Update!!

I'm back in Uganda now, and it's been awhile since my last post.  I visited the YWAM base in Kigali, and it was beautiful.

I talked with the man who runs the Vocational Training School there, and got some interesting info.  

The rest of my time in Rwanda I visited new friends, went to church on Sunday, and relaxed.  Then I traveled back to Uganda on the weekend.


While I was in Rwanda and when I returned, I spent a lot of time considering my future at Hope Land.  I thought about how things are going, and about what I wanted to learn by coming here, and what I wanted to do.  And I have reached a decision… I will be coming home at the end of this month.  I have several reasons for deciding this, but mainly I feel like I will be able to serve God better from home.  I have learned very clearly one important thing about my calling - I am not called to be a missionary abroad.  I am called to live and work at home, while using my resources to support projects and ministries in Africa.  If I had not come back to Uganda, I would not have learned this yet, and so I am grateful for returning.  God-willing I will definitely be back in East Africa many times, but I am certain now that I am not called to live here permanently.

As for things at Hope Land, they are not quite as I expected, and I don't foresee myself accomplishing much of what I thought I might do.  But there are ways at home that I desire to serve, things that I have much more motivation for.  So I have decided to follow where I have more passion and will be better able to serve with a joyful heart.

So, for the next two weeks I am around the base, trying to serve in small ways wherever I can.  We had the girls vocational training school graduation yesterday, and on the 27th will be the school of biblical studies graduation.  Other than that, not much is happening, so I am getting a lot of quiet time to pray, read, and study Swahili!


 

Rwanda

I am so thankful that God gave me the opportunity to visit Rwanda!  It is right next to Uganda but it is very different than Uganda, and also Tanzania.  The infrastructure here is much better, the corruption much lower, and the effects of that are very obvious.  I don't have many pictures yet, but it is so organized, clean, and landscaped.  The roads are all paved, there are traffic lights, crosswalks...in some places I feel like I'm in America!  God has surely opened my eyes about East Africa and how different each place is.

I have met many new friends here, and everyone has been so helpful.  A lot of people here don't know English though, so sometimes communicating is difficult.  Rwanda was originally a French colony, so most people know French, Swahili, and Kinyarwanda, but the country has recently switched to teaching English in schools, so some people know a little bit.

I have also had the opportunity to visit three different orphanages to do some research about starting some kind of project here in East Africa in the future.  The first place was called Gisimba Memorial Center, an orphanage that's been running since 1990.

 The government of Rwanda is trying to close all of its orphanages now, to go back to the Rwandan culture of adopting children into families rather than having orphanages.  So this place is slowly getting its children adopted and turning its buildings into classrooms that they rent to a school.  

I learned some interesting things from this place, especially about culture.  The boys dorm is just an open room with bunk beds, but the girls room has small wooden partitions to divide the room into very small "bedrooms" with two bunk beds in each room.  I didn't understand this at all, so I asked "Why did you put these here?  If they are all girls, why isn't it just open like the boys dorm?" And they said "Maybe in our culture girls need more.... protection?  For example, boys it is easy to just go out in underwear but girls need to be protected."  But I still couldn't understand, because it's a girls room... I thought it was a nice idea, but I didn't understand the need for it.  But it opened my eyes to the fact that understanding the culture of a place is important if you want to start a ministry there.


Another place we visited was very humbling.  It is an orphanage that cares for physically and mentally disabled children.

The stories of how kids come to this place are terrible, because it is often considered shameful to have a disabled child, especially a mentally disabled child.  Kids get tied to trees in the backyard, or are living in cages outside, so that they don't wander into the community.  Or they are just left somewhere, and the authorities find them.  This organization takes them in and has the plan to raise them for the rest of their lives.

They have some help from World Vision, which donated a lot of good wheelchairs, and other miscellaneous personal donors, but they struggle very much to meet their financial needs.  They only have 9 staff and I think maybe 20 or so children living at the place.  Some months the staff members aren't even paid, but they don't complain.  Most of those children can't even dress or feed themselves...many are so mentally disabled that they just sit in a wheelchair and stare.  But some of the children are well enough to learn how to dress themselves, play games, and other simple things.  They have a small exercise room where they do physical therapy with the kids as well. 

The people who work at this place have such big hearts... it was amazing to see.  No one else will care for these children, and they don't get any financial gain out of doing this hard work, but they continue to do it in Jesus' name, and somehow God provides for them each month.  It was incredible to see how local people with a common love can create something that is small but changes lives forever.


The last place we went to was a group home that is run by Catholic Sisters.  They don't really allow pictures, but they allowed me just a few photos with the children.  

This was another place that inspired me by how a few people with a common idea can start something.  It's not a big place, and they struggle sometimes, but they are making a huge difference in the lives of these children.  It is incredible to see people who have dedicated their lives to helping others, even at their own expense.

God has been showing me many things while I've been here, answers to prayers and ideas for future work...it has been invaluable to me already!  Tomorrow I think I will visit the YWAM base to talk with someone about their Vocational Training School, so more useful information is on the way!

