Yesterday was an interesting day. Our Sunday began like normal at 6AM. I got the car ready and loaded with some bagoya (the large, yellow sweet bananas you eat uncooked) and some sugar cane from our garden to take out to Djuna, our national pastor. Such things are scarce out at the camp, so I grow things in our garden to take out there. I filled a couple 20L jerry cans with water to take to him as well, because there’s been some problem with the water distribution in the camp lately. As such, the car was quite full. We headed out to the camp at 7AM, but were delayed a bit by road construction. This is awesome! They have been preparing to tarmac the road out to the camp for a year now, and have FINALLY started doing something. They currently have earth movers and bulldozers out cutting a swathe on both sides of the road, thus making the skinny road more than wide enough for two lanes, with room for proper drain ditches on the sides. You have to have drainage, or the rains will tear up the roads. Once completed, we will be able to get out there much quicker, and with a lot less wear and tear on ourselves and the vehicle.
Things progressed like normal, only as we were making our way to the third preaching point at Sangano, we got a flat tire, right out in the middle of the football (soccer) field/town common. Okay, slight delay, I’ll just change the tire. Once I got the tire off and the spare ready to put on I discovered that the rim I had was the WRONG SIZE!! Somebody must have helped themselves to the tire before we bought the car, and it was replaced with a similar rim that does not quite fit our car. Who thinks of checking the spare tire to make sure it’s the right size? After an abbreviated preaching service at Sangano (this is where being instant in season and out season is important) I sent both tires off with Djuna to see if somebody could get the good tire off and put it on the right rim. They finally decided to patch the tire, and put in an inner tube. It then had to be pumped up, by foot, with a foot pump, since no one in the refugee camp has an air compressor. We sat there for three hours, waiting for it to be done. Meanwhile, the kids ran around and played with all the other kids, who very generously shared their bikes and toys with our guys. Children are universal. Even though our guys don’t know Swahili, and the other kids don’t know English, they still managed to play. We gathered quite a crowd. I was kicking myself that I don’t yet know enough Swahili to be useful, because it would be have been a prime opportunity for preaching. It is definitely the right place to have a tent meeting in the future. The church folks came by to keep us company and for moral support, so we managed to have a good time.
We headed home at last around 4PM. We were within 4 km of the tarmac leading into Mbarara when the tire went flat again. Sigh. I gave my man Osbert a call, and he came in a vehicle to pick up the family and the two tires. He then went into town to get the good tire put on the right rim. After much confusion and delay, we were finally mobile again by 7:30PM, after dark. I hate driving after dark. It’s really quite dangerous here to do so, because there is little or no ambient light, no street lights, and people out on the roads at all hours in dark clothes and with no apparent fear of vehicles whatsoever. I finally drug my tired body into the house more than twelve hours after I left it Sunday morning. What a day! Still managed to minister though, and just the sight of us calmly waiting and letting our kids rip and play with the kids in the camp probably ministered as much or more than any thing else.
I sent Osbert out today to trade our two useless rims for one good spare rim to keep this kind of thing from happening again. He even managed to locate a decent used tire of the same type as the other three, so we will be good to go while I save up to replace these tires over the next three or four months. Pray God will supply enough extra where I can prepare to replace the tires in May when we go to the capitol for our annual Field Conference. Pray the tires last until then, because I can’t afford to be replacing tires right now. Pray the ministry will continue to prosper out at the camp. Pray for rain, so the crops will grow well and the people will have enough to eat. Pray the road construction advances quickly and well so we can be liberated from the abuse to our vehicles that the road currently produces.
