Well, here we are. Already on our 10th day here in Uganda. First of all, THANK YOU for your prayers & encouraging messages! We have been thoroughly blessed by your support. It means so much to have people back home praying & tracking with us.Our house is starting to feel more like home as we are slowly purchasing furniture & necessities. We now have a table which we can eat our meals on. It was fun for awhile though to eat our meals on a mat on the floor (Elijah LOVED it). We also have a bed & a desk and a few shelves. And we just had curtains made at the market the other day - they sure add a lot. Each day we've had different people from the church body here (the ELCU) come by to take us shopping or to help us get settled in some way. We have felt so embraced by them & we love them already. Each day we make our list of what we should get done and where we need to go & it's fun at the end of the day to see what actually took place. We are learning to be flexible!! We are leaning to welcome visitors into our home at all hours of the day, but we will need to set some boundaries in the future to preserve time for our family & for rest (Please pray for us on that!).
Yesterday Nate was able to travel with another of the ECLU pastors, Pastor Edward (who is also our next-door neighbor), to one of the churches in a rural area about an hour from here. He preached again and was able to observe a few baptisms. Pastor Edward recommended that the boys and I not come this time because they were taking various modes of transportation (bus, taxi, motorocycle, foot) and he thought it'd be too difficult for us. Hopefully in the future we'll be able to visit the outlying churches, but for now we (the boys and I) will attend our home church here in Jinja while Nate touches base with each of the other churches on Sundays. Our church here in Jinja meets in a classroom in one of the many schools in town & it is only a block & a half away from our home.As of this morning, we now have a lady coming to help with the household each day (a huge praise!). We don't have a washer & dryer, so laundry itself takes a lot of time each day. Also, the red dirt here sticks to everything & is tracked in by the boys all day long, so sweeping & mopping the floors is another time-consuming daily task. Cooking is another daily adventure w/ no convenience foods, microwave or fridge. SO, we are grateful for the help! Please pray for the lady who is helping us. Her name is Sarah, she is 21 years old & has a 5 year old son, Jamil. Her husband works in the capital, Kampala, and is only able to come home every other weekend. She actually lives in one of the sheds on our property as well, so it is handy to have her nearby. I do not yet know if she is a believer. Also, we have just hired a guard to watch our place at night as robbery is a great threat to mzungu's ("white people"). His name is Tomboni & he is a young man. Please pray for him as well. Nate has gone out to talk with him each evening when he comes & is working on developing a relationship with him.
One last prayer request... please pray for our boys. They are doing very well & have stayed healthy thus far, but the last few days they have both been a bit on edge, the both of them, and we need patience & wisdom in knowing how to best help them to adjust to their new world. We are praising God for their health! Judah puts everything into his mouth (dirt, bugs, etc.) so he has been plenty exposed to germs & such, but he's warded off sickness thus far.It is hard to know what to write to give you a picture of our lives here... this seems like just a tiny dent. We are hoping to put pictures on our blog soon so you can better visualize life here.
Thank you again for your support. You are a wonderful team!!! We pray God's blessings on each of you.
Serving Him together with you,
Nate, Rhoda, Elijah & Judah
