Wednesday June 23

We went to the orphan village today, and got to reconnect with all the children. It was amazing. I have to say that this time was a little different for me than the previous arrivals. The children made me feel as if I had come home after a 5 month trip. They were alongside the bus just wanting to touch our hands as we drove up. It was really amazing. I was making eye contact with seemingly endless numbers of familiar faces that were smiling uncontrollably.

The flight yesterday was long, and as usual somewhat boring. I have to say that for the first time, I was not wanting to watch movies, or listen to my iPod. I also succumbed to the desire to sleep on the second flight. I am terrible at sleeping on planes; my feet go numb, my neck hangs, and I can never breathe through my nose because it always is so plugged by all the dust circulating in the air. I got through it though. I actually ordered special meals, so I was eating kosher the whole time. The cool thing about it is that aside from being pretty delicious, you get your food up to 30 minutes before any one else. Everyone thought I was Jewish too.... I was constantly like.. “No, no... I'm not Jewish, I just special ordered kosher meals”. They got a kick out of it.

Thursday June 24

Today was our first real day of working. Alarm on my watch has been going off at around 7AM every morning, but I have woken up just before that both mornings too. I actually am waking up at 4AM wide awake, then forcing myself back to sleep and waking up at the usual time. My roommates this year are Kirk and Jake(we call him Hoss). We eat breakfast together, then we all board the bus at 8:30. Today, the construction team went on the first bus. We wanted to get started helping out with the school as soon as we could. We leveled off an area for the container when it arrives and there was a lot of moving brick but that is about it. Kirk did some brick laying, but for the most part they don't yet trust us enough to let all of us jump in and really work side by side. By moving brick we save them a lot of energy and time, so that is fine with me; whatever we can do to help! We finished working around 3PM and went to play with the kids. I got to watch the school use the soccer field for the first time with an organized team. That was rewarding. There has also been a Netball court installed at one end of the field. Netball is like basketball only there is no dribbling and no backboard. The girls like to play netball, the boys like to play football. The bus leaves the orphanage around 5:30PM every day; some people walk. Once we get back to the hotel, many people have been going to the pool. I went the first day, but this time I decided to do some blogging. Dinner starts around 7PM, and then we have our team meeting and prayer around 8PM. Then its off to our rooms for the most part, and so far everyone has been too pooped to do anything but go to bed.

Friday June 25

Still haven't slept through the night. I think it has to do more with the sunburn from yesterday than the time zone. Fought my way through the Mosquito net around 6:30AM and had a nice devotional. I always head down to the pool to do that as there inst anyone down there and its pleasant, so I can have my “Good Morning” time with God. When we got to the orphanage, we did our stretches again, and divided up into two groups. My group needed to get water to the construction site by digging a 250' ditch, laying the water line in and covering it back up. I was proud, we did it in 1½ hours. It was a quite productive day. We finished it all off with a little game of football with the orphans; we tied 2-2.

Sunday June 26

Winnie and Levi had their Kwanjura (Introduction) today. This is a tribal marriage tradition where the men dress in white dresses (called “Kanzu” in singular form) with a sport coat over it. Traditionally the men aren't supposed to be wearing anything underneath, but these days they all remain with their trousers. The women put on a Traditional Ugandan dress called a “Gomesi”.. cant really explain, but check out the picture of Winnie and Levi; she is in one. The Groom and his family are welcomed by the Bride and her family. The ceremony was quite interesting. We had all our prep at the orphanage, and traveled to Winnie's home village, which is Northeast of 

