Greetings from the Village!! I know some of you are waiting eagerly to hear from us and we've been so busy I haven't had time to blog. I'm working on pictures, but it's slow going. (Who can blame it though..I'm typing from a solar powered computer on a modem internet card in a hut in the middle of the bush in Uganda! Crazy!)
Here’s a quick rundown of what we’ve done so far:
We arrived Friday night, tired, but in good spirits. Stayed overnight in a quaint little “beach front" hotel overlooking Lake Victoria, woke up Saturday and made the 5-6 hour journey to the Village of Hope. We made several along the road stops to pick up various food items such as pineapple, mangos, and of course, live chickens which we just had for lunch today (well, they were no longer live, of course :) )
As we drove into the Village, I immediately welled up with tears as the children lined the road and were singing "Welcome, welcome we love you...". I got to hug all 154 of them when we stopped and it was glorious! Our team got a walking tour of the Village and again I was overcome with emotion at the progress since last September- a solar-powered water pump (no more little fingers pinched while pumping water from the well!), the start of the secondary school building, another house for the children (named Victory!), new cement huts for us instead of the former mud huts and of course, 100 or so more children living on this Land in freedom!
Today we had church or “prayer” as the Acholi call it. Another wonderful time of simplistic worship of the King with singing and dancing and a beautiful message on forgiveness. So simple, yet so powerful!
Our time here so far as well as our travel to get here has been nothing but absolutely stellar and we've been spoiled by the King of Kings in so many ways already. He just seems to want to keep pouring His love and blessings out on us. Imagine that! In the material sense, the blessings have come in the form of our “bedroom” now being a cement hut vs the former mud hut- goodbye pressed dung (aka cow poop) floors, goodbye not being able to set things on the ground for fear of termite investation, and hello spacious hut equipped with solar powered electricity and even a light switch (gasp!). It truly looks more like a mini-vacation dwelling than a hut (but no worries, we still have the pit latrines and the bucket baths).
In a deeper sense, I've been learning how much the Lord delights in spoiling us when we don't have a plan B, when we trust Him completely, even when it doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense for Abbie who formerly has experienced severe motion sickness and vomiting whenever she flies to still heed the Lord's call to come on this trip and in doing that, experience a complete healing of any trace of motion sickness. It doesn’t make sense that a place that houses 150 former child soldiers or “wives” of soldiers who have been brutalized in horrendous ways is a now a place of great, almost tangible, peace. It doesn’t make sense that the faces of these children now shine with a pure and radiant joy.
But then again, it doesn’t make sense that the Creator of the universe stepped into humanity, taking on flesh and bone and enduring the Cross on our behalf either. Good thing it doesn’t all have to “make sense”.
Thanks for all your prayers and support! They are definitely being felt in very tangible ways!
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