Back to Uganda for a few days

We have successfully returned from our trip to Dar es Salaam.  We almost missed our flight, but the ticketing agent was gracious and let us check in late, and we just made it onto the plane.  So the return trip was much quicker!

On Tuesday morning, those of us who are putting together the Vocational Training School went to see the school at the Dar base.  They have a carpentry training program and a tailoring program.  The man who runs the programs is Tanzanian, and he basically started everything by himself.  The base had a building that he could use, but he had to gather all of the supplies and materials and put together the curriculum.  So it was inspiring to hear that someone else has started with very little and is now running a successful program.  

The program at this base is different than ours will be... His programs are two years long, and the goal is that each student should be able to start their own business at the end, not just be employed by someone.  It is also not residential, so his students don't live at the base.  But it was helpful for us to talk to him about the challenges of running a training school, the challenges he faced when he started, how to prepare things, and how to work with the local government to get curriculum.  In order for the students to get certificates at the end of the program, your school has to follow government curriculum and allow the students to be tested on various subjects. 

Two of the others in my group are interested in maybe starting a clinic at our base, so they were busy touring the clinic and talking to the doctor from Dar's base.  

I think one thing that all of us were reminded of during this trip is that starting anything new, especially here, takes a lot of time and endurance.  I think we all realized the need for serious preparation, both for the school and the clinic.  People will come to these establishments with an idea in their mind of what they will receive, and we want to make sure that we can provide the right things. We don't want to be in such a hurry that we end up doing things half-baked, or saying "Well it's good enough for now" too many times.  Many things on our base are done that way, and we are starting to see its negative effects.  It is better to put in preparation time and start later than to start soon with "good enough" supplies and then fail in the middle of what you're doing. 

Anyway, it was a good trip to Tanzania.  I already miss it, because I much preferred to be surrounded by the Swahili language than the Lugandan language.  The areas that we were in seemed more developed than Jinja and its surrounding area.

But, I'm only here for a few days, and then I am off to Rwanda to visit the base there, ask some questions about their VTS, and also to do some personal research about orphanages and other ministries.

Wednesday we all took a beach day, and it was nice to enjoy such a beautiful place.

Today has been filled with laundry and preparation for my trip to Rwanda.  I'm very excited for this trip, because everyone says Rwanda is so different than Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, etc... I think I'll update again after a few days in Kigali!

YWAM Dar es Salaam

Yesterday was the longest day I have had in quite some time!  We got up at 3:30am and left the Hope Land base around 4:15am.  We got to Entebbe airport very quickly, arriving around 7am.  After a few hours there, we found out that our flight was canceled, and there were not many options for everyone to get seats on other flights.  

Fast forward about 10 hours of sitting at the cafe in the airport, and three of our group of six left on one flight.  Another hour later the other three of us left on a different flight.  On the bright side, I got to pass through Nairobi airport, and it was beautiful!

Around 12:30am the three of us who went through Nairobi arrived in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.  Around 3am the others in our group arrived.  Eventually we found our way to a hotel for the morning.  

Then we split again, with me and my Ugandan boss Julius getting a car to the YWAM base and the others getting a car to the ferry that will take them to Zanzibar until Monday. 

The base here in Dar es Salaam is very quaint, a much smaller community than Hope Land.

We won't have an official tour and such until the others arrive on Monday, but from what I can tell by talking to some people and walking around, they only have a DTS (right now 8 students), a VTS (but the students don't live on the base), offices, housing, a preschool, a primary school, and a clinic.  But just from looking at these buildings, it seems like each one is well organized and that their funds go further because their efforts are concentrated.

Julius and I will find things to do tomorrow and Sunday, and then when the rest of the team arrives on Monday we can start observing the vocational training school here.  I'm excited to see what they're doing and how they're teaching, and to bring ideas from this base back to Hope Land!

PA DTS Graduation

Today was an exciting day at the base, because the Performing Arts Discipleship Training School had their graduation.  This is the first time a DTS in East Africa has had the focus of performing arts, and it seems like it was very successful.  They learned a lot of dramas, skits, and dances, many of which they performed at their graduation.  Most of them were representations of Gospel stories or concepts, and some of them were very powerful!

Me and Geofrey, who I sponsored

I'll be somewhat busy this weekend.  Tomorrow we are supposed to check the machines that we use to make blocks for Homes of Hope, and I am also hoping to go visit an orphanage across the street.  As I was in the prayer garden a few days ago a teenage boy came and talked with me, and he lives at the orphanage.  I want to do some research about opening an orphanage anyway, so I said I would come and visit the place.

Then next week we have more meetings (Homes of Hope meetings on Mondays, VTS meetings on Tuesdays, staff meetings on Wednesdays), and then on Thursday I will fly to Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, with the VTS team.  The YWAM base in Dar Es Salaam has a good VTS, so we are going there to check it out and get ideas.  We will return to Uganda on May 21, and then on May 25 I will travel to Rwanda with Geofrey to spend some time doing research about orphanages and also to visit the YWAM Kigali base to see their VTS.

So, busy times are ahead!  I'm looking forward to seeing some more of East Africa :)