Promised pictures

Joel said I would post some pictures of the baby dedication. The light wasn't the best in the church so some of the pictures aren't that great.

This is the bishop who performed the ceremony.

The service was pretty long and since the father of the baby told me to take as many pictures as I wanted, I had the freedom to take them throughout the service (which proved to be an hour long sermon in the local language) so...here are my boys.

I don't know these women but I thought it would be nice for you to see some of the more traditional dresses.Back at the family-of-the-father's house, there was a dinner for everyone. The mother's family sat on one side and the father's on another - facing each other. There wasn't a lot of mixing. This is my first function like this, so I'm not sure if this is the norm or not. The mother is in red, her name is Carol.

There was a lot of waiting around and most of the pictures I took where of perfect strangers. I wanted to put all the pictures together with some music as a keepsake. It turned out nicely.

In the mean time, I tried to sneak in a family picture - but apparently Dade wasn't in the mood. :)

Usually Dara is the one who doesn't like her picture taken, but she was in a playful mood.

I did get this picture of Dade with a friend (Uncle to the baby being dedicated).

Another First

Yesterday we killed a pig - another first for me! I've been around right after they were killed - I've seen then shot when hunting - but don't think I've ever had the experience of participating in the death march!

This was a huge pig! It was about 115KG which tranlates to about 253 lbs!! Did I already say, this was a huge pig?!?! Richard had raised it and wanted to sell it before Christmas. However, the market for pigs has been way down and there was very little interest. Mike and I decided that since we are both from the south (he and Susan are from Mississippi) we just couldn't let good pork pass us by, so we pooled our money and bought ourselves a pig. Fortunately, we did think it through first. John (our New Zealand teammate) was a butcher back home. So he offered to come and slaughter it for us.

So, right after milking, John arrived with tools in hand. He rigged up a snout noose and after several humorous attempts (remember, this pig watched the last one be slaughtered), finally got it snagged around the snout. With a lot of squealing and "pig hollerin" we got him tied up to a post and with a quick stab he bled out and died within a few minutes. Now, before you give me any credit at all, John did all the "dirty" work. I was a simple bystander who had to hold the ropes, help drag the pig and divide up the meat. But it is amazing how much credit you seem to get when you are standing by with guts on your hands and blood on your boots.

I won't go into all the details of the process, but Jill and I do have a couple of great tenderloins and more pork roast then we know what to do with. Mike walked away with some tenderloins and some huge racks of ribs! Fotunately, I live just down the hill and will be able to smell them cooking so I'll know when to stop by for a quick visit! The rest we either sold to other missionaries or gave away to the different folks who helped us with the slaughter.

Oh.....almost forgot one of the reasons I was posting this....Dade, the ever brave son that he is, had quite the experience. Dara has been handling the deaths of animals around this farm quite well. She just stays inside. But Dade likes to be in the middle of everything and is quite fascinated with watching. I told him that he didn't have to be out there, but he wanted to.....until the pig got to hollerin' and it started bleeding out. Jill said he came in the house, holding back tears, but being brave. He stayed inside until it was hung and was being cut up. Never cried, just bit his lower lip and stood strong. My brave little guy!

How Many More?!?!?!?!?!

Will have Jill post pics some other time, but today we celebrated a dedication service for some dear friends (what many back home would call a christening service and what many here would call a baptism, but the intent is the same as our baby dedication services). Jill has been working hard the last few days to bake enough cakes to serve 100 people and so we delivered them on our way to the church. We thought we were simply dropping the cakes and heading to the church until several kids wanted to ride with us. "Not a big deal," I thought.....until two older ladies also climbed in.....and then another aunt. At this point we had 11 in our Toyota Surf - remember this is the size of a Toyota Forerunner for those of you in the states. As we were pulling away, the aunt said there was one more coming!!!!! Fortunately, Mike and Susan pulled up about that time and loaded her in with them. We made it fine - a bit crowded, but no problems!!!

