Blessed Sabbath to each of you.
We spent the night near the airport before traveling on to Jinja (3 hours away) the next morning. The kids were quite excited to be here and had a difficult time settling down and going to bed that first night. They finally fell asleep at around 2am and slept soundly 'til morning. I awoke before sunrise and listened to the chorus of birds outside welcome the new day. I had forgotten how much I loved being awoken by their singing. After a few moments a rumble of thunder in the distance accompanied the chorus. We were told that it is still the rainy season here, but we haven't seen any rain since we arrived and it has been quite hot (mid-80's) and humid.
A few minutes after we reached our new home in Jinja, there was a honk at the gate. Some friends of ours had unloaded all of our furniture and items in storage for us and hired a truck to deliver it to us. What a gift that was! We had anticipated spending the afternoon unloading our storage and attempting to get everything inside before evening. They saved us so much time. Another friend had come to clean our home that morning, and then she stayed to help dust off all of our furniture and boxes before they was brought inside. Our friends have continued to amaze us these last few days - bringing meals/groceries and helping us unpack and set up our home. We are so thankful.
We're all still jet lagging quite a bit, especially the kids. They wake up frequently at night and then want to sleep late into the morning. Hopefully we'll catch up in a few days.
Currently Nate and the kids are out exploring our yard and garden. The boys ran in excitedly a few minutes ago with a plant and asked me what it was. Celery! What a great surprise that the former residents of this home left behind for us. It's the first time we've ever seen celery growing here. We've discovered more fruit trees growing in our yard than we had anticipated - banana, papaya, jack fruit, guava, mango and some kind of citrus. We also have an avocado tree. We're looking forward to getting our goat, cow and chickens back from our friend in the village so they can start grazing and cleaning up the place.
This week we anticipate most of our time spent catching up on rest, setting up our home, and visiting friends and neighbors. Next Saturday Nate hopes to be ready to join one of the Bible classes in the village.
The photo above was taken outside of our back door. We will try to get pictures up on our blog at some point this week, so keep checking back! (www.jorenews.blogspot.com)
We are grateful for your prayers!
Rhoda, Nate, Elijah, Jude, Hannah and Baby
