Shawna's Posts

Hopefully you’ve had a chance to get a taste of our trip by keeping updated on our blog these past couple months. Our team is also having a recap night THIS Saturday, October 13th from 7 to 9 pm. Come join us to hear the stories in person at Q Cafe, located at 3223 15th Avenue West Seattle, WA 98119. You’ll get to hear stories and songs, see a slide show, and video clips from the trip. We hope to see you there!

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(Okay, that title was a stretch…but I tried. heh)

Today we had our final worship service with the beautiful congregation of STAO. We heard an awesome message about our POWERFUL God who brought Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego through the blazing furnace. I feel in the same way God has brought us through this trip. We may have gone in with just 11 mzungus, but God has met us in every step of the trip to make it a powerful team of 12.

After church we said our goodbyes. It was about a 4 hour process, with lots of hugs and tears. I am so excited to know that we will have friends forever in Mafubira.

The next time you hear from us, we’ll probably be sitting face to face with each other, and sharing laughs and tears over this amazing journey that God has brought us on. Thank you all SO MUCH for reading our blog for the past month–for trying to understand the things that we’ve been through, to provide words of encouragement, and to be prayer warriors for us from across the globe. We have been praying for all of you back home, and we can’t wait to be back with you.

NOTE TO THOSE COMING TO THE AIRPORT: Kate has posted some info on our flight in her last posting. We have a pretty tight layover in London, and if we miss our London-Seattle flight, we’ll call someone on the parent contact list, who can call the rest of the parents. We’re REALLY hoping this doesn’t happen, but we realize it’s a possibility. THANKS, AND SEE YOU SOON!  (p.s. many of us on the team are chocolate-deprived. feel free to greet us with smiles and chocolate if you feel led.)

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Here we are, halfway through our trip! We’re standing a point where we can look back and see how far we’ve come as a team—we can greet and carry casual conversations with the locals, we’ve learned how to cook some of the cuisine. Praise God for bringing us this far.

I’m still trying to get used to this whole “blogging” business…it feels weird to share my thoughts to possibly the entire population of internet-users. So, pardon my awkwardness.

As Victor mentioned in his post, the healthcare team has been going to the neighboring villages of STAO to do a participatory assessment. This has been extremely exciting and difficult at times. But I feel that it’s giving us good exposure to the needs and struggles of our brothers and sisters here in Uganda. The culture here is so beautiful; everyone we pass will ask us how we’re doing, and those we approach to survey are always welcoming. In doing these assessments, I really feel that God is aligning our hearts to His heart for STAO. We’ve been praying for moldable hearts that are open to see His people the way that He sees them.

Today we continued our surveying and also sang at a youth conference held in Jinja. It was amazing to see so many other youth our age gathered together to learn more about our God. It felt amazing to worship our God TOGETHER—the God that is the same God in Seattle as He is in Jinja, the God that knows each of us by name, the God that created our inmost being, the God that sees us in the depths of our brokenness and extends His mercy to redeem us from our sins.

Please be praying for our final two weeks here. Pray for plenty of time to spend with the kids, and for time to complete the HIV testing, the second building, and the surveying. God has been so good to our team. Thank you for being part of this journey!

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Bijenda bitya (How’s it going?)

We’ve made it to Jinja after a long long arduous journey. We landed in Entebbe only to find 13 of our 15 checked bags. Fortunately the most important boxes arrived with all our personal belongings and Dale’s guitar. We were stopped in the Entebbe airport by some “security people” who wanted to “tax” us on the donations we brought over. We found out later that there is no such thing So it’s a good thing we didn’t give them any money.

Dale, Pastor Nelson, and Pastor David met us outside of the airport to take us through Kampala to Jinja. Here’s where the real journey began. How can I even put to words Ugandan driving? Thrilling…scary…fast…a lot of passing huge trucks with on coming traffic. If you’ve never experienced passing a truck on a two-lane road and seeing two taxi vans coming straight at you in both lanes, then you haven’t lived! Boy the rush.

The van we rented took 7 of us, and Pastor David’s car took the other 4. We had a wonderful “muzungu” (foreigner) moment in the middle of downtown Kampala where we ran out of gas. Three gracious newspaper-men pushed our van 100 yards uphill to the nearest Shell gas station with all the locals pointing and asking us, “Muzungu, how are you?” Ack. How embarassing.

After that feat and two hours of Ugandan driving later, we settled into our beautiful home in Jinja. We have adorable neighbors who befriended us immediately upon our arrival. The country is beautiful. The people are beautiful. The food is delicious and God is so good.

Thank you for all your prayers and your continual support! Stay tuned for tomorrow’s update…

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