal this morning; I was feeling rough as, but it went really well. The kids love us! :) We don't get long with each group but we pack in a story and some games and a song and they seem to have fun so it's all good. Running around can be a bit of a joke at times as even the 4 year olds are faster than me... I'm being serious!! The P5/P6 group, who were kinda difficult last time, were a lot better cos we gave them a chance to write down questions and stuff they want to do with us and we brought a special box for them to put them in. Made them feel a bit more involved I think, so that gives us something good to work with :) The P7 group were a joy, as before.. It's so good to have time with a smaller group cos it's more chilled out and less all over the place. It chucked it down with rain just in time for our walk home. We got soaking wet! So when we got back, we sat on the sofas and thought "hmmmm how fun would it be to run outside in the rain....." It was a pretty major storm by this point, TIPPING it down with rain!! So in the end we just put shorts on, ran outside and had the most amazing time ever!! It was SO MUCH FUN!!! :D The kids ran out halfway through when were were holding bowls under the leaking rooves and just throwing it all over each other. Ah it was awesome :) Then we sat in our towels with toast and hot chocolate!! It was almost like being back at home! Bible study at Esther's house was a bit of a trek away but it was good times once we got there. She cooked an insane amount of matoke and sweet potato for us to eat, and we then had to have dinner AS WELL when we got home :S Needless to say, we're all going to come back the size of elephants!!!

And now it's Friday and I'm sitting in the Mukono internet cafe feeling stupidly happy that I get to read emails from you lovely people :D We have a random day off because it's Independence Day here (public holiday) so we can relax at home instead of rushing into Kampala for theological training. Cos I have some spare time, I thought I'd show you some photos of our time here :) Take a look and laugh your socks off!


This is me attempting to do some washing... We now have help from Esther, a lovely lady who lives in the village, cos it took us so long! You'd be surprised at how tiring it actually is. I'll never look at washing machines in the same way again - whoever invented them was an actual genius!! Becky and I do everyone's underwear washing twice a week, which can actually be kinda relaxing sitting out in the sun :) In case you didn't notice, this is a pre-accident photo!










This is my AWESOME leg injury from the accident :D I was so impressed, we took photos of it most days. It's healed over very quickly (thank you God) and now doesn't hurt at all. I think my nose has been permanently damaged in some way cos it clicks sort of funnily and is definitely different to how it was before, but it's all good! I'm SO thankful it wasn't any worse; just thinking about it makes me feel sooooo blessed :D :D :D




This is the toilet... I'm sure you'll agree that it's utterly joyous....!! Nothing quite compares with struggling to hold a torch and loo roll in the pitch black at night while squatting and hearing strange insects buzzing weirdly close to your ear. Plus the constant awareness that there are doubtlessly cockroaches somewhere underneath you - GOOD TIMES! You can just about see the hole in the ground in the one on the left :) We're actually used to the loos now though, it's not a big deal......! Ahahaha..



This is me trying on Mama Rachael's African clothes :) Pretty self-explanatory really!


















I wanted to upload some more but haven't got time cos the computer's being horribly slow... I'll put some more up on Monday and hopefully some videos too. Lots and lots of love to everyone, please keep praying for us!

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