Mohawk Mishap

Everett had been begging me to cut his hair for a couple of weeks.  He wanted a mohawk again after a failed attempt to grow his hair out long like Karson's.  So  45 minutes before church I decided it was the perfect time.  What was I thinking?  I was in a hurry and not thinking 100% clearly and I plugged the clippers in and began the process of shaving the side.  After one good swipe, about 1/4 of his head shaved, there were sparks, a pop and a cloud of smoke.... I had forgotten to plug the clippers into a step-down.  The power here in Uganda is 240 volts, most American things will only handle 110 volts, thus the need for a step-down to convert the power.  Jason usually handles plugging in all the appliances and electronic gadgets, but I was in a hurry and was trying to get it done quickly.  So, 20 minutes before church, Everett had a big swatch shaved out of his head and the rest was long.  Most kids would have freaked out and worried about going out in public with their hair messed up.  Not Everett.  He thought it was hilarious and thought it would be so funny to go to church with his hair like that. Just another case of Everett being Everett.

Luckily another missionary family just up the street had a pair of clippers that we could borrow and Jason hopped in the car to save the day.  Walking in the door with just 18 minutes until church started, Karson kept a totally strait face and informed Jason that now the power was off (something that has been happening more frequently, so totally believable).  And that is a perfect example of Karson being Karson.....always the jokester!   Crisis adverted though and we even made it to church before the praise and worship team had finished their songs to start the service.  Life is never dull here in Uganda...

Stitches Uganda Style!

The "Spring cleaning" bug bit and Jason and I were cleaning the house and rearranging some things.  We started moving something into the kitchen and the edge scraped over the top of my foot.  Thinking nothing of it I said "ouch" and kept going until we got it moved.  I looked down and there was blood trickling down my foot.  As I looked closer there was  a nice clean surgical type incision about an inch and a half long.  Jason bent down and looked at it and immediately decided it needed stitches.  Whatever it was had cut pretty deep and needed attention.

Now when you have an issue here in Jinja you have two choices, a private clinic or Jinja Main Hospital.  I have experienced first hand the filth that is Jinja 'Pain' and I knew there was no way I was going there.  We bandaged my foot and made a call to our friend Katie.  Luckily she was at home and had experience in providing stitches. Jason stayed behind with the kids and I drove myself over to Katie's house.  There on her living room floor, my 'doc' Katie put a stitch into my foot.  She tried to put another but for some reason the needle did not want to go through my skin (apparently I have tough skin, only second to her dog!).  So with one stitch and a few Steri strips I headed home. 

Ugandan Birthday Celebration

Jason and I were just pulling in the gate arriving back home from a long exhausting trip to Kampala, when Morris our Askari (night guard) was there to greet us on his day off.  He was there to invite us to his birthday celebration at 5:50, I looked at my watch and it was 5:00. All I wanted to do was go inside, see the kids, take a shower and crash.  Instead, we loaded up all the kids and went to celebrate with Morris for his birthday.  As we were loading up we had no idea what to expect, how long we should stay or what in the world we were going to feed the kids or when.  The kids were already hungry and asking for dinner. When we arrived Zippy, Morris's wife, was busy preparing a meal outside in lots of sagiris, which are outdoor cookers. Morris invited us all in to sit and poured us all some juice, which is the polite thing to do in the Ugandan culture.  In his politeness he poured us all a huge mug full of Coke, just what every Mom wants their child to have at 6pm.

I went outside to help Zippy with the cooking and she put me right to work.  We were preparing rice, matoke (mashed bananas), meat, cabbage and pineapple.  As I was watching Zippy masterfully work with the small sigiris it hit me that the "play" kitchen we had built for Hadlee's birthday was more of a kitchen than Zippy had to prepare this huge meal.  She had no stove top or counter space, just a rock to sit on and several outdoor cookers going all at once.  She was doing this all while 9 months pregnant.

All of us packed inside celebrating 

When the rest of the guest arrived we all went into their house, which is a room that is no larger than 7 feet by 11 maybe 12 feet.  By the time we all were seated there were 8 adults and 7 kids squeezed into their house. We started the celebration by Zippy giving a small speech and praying for Morris on his birthday and welcoming all her guests.  Morris cut the cake and served it before dinner. He also served everyone a bottle of soda, mountain dew this time.  Another sugar rush for our kids! Apio, Zippy and I then went outside, in the dark, to serve the plates. We ate dinner and visited.  Unfortunately, Hadlee had a tummy ache and we had to leave, but it gave us a reason to make an exit and get the kids in bed after a long day.

At one part of the night, somewhere between the first coke and the cake, Karson approached me and asked if we were eating dinner there.  I told him that I thought so (it hadn't really been talked about at all, but since I was busy helping prepare dinner, I thought that must be the plan).  Then he told me, "Ok then, I will be sure to try a little of everything and keep eating even if I don't like it."  Then, after he saw Morris pulling out the birthday cake, Karson came to me very worried, saying that Morris was doing too much and he felt bad because he knew how little Morris and his wife had.  I tried to explain to him that this was a joyous occasion for Morris, not to feel bad, but to help celebrate his life.  Karson still couldn't quite shake a feeling of guilt, but he really made an effort to make it a special night for Morris.  I love his heart!

Morris and his wife Zippy

I was amazed at Morris and his wife's hospitality and her ability to cook a huge meal for 15 people outdoors and 9 months pregnant.  Jason and I have been truly blessed by our Ugandan friends here and having these glimpses into their culture, and being invited in as their friends and family is so incredible to us.  Morris and his wife are such an example of finding true joy in the absence of material things that so much of our American culture tells a person they need to have in order to be happy.  They truly inspired me to be thankful for what I have and treasure these moments.