Then......we are loading up at the church to head back to the home for lunch, cake and many speeches and we have several new folks wanting a ride back. This time we ended up with 13 piled in. I don't think I've ever had people more excited to get a ride and more excited to get out of the car at the same time. Just another regular occurence of life in Africa.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas felt quite different this year. I think it made it easier to be away from home because it didn't "feel" like Christmas. We played Christmas in the house and we made snowflakes for the windows. We went to a couple of Christmas parties so we know it is that time of year, but it still didn't "feel" like Christmas. It's quite difficult to explain. So...I'll just tell you what we did...

Christmas eve we spent a bit of time shucking corn (maize). We were excited to be having corn-on-the-cob with our Christmas lunch so everyone helped.

Except Daddy who was fixing up the grass fort (yes, my flower beds are still missing their mulch). I think he knew something we didn't know (like how fresh maize somehow doesn't taste like corn-on-the-cob. I'm sure I did something wrong, but it was so, so, so hard - tasted a lot like hominy. Yuck!)

After we finished shucking our corn, Dade reminded Joel that he had told Dade he would help him fly his kite. So...despite the fact that there was little to no breeze at all - off they went. We bought some cheap kites in Kampala and this was our first time to use them.


I tried to do the pictures differently so maybe you can click on it and see Dara's tongue sticking out while she is running. (sorry it doesn't work - Joel just has a magic touch). I'm glad she didn't fall. She was just working so hard!
I think the cows enjoyed the show.

Christmas morning came and the kids were excited to know Santa still found them. It's a bit hard to keep the illusion going when Santa brought them the exact thing they wanted in Kampala. Oh well...they know the truth anyway...it was still fun.
We were so blessed to have Zillah, a single girl on our team, spend the night and share our Christmas morning. Her family did a great job of sending her gifts (this is not a jab at our families who also did a great job - it's just the camels that bring the packages have been a bit slow lately)

We gave the kids "Clue" as a gift to share - the instructions are in Arabic so I hope I remember the rules correctly. I will admit that even though the box said it was for ages 5+, it's a bit difficult for 6 year olds (as I learned today).

These are Dade's new pajamas. He has an affinity for soft pajamas so when I found them, I just had to get them. I hope they stay soft.

We were having this slow relaxing morning and I knew that soon I would need to start cooking. We were all still in our pajamas when William knocked on the door and presented me with a chicken. It happened to be one of the roosters they had bought for our Christmas lunch. I hadn't expected to cook one, and I wasn't quite sure what to do with it. I didn't know if I was supposed to boil it or bake it or fry it. I just kept laughing at it. I finally figured out from William that I was supposed to cook it however I wanted to. I was so grateful because I sure didn't want to mess up someone else's Christmas chicken - so much pressure!

I went to cut it up so it would fit in my pan and Joel and I just kept laughing. He asked how he could help, and I just asked for a camera. It was like a rubber chicken - even the color was yellow! It even felt rubbery!
In the end it became a good casserole and we had plenty of food. Donna (William's mom) made chicken, beef, cabbage, and rice. I had fish, chicken, hard-corn (which is how the Ugandan's like it - so that worked out well), and millet bread (which is difficult to describe and make, but it was fun to present as it's Richard's favorite food). The picture doesn't do it justice. So, you'll have to take my word for it that it was a great time.

We ended up having 13 people for lunch and Richard was so comfortable that he fell asleep on the couch afterwards. What a true compliment! This is Medard (May-dad) who is the young man who worked with Joel to start the college Bible study.
In the evening we went to the Wards for an evening get together. We ate so much food and had such nice fellowship with our friends here....what a wonderful celebration of our Lord's birthday.

Just Different

Did you know that "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" the movie is actually pretty long and boring when you haven't grown up with it? We watched it tonight with some Ugandan friends and I think they almost fell asleep. Joel did. Maybe it's hard because they have never seen snow. Or maybe it's because Christmas here doesn't revolve around Santa Claus. They didn't even know he had flying reindeers who pulled his sleigh. All in all, I feel silly even showing it to them when we could have had more fun playing a game or something. This is just one of the many things that doesn't cross cultural barriers well. We live and learn.