All our adventures as missionaries, past and present.

MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 06-21-2010

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Greetings from Uganda! The World Cup is in full swing down in South Africa, and it's sucking up all available bandwidth on the internet, so I have to take advantage of this window of opportunity to send an email (plus, the power has a bad habit of going off whenever I need to do something important like this as well). Our Runyankore language study is progressing well. We are in the phase of study where you mostly gather the names for things, so no real grammar yet, but we're learning, and it's very cool. In addition to helping us be better preachers and teachers of God's Word, and better soulwinners and disciplers, learning Runyankore will make it possible to communicate in the four other related Bantu dialects around here, including the dialect spoken up in Fort Portal. We may go and start a church there someday, so this language is going to be a great help to us in that endeavor.
 
Meanwhile, I've won my first soul, our carpenter Andrew. I am beginning his discipleship on Saturday. I consider it to be my blessed duty to disciple all the people I win to the LORD, considering that new converts are spiritual infants. Soulwinning is not an end, but only a beginning. If we are to perfect the saints, we must actually do the work of teaching them what they need to know from the Bible, getting them plugged into church, and helping them grow.
 
I am preaching in one of the prisons nearby, and am considering going down to the refugee camps with Jeff Bassett soon. There's plenty to keep us busy, as if learning a new language doesn't keep you busy enough.
 
Some prayer requests:
  1. We need some more support. We came to the field undersupported. Not all the churches which indicated a desire to support us have done so, and we could really use it.  Pray that God will prosper the churches where we've been, and remind them of His desire for them to support the Huckabees.
  2. Pray we will get a tenant for our house in America by the end of the month. We thought we had one, but then it fell through. We need all the money that is coming in, and cannot keep supporting a house in America. Our church has gone above and beyond the call of duty fixing it up. Someone gave us new carpet, and lots of folks have donated time and materials working on it. Our stackpipe started leaking after we left (no plumbing problems at all until after we left the country). It has to be replaced. There is some sort of blockage in the pipe under the floor in the basement which will require a plumber to fix. All these things are needed so the house can be rented, or better yet, sold (we are still in need of an eccentric milionaire to buy the house at above the current dismal market value ). Pray this can be fixed, and that the money and labor will be available to do so.
  3. Pray about our work permits. I have gotten a two-month extension on our visas, and we can do that one more time afterwards, for a total of four months, but we have to get our paperwork finished by then if we are going to remain in Uganda. It's costly (I have lots of bodies here needing work permits), and I have to go to Kampala to do it, which is enormously expensive in fuel and time. Bureaucracy here is every bit as tangled as it is in America, so there's no such thing as one, easy trip to immigration and you get everything done in an afternoon. It will probably take me staying in Kampala for three or four days to get it all done, and, knowing bureaucracy, I'll probably wind up having to go back. We had the money for this actually, but then our yard was flooded and I had to repair a septic tank. Pray God will provide.
As always, pray for our continued health and safety. Pray for the souls of Uganda, and for the churches and leadership here.
 
Thanks for all your prayers and encouragement!

MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 06-01-2010

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Greetings! Things are going well here. We have fully recovered from the great flood. Our house is finally in order and we are using both sides. I am no longer, after two months, sleeping in the same room with my children (glory hallelujah!). I got screens and doors put in on the other side of the house, and window boxes for curtains. The mason has finished the latrine (where the folks that work for us go the bathroom), and the dog kennel, where we keep our dogs during the day so they don't eat people who come to visit.

Meanwhile, our gardener has gone to get a load of manure to come and and mix with the soil in our flower beds, and on the large areas of the yard where grass is needed. If we still lived in America, we'd be able to get our manure cheaper and in larger quantities from Washington, or from the nightly news, but here they still use cows, so I guess we'll have to settle for that. 😉 I need to get the grass in place to protect against erosion, and to make it nicer for the children to play.

On Friday, I'm buying a side of beef from a local cattleman. They will be chopping up the meat in our garage, and I get to learn how meat is prepared, since I will likely be doing most of it myself. We will be using a new panga, and putting cardboard on the floor to catch blood and offal. I've never butchered in my life, so it should be quite a learning experience. It is a small price to pay for steak, however!

This week, I am attending a course Independent Baptist Church of Mbarara is hosting called Farming God's Way. This is a method of farming, inspired by Biblical principles, that will allow African farmers to dramatically increase their crop yield. This increases their food, standard of living, health, and income, so they can tithe and be able to support the Pastors in the churches we start better. I'm going to experiment with these methods in my own garden, and anticipate being able to teach this to others so I can attempt to improve life here for people by giving them the knowledge they need to feed themselves and their families more effectively.

