Hello, from the rain forest! While many of you are dealing with winter weather, the rainy season is in full swing here in Uganda. It rains, hard, nearly every day. Our yard is a swamp. Thankfully, we have some good grass on most of the yard, but it still makes it rather messy. I'm saving money to pave the muddy bits that remain, so we don't have to slog through the mess all the time. I bought a swing set for the kids for Christmas, and it promptly sank into the saturated soil (never fear, I'm getting some concrete pads made to prevent this, but it, as always, takes time).
I failed to get out to Nakivale on Wednesday because the seasonal runoff from the mountain had washed out the road. I parked the car in line with all the others, and hiked down the road to survey the damage. It was pretty bad. The Chinese road crew that's working on paving this road was on hand with a bulldozer, and dumped a bucket load in the breach. This worked briefly, but since it was only soil and not marm, it quickly turned to mud. They had extricated the two trucks blocking the road, and then another banana truck got stuck again. I'd been sitting there for two hours when this happened. It became readily apparent we weren't getting through that day, so I had to make my way back to Mbarara.
A couple weeks ago, we were driving out there on a Sunday and got stuck behind a UN truck hauling grain or other food items out to the camp. The road crew had been spreading lime on the road (binds with the soil, makes it harder, more resistant to rain). This creates dense clouds of white dust. It's sort of like driving in snow with whiteout conditions (you guys from Alaska know what I mean). I was blind, and kamikaze pedestrians kept materializing out of the cloud. So, I decided to pass the guy before somebody got killed. Well, there was a nice rock that the bulldozers had been good enough to excavate and leave directly in my path. It was too late to stop, so I ran over it. This dented our muffler and, as we found out later after we limped back to Mbarara, the brake line was cut. I had nearly made it home when the brake went to the floor. Not cool. I'm very glad I didn't try to forge ahead anyway.
Stuff like that has been happening a lot lately. Pray for the state of our vehicle. It's a good car, but the road conditions are very hard on it. The maintenance on it has been quite expensive of late, and is putting a lot of pressure on the finances. We need the car to do this ministry, so I have to keep pouring money into it to keep it in good repair.
Thanksgiving went very well. We had all the other missionaries over to our house again. As has become the tradition, we buy two live turkeys, and slaughter and prep them both (I paid a guy to do it. I'm by no means squeamish, but they are much more skilled and do a vastly better job.). One gets cooked and served for Thanksgiving, the other goes in the freezer for our private consumption later. Even on the other side of the world, we still have a great Thanksgiving (it helps to have so many good cooks around).
The construction on the church building at Juru continues. The walls have been raised nearly to the roof. It's looking really good. I expect within the month we'll need to start looking at buying cement to do the floor and the walls. Pray we'll have the money we need for this. I like to have churches give to these projects, because then I can truly say to the people there, "God provided the money to do this work. I did not do it." I'm trying to teach them to depend on God, not look to foreign interests to provide all their needs (this is the African way, after all). Once the building is done, and they have been organized under a constitution, there will be no further assistance. They are going to have to grow up, and take care of their own needs. It's a process though. Culture is very hard to overcome, because it takes a lifetime to develop.
I will be going through the church constitutions soon. This mostly involves discussing the rationale and Biblical basis for the policies contained therein, and giving detailed teaching on the doctrine to which we rightly adhere as Baptists. I have been spending a lot of preaching on dealing with false doctrine lately, so this will make for good followup.
We are already making plans for the Children's Christmas parties we are going to do out at the three churches on Christmas Eve Day, and the VBS we will be conducting in January. Thank you all so much for the toy cars you sent! There are going to be an awful lot of ecstatic little boys because of your loving generosity. We have enough to be able to give them all two cars each, and have plenty left over to give as prizes for VBS. It's always such a joy to be able to minister to children. Children tend to get treated as an afterthought around here, so we feel a particular burden to see they are cared for.
On Christmas Day, we'll be having church, and giving gifts to the adults. We are busily assembling the gifts, and I am looking forward to having services on Christmas Day. Then on Monday, we will celebrate Christmas at home as a family. That's the cool thing about living here. Christmas lasts way longer than just one day.
God bless you!
