MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 10-15-2012

Greetings! Much has happened in the past two months. Remember the EPIC HUCKABEE MOVE 2012 I mentioned in August? It ate two months. Two months of brutally hard work, excruciating stress, frustrations, and sheer exhaustion. August and September I spent pushing wet noodles up hill. In other words, I had to get the various men I hired to work at a pace an American would consider to be fast. As I’ve said before, time is viewed very differently here. Everyone moves at their own pace, which is invariably slow. No one is in a hurry, even when they should be.

The number and magnitude of projects required to bring our selected house and compound up to snuff was overwhelming. Each job (plumbing, electrical, masonry, carpentry) required bringing Ugandan labor into the mix, with varied consequences, sometimes negative, to the process. My job of painting the place could not begin until ALL of their jobs were finished. Our house is divided into two portions separated by a smaller compound-within-a-compound connected by steel security gates. They finally got the big house done, and I started painting. It took two-and-a-half weeks for myself and one of my Ugandan friends to patch, tape, and paint every room, and seemingly endless liters of paint, but now we have a beautiful, well-painted structure to live in. As annoying as all the required inspections and what not for houses in America might be at times, I can definitely see their importance. 

Last week we began the move. Each day, Anna and the kids would pack things into our legion of Rubbermaid containers, and I would haul them over to the new house and put them in their place. I spent the time necessary to go through the place and remove all useful fixtures and hardware which I had previously purchased and installed. Bit by bit, room by room, we whittled it down until on Friday, only the big things remained. We hired a truck, one of the smaller Japanese cargo trucks they use for hauling sand and such, and began taking things over. It took six hours, and just like that, we were moved in. Of all the stressful things that come into our lives, after death and divorce, there is moving. Moving on the mission field is several magnitudes worse. This past weekend we just crashed, even though we had a lot of unpacking to do and got a lot done on Friday and Saturday.

Now we’re gradually flowing into the new place. The kids are loving the place. It’s paved with cement, so the kids can ride their bikes and play even when it’s been raining. We are trying to get the grass to grow on the dirt areas. I have planted numerous rose bushes and other flowering bushes in the flower beds. We transplanted several banana trees from the old place and strawberries. So, in about six months, it will look like a park. 

Thank you for praying for us during this long, grueling, expensive, stressful move. Now that this distraction is finished, it’s back to work lining up meetings for our furlough in America, as soon as we get unpacked enough in the office so I can walk in there. 🙂

Pray for the work in Ngarama. Somebody may have been poisoning the wife of Theogene, the man we are training to be pastor there. If there’s anything Ugandans cannot stand, it is a successful Ugandan. Theogene works very hard and serves the Lord, and so his garden does very well. Some folks were jealous of this, and tried to poison his family (this is a common occurrence here). I am taking him some activated charcoal tomorrow to give to her to see if it will help. Pray the evildoers will be exposed and brought to justice, and that Theogene’s wife will recover. Pray for the preaching, for souls to be saved, and for the men we are training for leadership. Pray for the future churches we will be starting.