On Monday, I begin formal language study with my assistant, Osbert. This has been my goal since I got here. I have been learning culture and language all along, but now we will be devoting set times every day to learning language, in the pursuit of eventual fluency in Runyankore. The kids finish up school this week, so Anna will be studying with me, and once we know enough, we will begin using it in the home so the kids can learn as well. The language barrier here is a significant hindrance to practical ministry, not to mention daily life, and I am greatly looking forward to dealing with this problem directly. Once I have a handle on the language, I can be useful as a translator in the dual-language services we have here, with the translation of the Bible, and in the translation of any other literature (like tracts and curriculum) that need to be translated into Runyankore. I plan to offer literacy courses as well, in both English and Runyankore, so the people we win to the LORD can read the Bible in their own language as God intended. It all begins with learning the language and culture, and I am almost impatient to begin this critical first phase of our ministry here in Uganda, Africa.

Pray for us as we learn to speak. Pray for our finances. Pray for our health and safety. Most of all, pray for the souls of Uganda, and for the continued growth of the churches here.

MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 05-11-2010

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Greetings from Uganda! It has indeed been an interesting few days. Remember how I said we were swimming in mud? We decided to switch from that to actual swimming. On Sunday morning, thieves came onto our place and stole five of the angle iron poles we had placed for the fence we were going to construct this week. So, we had to move up our schedule a bit. Instead of going to church with my family on Sunday, I had to go down to the police station and file a report. We tried to get the K-9 unit to come and see if we could find the culprits, but they could not come. I got some more angle iron, and got some more poles made so they could be set in place and the mason could get to work installing the fence on Monday morning. My guard was much more vigilant that night, and no more poles were stolen. We then began installing the fence in earnest on Monday. As of now, it is complete, except for a small section near the wall our neighbor is building, which will be completed as soon as his wall is complete.

Now for the interesting part. I put one of my men to work planting some local cactus type plants around the perimeter of my compound near the hedge, which lies just outside the fence. This will have the effect of creating in time a natural thorny barrier that will be better than barbed wire. So, they were busy planting them, 117 in all as it turned out when something very unexpected occurred.

I'm in my room, taking a few minutes to read my Bible and pray, when I heard a sound sort of like the sound of a heavy rain coming, only louder. I went outside, and Anna too, to see what it was – no rain. Weird. Then we rounded the corner of the house and saw it, a 20 ft geyser spouting towards the heavens. One of the workers had broken the MAIN WATER PIPE which ran along the road there with his hoe. Thus began one of the longest Mondays of our life.

My new trash pit quickly filled with muddy water, and other less savory things. Then the torrent rushed down my hill, and slammed all that dirt up against our house. Muddy water streamed into our garage and into the house. In short order we had 3 to 4 inches of water running down the hall. The river quite literally ran through it. I'm frantically trying to contact somebody, anybody to turn off the water, while my wife ran up and down the road trying to figure out the same thing. My man Mordecai took off on a boda and fetched the water people, and finally got the water turned off. By this time, as it turned out, the water had streamed into our concrete septic tank and ripped out two walls because it was poorly constructed to begin with (more on that).

I was frantically grabbing things and moving them out of harms way. I shinnied up our water tower to turn off the water to the tank since I didn't know how long our tank full of water would have to last. Anna is busily sweeping water out of the house with a broom. The other missionaries rallied around us, and in very short order, a cleaning crew descended on our place and began the work of cleaning the mess.

By this time, I had gone to the water office to face the music. The cost of fixing the pipe was immense, and time was of the essence because water was shut off to half the town. As it turned out, my part amounted to about $200, which was the LORD, because the part they paid was much higher. The guy who did the breaking took off for parts unknown. We don't know where he is.

Well, the damage is fixed, the pipe is well covered now (someone had dug a drainage trench there, which caused the whole mess). We have cleaned up the worst of the mess. The amazing thing is, because of the how African houses are constructed, we are actually doing fine. Nothing was damaged, and because our stuff has not arrived, everything is safe.

The damage to the septic tank was catastrophic. There are actually two. The first, which was well made, is undamaged. The second, larger one was apparently constructed from spit and mud by some local idiot with his own three hands. This one failed. It was beginning to show signs of failure already, just from the rain, and had this fortunate accident not occurred, could have collapsed in the future and taken one or more of us with it.

Here's what we're going to do. The second tank is a loss. We're going to carefully break the concrete cover stone, preserving the part that covers the good tank. The rest of the junky one will be collapsed, and dumped in the hole. Into this hole will go all the remaining rubbish on our place, the four stumps, and anything else we want to get rid of. We will fill this with dirt from the hill out back, which is dirt we would have had to remove anyway to make a retaining wall in the future. We are in the process of digging a pit for a latrine, and this dirt can also go in the hole. So, we'll get a better, safer septic tank out the bargain, and a clean compound as well.

