Saturday in Uganda

Well, what a wonderful day we had today. To start off, we are much less tired than we were last night. Not falling asleep sitting straight up today! We started the day at 7:00 with breakfast at 8:00. After some singing around the guitars we headed off for the KPC building (the headquarters of the Watoto organization) for our orientation. As it turned out we had a call enroute that things were going to be a little delayed so Moses, our driver for the week, took us for a tour of the city in the nearby area. Now you really have to see streets of Kampala to believe this… there are "general rules" more like "guidelines" if you remember that from the Pirates movie, and you generally stay on your own side of the road (they drive on the left) unless of course there are cars coming toward you; or the street is crowded with pedestrians; or someone cuts you off! Moses must have nerves of steel! There are rotaries quite often with the traffic coming into it one deep but in the circle cars are 3 deep. The centre of town, which is also the centre of commerce and trade is extremely busy. We saw the taxi pool (organized chaos where you just show up at a certain area to catch the next taxi going in that direction) and several market places, some where you haggle and some where the price is fixed. There were probably 500-1000 taxis in the area... impossible to tell really.

Overall, we have been very impressed at how modernized things are in Kampala. Apparently the economy changed quite dramatically about 20 years ago when the current government came into power. Everything is available for sale…TV's, all manner of groceries, clothing, musical instruments; the centre of the city has high rises and the houses range from the very poor to the very elegant, all mixed in together; the food eaten is much like we would have on our tables at home. Now this might be a different thing when we get outside the city but that is what we have seen so far. And the roads are quite a different matter... not much rhyme or reason and very few street names.

The KPC then conducted our orientation: what to do and not to do, what is good to say and what is not good to say … this was so helpful because our desire is to help, not hinder; to be considerate guests, not offensive in anyway by our words or actions. They also explained the history of the ministry here as well as the current projects in place. When I heard Pastor Julian speak that "this is so much bigger than we even yet know" it amazed me as that was almost exactly how we expressed it as we gathered for one of our first Watoto planning meetings in Long Creek. It is so incredible to see how God is at work. We are looking forward to attending church there tomorrow. The sanctuary seats 4000… and then there are the other 4 satellite churches situated around the city. If you include the worship services that take place in the children's villages plus the 5 churches in the city plus KPC Gulu, just last week their attendance on Sunday morning reached 20,000 for the first time! (four services at KPC central... 8, 10, 12 and 2)

After lunch at the same mall as yesterday we went to the Bulrushes…. Where do we start to tell you about that? The babies were just waking up from their nap when we arrived. After a tour of the building we were cut loose to cuddle, feed and take as many photos of babies as we could in 2.5 hours! "Nana heaven" but definitely enjoyed by everyone of us. We left all the baby supplies that had been donated with the staff there and it seemed to be very much appreciated. They checked our bags/backpacks as we left to ensure we hadn't try to smuggle out babies (just kidding) and there was some talk about team members changing their departure dates but rest assured, our Canada family has a pretty strong draw for each of us. Having said that, Long Creek, get ready! There is no longer any question about coming back!

We headed back to the Guest House (Adonai 5) for supper, a time of praise and worship and now we are ready for bed. Tomorrow is a busy day at church in the am, a cultural program in the afternoon and then to bed early to get ready for work early the next morning. We work in the sun from 8:00 to 4:30 and then come home to crash… I think that is the general concensus anyway!

Everyone is doing fairly well… a few tummy grumbles, adjusting to the heat/humidity/culture but that's about all. We have much to be thankful for His blessing just continues to pour out.