Kampala somewhere; further out from the orphan village. While at the Orphanage, I went to get some water that we have in the room of a house there, and noticed that someone had a nice big piece of beef! I later found out that it was part of the dowry, but if I were in charge of putting it somewhere, I also would have put it there. Logistically it makes the most sense. Anyways, to make a long day short; we parade into the village in our traditional dress, we sit on one side with the bride's family on the other, groups of around 6 girls at a time dance out in front of us and all greet us in the name of Jesus and try to find Levi. I'm not too sure what the purpose of this is, but its tradition. More and more groups are brought out until finally someone who knows Levi is brought out (Winnie). She then says that she knows who he is, and walks back and forth through the Groom's family searching for him. Once she finds him she takes him to her side and introduces him to her family. The dowry is then paid (which is a ton of stuff), and to finalize it Levi presents Winnie's brother with a rooster and says “Muko nkuwa enkoko eno ompe Winnie.” This means, “Brother-in-law, I give you this Rooster to give me Winnie.” They expected him to say it in English, but he really impressed them by saying it in Luganda. Then there is food, cake.... and thats about it.. we all filed into a line and greeted Winnie personally on our way out of the Village. The day went from around 8:30AM to around 8:00PM. It was very hot in my Kanzu and sport coat. It stuck to my body because of all the sweat and restricted my steps, but it was totally worth it. I got tons of pictures of the whole thing, and Winnie was absolutely gorgeous. We then arrived back at the Ridar and watched the US get beat by Ghana... were going to get a ton of flak for that. =)

Team Photo!!!!

Here is the 2010 Abundant Life Church, Ukids Uganda team.  The guy 2nd from the left, top row (Andrew Millikan) gets the award for best face. Notice the cast/brace thing on his arm? yeah, he messed it up playing basketball. That guy is coming to Italy along with me when we get back from Africa. ... Great face though. I am in the red shirt front row. next to the thumbs up. I know that God is going to use this team to do some awesome work. ONE MORE WEEK!!!!

The Mission Season

I recently was approached by a man named Dennis Quick. He is from my church and leads a mission team to Italy; has been for the last 2 years I believe. When he spoke to me, he asked me if I could come to Italy on his team.. I wanted to so badly, but I told him that it was just going to be too hard with the Africa trip to make it work out. I mean, the Italy trip was going to cost around $2,500 on top of the $3,500 that I was already supposed to raise for Africa. I left him that day with the notion that if God wanted me on the rip the funding would come. I told him to start selling my chairs. If I could just sell some more chairs!! I might come up with the money that I need to make it a reality. a few days later I looked into what it was going to cost me to cancel my flight home and instead do a flight from Uganda to Rome, then Rome to Portland. It was looking like $3,000 dollars just to change my flight. I was very distraught. I sent Dennis an email telling him what I found out. He called me a day later and asked, "Why did you send me this terrible message? What do you mean you don't think you can do it?"

     I told him, "Dennis, my supporters are exhausted. I have already asked them for support for Africa, how can I ask them to also support a trip to Italy? Unless you have an order for around 20 chairs for me, I don't see how this is going to happen."

     "Don't worry about the money."
     "What do you mean don't worry about the money?!"
     "Its taken care of."
     "The plane ticket is taken care of?"
     "The money is taken care of."
     "....So, ...what does that mean? Do I not need to pay for my ticket?"
     "Just don't worry about it."
     "What about lodging and food? what do I need to fund?"
     "You need to bring enough money to pay for what you want to bring back."
     "Thats it?!"
     "Thats it."
... I didn't believe it. I have to say my reaction was probably not what he was expecting. I wasn't jumping up and down, I just stood there trying to understand what he just said. Looks like I am going to be doing two more mission trips to add onto my January trip this year! Later we started to talk more logistically about the details of the trip. It just so happens that the Africa trip ends a whole day before the Italy team starts. I found that it is cheaper for me to fly all the way home, hang out for a day, and then fly all the way back to Rome than it is to fly from Uganda to Rome. I can already tell that I am going to have an awesome day on the 21st of July. If I don't stay on Italy time, I am going to be a train wreck when I get back to Europe. So, the Italy trip will be in Naples, Italy and I will be there for 2 weeks. We are going to be working at an English speaking camp for college age people who are wanting to practice their English. I'm really stoked.