Moving quick!

We've been gently reminded that we have a blog to tend to - already slacking!! Things have been happening pretty quickly - or at least a bit too quickly for me to digest properly. I am starting to think it won't officially hit me on that deep, emotional level until we're sitting on the plane in August. I am trying to be as realistic as possible about the whole thing. For example, when I drive to the grocery store and pick up the random assortment of everything my heart could desire from one big ole store, I remind myself that this isn't normal and I should remember how nice these conveniences are. Same for laundry, oh goodness, I've never held my washer and dryer in such high regard - something about the prospect of hand-washing clothes has strengthened our bond immensely.

So here's the low-down - and special thanks to the Duboses who were so good as to live in Kampala a few years ago and then manage to get their niece in our first grade small group! I love how God connects all of the dots for us!

Big news is that we'll have a place to live! eMi is actually going to move a few of their male interns into a different building specifically for male interns, and we'll be moving into their current furnished apartment - big answer to prayer as we weren't looking forward to the task of hunting down furniture (takes a long time to do over there).

Also very cool is that we'll be living within walking distance of eMi and Heritage, so we are for sure not going to need to buy our own transportation. Instead, we'll be riding boda-bodas (wildly crazy motorcycles! woohoo!) or hoping to make friends with people who have cars :-)  Sounds like just about everything we'll need is well within walking distance, so for day-to-day things, we'll be good to go.

Not technically the most important, but since eating and cooking are big hobbies of mine, this was a big one for me! It sounds like we'll have access to all kinds of good stuff - although as mentioned before, not in a big ole one-stop-shop grocery store. I'll get to hunt down a good baker for bread, go by word of mouth to locate the butcher with the best meat (which is not too easy to find...), listen through the grapevine to find out where in the world to find the ever-elusive brown sugar... Fruits and veggies are plentiful and quite good - Uganda is among the most fertile countries in Africa, so they do pretty good with their agriculture - pineapple, avocadoes, bananas galore. And apparently the Africans aren't into eating greens, like lettuce, too much, but people will grow it and sell it for us foreign folks - thank goodness, because this girl sure likes her greens! So it sounds like we'll have a pretty good variety of stuff available to us, although it will take more time to actually get them and forget about processed or pre-made stuff - all homemade. Also of note is that we'll have to soak our veggies/fruits with no peels in bleach water... and then rinse well with purified water - perhaps we can find a way to do that which does not involve bleach and bad intestinal bugs.

Other random tidbits - on Sundays, we'll go to Uganda church in the morning and English (?) church at night. Things move much more slowly, so at night, you kind of revert to old-fashioned living - you have dinner much more often with friends as going out after dark isn't an option - so lots of dinner/game nights. Sounds good to me! Also will need to bring lots of books as we'll have time to read, but we won't have much access to books in English - sounds like there's a lot of book swapping in the missionary community that goes on. No need for malaria meds - they're really good at recognizing/diagnosing/treating it very quickly, so while we're there, it's not a problem - just gotta get my yellow fever vaccine, and I'll be good to go. Going on a mad hunt for modest skirts/dresses - nothing low-cut, above the knee, or sleeveless - do you know they don't make that kind of stuff for girls in the US?? And lastly, I'm SUPER excited to get my textbooks in the mail that I'll be teaching from! No clue what I'll do from there - my colleagues have been extremely generous with sharing their resources for Physics and Chemistry, but the thought of developing a curriculum basically from scratch sorta makes my head hurt right now, particularly since I'm busy teaching my current kids that chickens are birds and temperature drops when you go up a mountain (walking closer to the sun is the logic I think they're using... ugh) - if they ask questions about nitrogen fixation or biomagnification on the EOCT, I'll cry.

We just got all of the information we need in order to really hit the ground running with our support-raising. And even so, God is already showing us that He is faithful to provide and is using the generosity of those around us to impress that upon us even more. In small group, we've talked several times about how sometimes our prayers are, for lack of a better word, ho-hum. We ask God to bless our food, help the plane to land safely, help me pass the test, and none of those things are wrong to ask, but really, most of that stuff is going to happen whether we ask or not (except if you didn't study - you can ask my students that one!). For probably the first time that I can really think of, we're asking God to do something that really can't happen unless he steps in. We are asking Him to help us raise the $1850 a month we'll need while we're in Uganda before we leave in early August - you can do the math, but that's $22,200 in just over 3 months - woah! We're definitely going to need God to step in on this one! We are confident that when we follow God's leading to accomplish His work, he will work out all of the details. ::insert big sigh of relief!::

PS We'll be putting pictures on here as soon as we have some to post!