Pray for us. By doing it this way, it reduced the cost to maybe about a $1000, but this is certainly not money we expected to have to pay. God has already taken care of some of the cost, so we should be fine for the remainder of the month. Just pray nothing else goes wrong. It has certainly been an eventful time here so far. God is good. We're not discouraged, and we have our work cut out for us in the future as we attempt to learn the language here and begin to minister to the Runyunkore people in their own dialect. It would be nice to get all the major stuff done, however, so we can focus on the other.

MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 05-07-2010

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Greetings! We've been on the field for over a month now, and we're doing great! I've been so busy that the time has just flown by. My principle job has been getting my family settled in a house, which we have done. There was a problem with a property line dispute that slowed things down a bit, but now that's resolved, and the neighbor is putting up a wall around his compound. I have several meters of 7 foot chain link sitting in my garage, and as soon as he is done with his wall, I will be attaching my fence, and running it all the way around my compound. The poles are in place, and all that remains is the wall to complete on our side so we can attach and finish OUR project.

Meanwhile, much has been accomplished. We got the last of the painting done. The tiles are finished. I have a man building screens and doors for the side that shall soon no longer be unfinished. There's a lot of stuff to do in the yard. Right now, we're swimming in mud. Mud, mud everywhere. I have gotten the yard level, and the grass is planted. Since it rains pretty much every day, it will grow quickly. I have removed 4 huge stumps from the yard, and all the trash from construction is gone. Yesterday, I had guttering installed to keep the water from washing us away. The neighbor is going to put a drainage trench (concrete) next to the wall, and this will carry water from my place and his to a drain by the road. I can then tap into that, and funnel all my water away from the yard. Otherwise, the place is a swamp.

It is taking shape, but the land requires a lot of work to get it to the place where my children can actually play. They have been confined to the house for weeks because of all the construction going on. Thankfully, it looks like the end is in sight. It will be good to have this distraction completed so I can focus more on language learning, which is really what I came here to do. I am painfully aware of how limited I am with my ignorance of Runyunkore, and am looking forward to alleviating that ignorance soon.

Pray for us. I am going to the capitol next week to meet with Dan Olachea and observe his Greek school and translation team. I am going to have to adapt the process for Hebrew so I can begin translation work on the Old Testament. He and his men have done a fine job, and are nearly finished with the New Testament translation into Runyunkore. While there, I can take care of some bureaucratic stuff, and possibly pick up our stove and dryer, if we have the money, and if they have them in stock (last time they did not). We have been line drying our clothes, and the stove the Stensaas' lent us is working well. So, if we have to continue as we are a while longer, it is not a problem. Pray for our health and safety, as always, and pray for the souls of Uganda!

MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 3-25-2010

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Greetings from Uganda! Our flight to this beautiful African country went well. We survived the 22 hour flight, which is every bit as tedious as it sounds. I managed to handle the fatigue pretty well. I used the strategy of staying awake nearly the whole time, except for short cat naps, and went to bed at night once we got in country. We all slept very well last night, and seem to be adjusting to the new time zone just fine. I personally feel great and not at all jet-lagged. All of our luggage made the trip (all 26 pieces), and seems to all be there with nothing broken or missing. Didn't have to stop at Customs, or pay any fees, other than the $50 a head you pay for 90-day visas once you get into the airport terminal in Entebbe.

We spent our first day in Uganda with Matt Stensaas and Tom Tracht running errands in Kampala. I got our American currency (carried into the country in a special law-enforcement shirt with pockets for pistols and worn under one of my Hawaiian shirts) converted to Ugandan currency. I immediately became a millionaire ($5,000 turns into a little over 10 million Ugandan shillings). The trip to Mbarara went well. We got here just before dark, and just in time for church to let out.

We all slept well, and seem to be adjusting to our new timezone well. Today, we looked at houses, and got one for only 700,000 Ush a month! That's just $350 a month for rent! What modifications are needed will be taken out of the first year's rent. When we get it all squared away, we will have 5 bedrooms, 3 baths, and room for an office for me. The yard has an elevated garden area with fruit trees (avocados, mangos), where we can plant strawberries and anything else we desire. We are walking distance from Bryan and Cheri Stensaas, up on a quiet hilltop neighborhood.

We are buying some of the super comfortable VitaFoam mattresses to use until our container arrives with our American beds, and will likely have to make a run into Kampala to buy appliances soon. It's so exciting!

I'll let you know more when I get some more time to sit and write. Keep praying about a car. We will need one eventually. Also pray that our Property Manager back in the States will find a buyer for our house in America. She seems to think that she can find a buyer, as opposed to just renting it. She is capable of both however, and we will do what is needful to deal with our former home.