The meal they prepared and shared with us.

Apio serving plates in the dark

Pierce on a mission heading outside

Balance in this Life

How do you find a balance in this life we are living?  Being in a third world country, trying to lose the last shreds of our first world mindset?

Moving into a different house recently, I find myself doing what would probably come natural to any Amercican in a new home for their family.....making it look nice.  I found myself contemplating what I could do to transtition the raw, concrete floors into something "nicer" and easier to keep clean.  Then it as if I wake up again, take a look around me, and realize where we are and that I can live with concrete floors.  Who needs tile when the majority of people we come in contact with have dirt as floors?

BUT how do I tap in to this balance of Third World vs. First World life?  How much do I deny myself or deny for my kids because life has choosen to deny it for so many others?  WHERE DO I DRAW THE LINE?????  Some lines are easy, as in "Yes, we can live without a t.v.", but others are much more blurred.  Do I take us down to two meals a day because others are lucky to get one?  Questions like these are what I am finding my brain being bombarded with on a daily basis lately.  Sometimes emotionally it feels like too much and I just want to scream.....scream for the unfair hands that so many of my daily companions have been dealt.  Am I saying that these companions need a western styly house with tile floor?  No!  Some of the happiest people I have met here have had the least in terms of material possessions. 

But I am saying that NO mother should have to watch their child starve to death when there is such excess of food in other parts of the world.  I am saying that NO mother should have to sit on a dirty, rat infested, hospital floor for four days, waiting for someone to care more about her son's life than about a few shillings they could make from a bribe. 

PLEASE, someone, help me find a balance to this life God has called us to live.

Field Trip Fridays

The kids and I home school and usually we are able to fit five days of work in to four school days.  That leaves us Friday free for Field Trip Fridays!  It has been very important to Jason and I to involve the kids in as many steps of our ministry here as we can.  It wasn't just our lives that changed drastically when we moved here, but theirs also.  We want them to understand what we are doing here and most importantly WHY we are here.  FTF came to be as my way of making sure that the kids stay involved.  During the week, Jason usually rotates through the kids, taking one or two with him into the villages when he can.  Fridays are our day as a family to all minister together.  We have been trying to visit different types of ministries around the area, giving the kids a glimpse of different ways that people are working together, under God's name, for His purpose.

This Friday we visited a ministry called Ekisa.  http://www.ekisa.org/  While there are many orphanages in Uganda, very few will allow children with disabilities.  Ekisa is a home for these disabled children, that so many in the rest of society here, are ready to just cast away.  We had an incredible time visiting and loving on the kids in this ministry.  Nothing makes me smile more than to see my kids get down on the floor and truly care for these other children.  Here are some pictures from that day........ (and yes, Pierce had pigtails because Hadlee did that day and he insisted on some too!)

Fresh Meat Anyone?

Getting meat here has been tricky from the beginning.  In Luweero, where we trained, the issues were that our power was unreliable so we couldn’t store up meat, and yet to buy any we had to travel about 2hrs, so it wasn’t something we could just get as needed.

In Jinja there are some meats available in the local grocery store, or supermarket, as it is called here.  At a supermarket you can usually find whole chickens and minced meat (ground beef).  It doesn’t always look trustworthy though, with questionable temperatures in the coolers, and meats stored right next to ice cream.  Here are some images of what the supermarkets look like…….

Meat is mostly sold in market (I'll get pictures of market soon.  It is quite the experience).  

The sight of the raw slabs of meat hanging, often all day in the sun, with no type of refrigeration, flies all around, does not necessarily scream “Mmmm, let’s have steak for dinner!”.  So for the first nine months in country we have avoided most meat, aside from the occasional chicken or mince meat, which was still wary at times.  These last two weeks things changed though.  We were eating lunch at a local diner run by a lady from Australia.  We noticed she had filet on the menu.  Jason had been craving a good steak, pretty much since the plane landed, so we gave it a try.  IT WAS DELICIOUS.  I asked Jude where she bought her meat from because all I had seen was the market booths.  She told me about a butcher in town that she had been using for quite some time and that if I told him that Jude sent me then he would make sure that the meat was fresh and cut the way we (as in Westerners) like it.  Ugandans have many different uses for different parts of the animal that we would not even think of, so if you don’t specify, you will end up with all types of cuts of the meat

We decided to be brave and give it a try.  The whole pieces of steak were actually quite a bit cheaper than buying the mince meat in the supermarket, so I even thought that I might start trying to mince my own meat, if I can get the right attachment for my Kitchen Aid.  Best of all, the meat was so good.  It has to be bought a couple of days before you intend to use it and really worked on to tenderize, but the result is worth it.  I still have to hold my breath when I buy it and get past my American thoughts of how meat should be handled though.  My stomach turns slightly every time I go to buy some, but I am sure I will soon get used to it.  Here is our butcher……

Our Church Here

I wanted to try to give you all a glimpse of our lives here.  One of the hardest things to leave behind in TX was our church family.  We absolutely LOVE Brazos Fellowship and miss our friends, fellowship and the sermons so much.  God has given us another gift here in the form of Accacia Community Church.  It is a nice mixture of Ugandans and other missionaries.  The services are in the backyard of the pastor, underneath the trees, surrounded by God's beauty.  I even received quite the sunburn this past Sunday because the shade shifted after the service started.  Here are some images from a normal Sunday morning for us......

 Hadlee hasn't quite developed enough courage to attend the Sunday school class yet, so she usually sits with us and colors.  Our pastor throws a lot of "Amens" into his sermon and Hadlee never fails to answer him with her own "amen", much to the delight of the crowd!

 The family before the kids break into their own class.  We all worship together.

The worship and praise team.