The Great White Elephant Pony

I am trying to feed a giant white horse, the size of an elephant. But it is rearing and kicking. Bystanders are warning me to stop, telling me that it is dangerous, but i just keep trying to pet the thing. All the while a hyena-horse (like from Lord of the Rings) is running around in circles. It has a white Texas Tech logo on its forehead. We are in some sort of corral.

They have been stranger, but that one was pretty vivid. Thankfully they are not frightening, just entertaining.

We have been to Bukaleba for the past three days, John taught me a lot about my job out there. It is going to be half construction management and half owners representative. The building will be beautiful. The misistry brought in four Kenyan masons to do the stonework, the whole building is cut stone, and it is all cut by hand. I will take pictures next week.

Arise Africa is pretty incredible, the more I see of the minsitry the more impressed I am. It is a Uganda based minsitry that plants churches, schools, and orphanages. The land out at bukaleba is very fertile but largley undeveloped, so in addition to a babies home and pastors school, they are putting in sugar cane fields and goat herds to help fund the ministry. The goal is to be self sustainging. Their main office is in Jinja and I have been spending most of the day helping out with some renovations they are doing to an adjacent building. Jerome is teaching me some Lusoga slang.

God is teaching me here. A lot about missions and service. John Sauder is a pretty incredible example of humility and a servants heart. I will have to explain more about his work later.

Mukama wafo yebisibwe

Andrew

Zombies and Yardsticks

They told me that mefloquine gives you weird dreams. They were right. So Lindsey and I were riding a bus and suddenly realized that all of the passengers were zombies. They were not very aggressive, but we still felt threatened. The only weapons we had to defend ourselves were yardsticks. I feel like what happened next is fairly self-explanitory.

Actually the weird dreams were all in Colorado Springs. So far, no weird Africa dreams. This is probably a blessing from the Lord, because things are strange and different enough as is. One of the Ugandan staff here explained to me why roosters crow three times in the morning. Once at 2, just in case you are making a long journey, once at 3:30 to remind you, and once at sunrise to wake everyone else up for the day.

Thus far we have ventured out into the city, gone to a Ugandan construction site, and visited a school in a rural community. Everything is very different. Ugandan construction practices are really different, but very very clever. Labor costs less than machinery here so everything is done by hand, from the brick making to digging a septic tank. Being a mzungu (white person) means you attract a lot of attention to yourself. In the back of my head I think that my plan was to just adjust right away and skip culture shock. Words to the wise: that is a bad plan. Things are different and uncomfortable. And they might be for a while. I read in a book that the best way to deal with it is to keep trying new things and understand why it is hard.

Church tomorrow, heading to Jinja on Tuesday. I will try to post some pictures soon. I have been taking them.

Colorado Springs

It has been one full week in Colorado Springs.  There are about 35 interns and long term volunteers going to the various eMi offices.  It has been so great to be around so many like minded people.  In that same vein, so many experienced minister/engineers are here.  My goal has been to keep my mouth shut and listen as much as possible.

The culture training was eye opening, and really prepared us I think for the countries we will be traveling to.  Also, a big part of the week has been a strengths test, personality test, spiritual gifts test, and testimony preparation.  For anyone that is curious I am an extrovert who cares about peoples feelings with vague engineering tendencies.  Also I naturally gifted in the areas of Developing, Connectedness, Belief, Communication, and Positivity, according to Strengths Finder 2.0.  it was such a blessing to talk about gifts and personality in the context of missions.  However, the biggest blessing was hearing my team's testimonies.  God has been so good in our lives.

Colorado is beautiful.  Hiking is wonderful.  People are awesome.

We leave for Uganda on monday.  Pray for safe travel, freedom from fear, and a smooth transition to the Culture.  I will be working out on a construction site about an hour from Jinja, one of the major cities.  I couldn't be more nervous or excited.