Finally an update

Hello from Uganda! I am sorry that I have not been able to update as of yet. Today is the first day that I could get away to get to town to the Internet café. At this point, it has taken me 8 minutes just to connect, so not the greatest connection. I do not know how often I will be able to update. The H4KI website will be updated at least sometimes, so please check that one (link below) for pictures and updates from Rachel and the team.

I have been in a state of just being overwhelmed – with the poverty, with the smells, with the kindness and love in the people. I wish I had time to write all that I have experienced this far.

After 24+ hours of travel, we arrived in Entebbe. For 7 of us, our luggage did not. It seems our luggage got mixed up in Detroit and took a different path through Kenya. We did finally get it the next day after a very long morning waiting. Once we got our luggage, we began our 6 hour drive to our hotel. Needless to say, we were all exhausted upon arrival.

I don’t have time for a ton of details, but to summarize our days thus far….

We began our day on Friday at Smile Africa ministries. When we arrived, 382 children were lined up singing to us. They were so excited that we had come to see them. It was very difficult to hold back the tears. Then, we went on to meet with the widows and a large group of women greeted us with singing and dancing. This is a greeting everyone should experience!

Saturday we attended a wedding of an orphan field worker, Kleffus. This wedding was 5 hours long!! (plus it started an hour late, so 6 hours in the church). It was amazing and beautiful and interesting. I will give more detail at another time.

Sunday we had church. Did you know that they have church ALL day long? We only attended for 3 hours or so. What an incredible experience. I cannot remember when I ever danced and sweated so much! These people know how to rejoice. After the FIRST offering, we danced for 15 minutes! Everyone in the whole entire church – up on their feet celebrating! Wow! Then, if that wasn’t enough, there was a party in the bush (jungle) for one of our teammates on this mission, Mae. She has been here 5 times and the people know and love her. These people that have so little poured out all that they had to celebrate and feed about 300 people. Then, several of us spent the night in a mud hut. I will definitely be writing more of that experience!

Today (Monday) we had another women’s training for many widows. I think we had at least 180 show up today. I had been elected to teach women about budgeting and finance (I know, get a good laugh)…but after discussions with these women, we shifted the focus of our topic and are working on implementing some ideas for these women to be more successful in their current businesses and work together (a foreign concept to them).


I will write more at another time about our time here, but please look at our pictures at H4KI site.

We are loading photos to the H4KI site. Please check it out (hope4kidsinternational.org – international missions – Africa – photos – February 2008).

In summary, I am OVERWHELMED. The people are beautiful and amazing!

Will write more later…

jodi