Catch Up

Okay....just realized how long it has been since our last post. Wanted to at least give you a quick update.

When we first arrived in Kenya, we met a young man named Craig, from Austrailia, who was serving with AIM in South Sudan. He was on a team with our friend Kim, who is currently serving with Wycliffe. Craig and I immediately hit it off and we have kept in contact since. South Sudan is part of the Central Region with AIM, which is also the region we serve in. We get to see Craig often (at least often for Africa) at conferences and at AIM's guest house in Kampala. I've been asking him to come and visit, but the timing has never worked out until now. He is about to head back to Austrailia for a much needed home assignment and decided to come down to Mbarara before he left, to stay for a week. We enjoyed making him part of our family for a week and letting him rest a little before his trip home. He even helped me fix the fences at the farm while he was here. It was really a joy getting to spend some time with him and getting to know him better. You meet people out here and bond quickly because of the environment, but very rarely do you get to just sit and spend time with people outside your team or city. So, when you get that chance you truly appreciate it.

On that note, we dropped Craig off in Kampala this past Sunday (and got to see the new Narnia movie while we were there!) and picked up our friend Jenny! Some of you may remember Jenny from our early posts when we first arrived. She was one of the single ladies that traveled with us from New York, our first time out. She was such a huge help to us (along with Hannah, Jennifer, and Margaux) and bonded so quickly with the kids. It made the initial trip so much easier. We have been hoping that she would be able to come and visit sometime and it finally worked out. So we picked her up Sunday night and headed back down to Mbarara. It has been a joy having her around again. There are just some people that feel like family and she is one of them.

When you have guests come, you realize how boring our life must look to people. The university students have gone home for Christmas, the pastor's training class is over, secondary schools have shut down for the holidays, and there's not a whole lot going on at the farm. There is a lot of planning to do, curriculum to write, meetings with administrators and faculty - and sometimes we think that looks boring to those around us. When we have visitors, we realize how much the "fun" we have here is based on getting together and playing games with teammates, meeting with students and just having an off night as a family. Even in Kampala there isn't a lot of exciting things to do - although Jill and I find that shopping in stores with variety on the shelves is quite fun! I guess it just makes you realize that this is your life now. Walking to town for groceries, negoitating on prices with local businessmen for hours, constantly writing (and re-writing) new Bible Study material, 3 hour meetings that would only take 30 minutes back home.....those are the types of things that make up our new routine. It's not exciting, it's not adventurous, it's not even fun much of the time, but it is life for us now (and for the next year and a half). We embrace it and love it and see the work God is doing through us.