Guess What Nate, Ben and Jesse Got for Christmas

Greetings from Uganda!! We are grateful our trip to visit Ben’s brother and family over the Christmas holiday has been able to go ahead as planned. We are also very grateful that the bus ride from Arusha, which took 26 hours when we came here in July, only took 18 hours this time around.

With regards to our residency issues, we were able to submit documents before we even left Mbulu. We believe these will enable our residency issues to be resolved quickly. Thank you so much for your prayers for all this.

Before leaving Waama, we were also able to participate in a meeting with the principal and other teachers to discuss the upcoming term and decide who will be responsible for teaching what classes. Ben and I will be continuing with many of our same classes (guitar, keyboard, sports education, and computer); however, we will be teaching new Bible courses. As you may recall, we were responsible for teaching the book of Philippians this first term. We will be teaching 1 & 2 Thessalonians as well as 1 John during this second term. It is definitely going to be more of a load but we are looking forward to it. Ben and I are planning on being back in Mbulu on January 6th but we will see when we actually get started with classes. The plan is to spend the first week doing the first-term finals which we were preempted by the corn planting.

So, for now, it is fun to be able to spend this time visiting Nate, Rhoda and the boys and see how well they are settling in to their new home, ministry, etc. We are also excited about celebrating Christmas in a home with a reasonable-sized Christmas tree! ☺ Today, Ben and I went to the market and got our Christmas shopping done and now we are watching the boys so Nate and Rhoda can get some things done in town.

Yesterday, as a Christmas gift to ourselves, Ben, Nate and I had a day of class-5 whitewater rafting down the Nile!! Yeah, it was pretty much amazing. In our boat we just had a bunch of crazy guys and our guide has been Uganda’s National Free-Style Kayak Champion…he was pretty much amazing…and took us through all the “best” places. It was a 31 km trip so we definitely got some sun (in between being flipped and tossed in the water…one of the tamer things we did was go over a nine-foot waterfall!). It was a crazy-good time…

So basically, I just wanted to send you all a final Christmas greeting. May it be a great time for you all and I pray the New Year ahead be full of all God’s best.

Keep up the good work no matter where God has placed you.

Merry Christmas from here to there…

In Him,

Jesse Long