MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 06-29-2010

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Howdy! I can't believe it's almost July already, and yet here we are. Our container is in Mombasa. I heard from our clearing agent, and once the details of clearing it at the Ugandan border are settled, it should start heading our way in the next couple days. Our house in America has been painted, fixed up, spruced up, and the plumbing fixed, which is an answer to prayer. I think all that remains is someone to lay the carpet (God provided new carpet for the house), and there may be someone in the church that can do that for less than what a standard carpet layer is charging.

Our language study continues. Basically, you study every day, and review, review, review. Then you practice in common speech wherever you can work it in. There is no quick or easy way to learn a language. It's just work and time. I'm going to the refugee camp with Jeff Bassett this Sunday, and we have been going with Matt Stensaas to aid in the prison ministry outside town. I'm discipling a Ugandan man named Andrew. That's going well. He's really excited about his new relationship with Jesus Christ, and it's great to be able to work with him, showing him the ropes of Christianity as it were.

In other news, my wife Anna is pregnant. It was a bit of a surprise, since we didn't think we'd be having any more, but we're excited and pleased about it. I'm hoping for a girl personally, because Elizabeth could really use a sister, but will be happy with whatever God gives us. This does change things somewhat. We will definitely need some more support now, so pray that God will bring it in from some of the churches we have visited in the past. We will need another car. The Pajero I have is well-suited for getting back into villages, and navigating the many rutted dirt roads and paths around here, and just as a rough and tumble work vehicle. However, for taking my family places, especially longer trips like to Kampala, I'm going to need a minibus, which seats 8. I know a guy in town who has one he will sell me for around $10,000 (perhaps a bit less following the standard Ugandan haggling). It's 4 wheel drive, and diesel (cheaper than petrol). Pray God will make those funds available. Such a vehicle would be a great blessing to my growing family. I will need to take care of our work permits sometime in the next 4 months, so pray we will have what we need to accomplish this. We still need a tenant for our house in America, or better yet, a buyer, so keep praying about that. Such things seem unlikely in today's economy, but I am confident God can take care of it without any difficulty.

Life is good here in Uganda, and I am so enjoying the great privilege of serving the LORD right where He wants me. Thanks again, as always, for your prayers and encouragement.

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.

More adventure than a body can stand

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Today was really overwhelming in many ways.

Early this afternoon – before I’d had a chance to finish lunch and feed everyone – a worker that was helping plant some cactus like bushes outside our fence around the property broke a water main. I’d just finished putting some clothes on the line and starting another load of laundry when I heard a strange noise. It sounded like really hard rain – only it wasn’t raining outside. Then we looked up the hill behind our house and saw the plume of water. Water was shooting into the air for 25 or so feet by the road. I ran to our water shut off and tried to turn it off. That did nothing. So I ran up the road to see if they knew how to turn it off. No one seemed to know. Finally one lady said that they had to turn it off at the water office in town.

By the time I got back to the house there were several inches of water in our house, running down the hill, through the garage and then into our kitchen, hall way, bedroom (though not as bad there) and living room. It was also running up the hall and into the other side of the house that has just been finished. Thank God, nothing was sitting down that would get seriously hurt except for a few things in our bedroom and James was able to get them picked up really fast. Only a couple of our mattresses got wet and a few odds and ends that could either be thrown away or washed.

But the water was still coming. I started working at sweeping it out of the front door. But it was still coming. I’d barely make a dent in it but it would fill again. I went to the kitchen and just couldn’t get it out of there so had to stop. I worked and worked and worked and lost all track of time. I wished I could throw up because of the stress of it and because it just made me sick to my stomach. Finally, 45 min. later they got the water shut off. But the damage was done and I didn’t know what to do to get it all out. I called my parents (thank God for skype!) and got an okay connection, enough for them to be able to hear me. Then I called the only missionary I could find the number for on James’ phone. He said they would be here as quickly as possible.

Meanwhile I’d been bawling my eyes out, then gritting my teeth and working frantically, then crying again and on and on. The guard kept coming to the door and apologizing (it was a worker that he’d gotten that broke the main). I told him that it would all be fine and that I would be okay, believe it or not. Osbert came and told me he was sorry. I told him I would be fine. It was just so overwhelming! All that water and mud!

Finally, the several of the missionaries and several of the Africans arrived and started helping. In about an hour all the water was out and we could start cleaning and mopping. A couple of the missionary girls that are here stayed and helped me mop and clean and in a couple hours after that we were as done as we could get it.

I’m so thankful for all those that came and helped! It was such a blessing! I’m thankful that we didn’t have our container here yet because then we would have had so many more things in the garage and house and they would have been ruined. I’m thankful that the damage to the property wasn’t worse. It washed away a lot of the hill behind our house but not all of it and we can build it back up and level it.

The worst thing right now is that the huge volume of water coming past our house and into the road washed away some dirt around the septic tank and caused parts of two sides of it to collapse. It wasn’t very well built in the first place and I think that this revealed a weakness in it’s structure that would have come out eventually but this just sped it up. Now we have to get our septic tank repaired as it is sitting open and other sides of it could collapse at any time, if there is a lot of rain or something.

I’ve also been able to laugh about it – Here I was, the crazy white lady running up and down the road asking how to turn the water off, asking people to turn off the water to their house to see if it helped, splashing water out of our front door (it had to go over the sill we have for our screen door!). As we were mopping we got started singing “Showers of Blessing” and one of the verses seemed so appropriate:

There shall be showers of blessing
Precious reviving again
Over the hills and the valleys
Sound of abundance of rain.

LOL!

Yep, that was pretty much it – Sound of abundance of rain over the hill and the valleys. Not sure about the showers of blessing yet – but I know that God doesn’t allow things in our life just to make things hard for us. I know He has a blessing in there for us somewhere and we will yet see it. I know this. Because God is *always* good – even when water is pouring down your hill and through your house.

Now I have a stack of laundry a mile high (mostly dirty rags and clothes the kids were wearing that got covered in water and mud) but my house is pretty much clean. I’ll probably have to mop a couple more times to get it completely cleaned up but that isn’t going to be as hard as it would have been. I just need a couple dry days so I can get all the stuff dried on the line. It was nice this morning and the rained most of the afternoon – ironically, it was pouring rain *while* the water was pouring down the hill. God does have a sense of humor.