A challenge to all of you

So... I am writing this from Mbarara where I am spending time with the AIM team here. (They are pretty awesome) And Ruth (the house help of the team leader) is AMAZING!!! Ruth is an AWESOME baker and cook. She is slowly starting her own bakery business selling cakes, bagels, and other baked goods. I am so excited... I have not had a bagel in 4 months! I am buying tortillas and bagels to bring home. Not that you all care, but I am so excited!!! You cannot buy those things here! I will post more about my time in Mbarara next week since I do not have my camera cord to upload pictures from here. I do apologize for the lack of photos in this post!!! I know reading is not so much fun!

What God has been teaching me:
Three years or so ago, Park Church in Chicago challenged their congregation to pray for one person, one neighborhood in Chicago and one disparity in the city. God laid on my heart to pray for a friend of mine in PT school. I daily prayed for her, and God slowly opened up doors to grow our friendship and eventually invite her to church. This girl today is one of my absolute closest friends, she is daily growing in her relationship with the Lord, she is active in her church, and truthfully she is challenging me in my faith. I am so thankful to see how God is working in her and for the opportunity to see how God can work when we are open to his leading.

My life here really isn't that different from home. Basically, I am just working and doing life with Ugandans instead of working and doing life with Americans. (With many cultural changes too) And here I have been challenged with a similar challenge to Park's 3 years ago. When I first arrived here, I was talking with a retired missionary couple who challenged me and a couple other short-termers to focus on pouring into the lives of 3 people. He said, otherwise you will get overwhelmed and not feel like you did anything in your time here. It has taken me 3 months of praying to figure out who those three people are. And I am very excited to see how God will work over the next 9 months.

Here is where I challenge all of you. One thing God has really laid on my heart is that it doesn't matter where we live, but our purpose there is to build relationships with those around us in order that we may share Christ's love with them every day. I challenge each of you to ask God who to pray for and pray for them faithfully as I pray for my 3 people here for the next 9 months. And when we meet again in 9 months, we can share how we saw God work. I do want to say, please do not be discouraged, I know a women who prayed for her husband for 19 years before he came to know Christ; however, I am very excited to see how God will work over the next 9 months!!!!

Please let me know if you accept my challenge, so we can pray for one another and hold one another accountable.

I cannot leave you without a picture of one of my sweet kids - Ronald :)

New Years & African Wars

Happy New Year Everyone!

I had a wonderful New Years Eve surrounded by other missionaries and having a game night! Cassandra and I made lots of yummy appetizers and it was all in all a good time!

Cassandra's mocktails recipes

Cassandra mixing our non-alcoholic drinks! They were quite yummy!

I was pretty happy with how my appetizers turned out - these are stuffed cucumbers

I also made egg plant topped with tomato, cheese and garlic - YUM!

With my friend Julie Matthews - who just got engaged yesterday when her boyfriend arrived! So excited for her!

The Girls - Julie, Cassandra, Me, Bobbie

This little trooper., Cole, made it until 10:15 - much past his bedtime :)

I learned to play Ticket to Ride - so much fun!

At midnight with our party hats on! - We were able to watch the fireworks around the city from her neighbors balacony

Since New Years, I spent 3 days sick with the African flu. Ugandans call a cold the flu. I have been trying to stay in my house because when I go outside I am surrounded by kids and I want to contain my germs. I have taken sometime while stuck inside my house to research some of the wars going on in Africa.

When I first arrived I borrowed two books from the AIM library. I first read "A Long Way Gone" by Ishmeal Beah and I am now working on "Aboke Girls" by Els De Temmerman. Both have been very interesting as they are personal accounts of wars in Africa that abduct children and use them for soldiers. I strongly recommend these books although they can be a bit gruesome, they are real life and true stories about horrors that young children have faced. I felt very naive about the wars in Africa, I have always known they existed, but never really understood the weight of them. We are taught very little about them in American schools even though the age of the children fighting the wars are the same age of school children in America.

I first learned about the war in Uganda as a freshman in college when Invisible Children came to my University to speak out for child soldiers and displaced people because of the Lords Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda... truthfully that might have been the first time I had heard of the country Uganda (who knew 7 years later I would move here!). Thankfully the Lords Resistance Army led by Joseph Kony have moved out of Uganda, but they still terrorize parts of South Sudan, Congo, and primarily Central African Republic (CAR). Here is a good article from 2011 about the history of the LRA if you are interested: Lords Resistance Army History

There is also a major conflict in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) over many things, but one is a mineral called coltan that is needed for most electrical devices especially cell phones. I tried to learn more about this war today from my Ugandan friend and he explained to me that the Congo government is so corrupt that some people even prefer the rebels to be in their cities even though the rebels groups rape their women and abduct their children. He also explained that Rwanda and Congo support the rebel group (M23) under the table since they cannot fight for resources and other things in Congo themselves.  Not sure all that is 100% fact, but my friend's parents are Rwandan and he understands more about the US government than I do, so I have a feeling he knows what he is talking about.You can read more about what has been going on in DR Congo from Wikipedia (sorry to send you there, but it is the most up to date and in line with what I have been hearing about in Uganda). According to this Article the "Congo is often referred to as the worst and most neglected humanitarian crisis on Earth.

Many of you may be aware of all of the wars going on in Africa, and many may not. I was one that vaguely knew but didn't understand the harshness and terror of them. I hope you read the above books if you have not already, and try to pay more attention to the world news on the wars in Africa..... I have no ideas for a solution nor do I even pretend to remotely understand what is going on in all of these countries, but I am sure that being educated on these things and lifting up these countries in prayer is a start!