And it finally happened..

My initial title of this post was "A few random stories" and really that is what it is. BUT I have been waiting to see something for 7 months, and it finally happened! You will have to read all the way to the last story to find out what! (And its probably not what you are thinking, but I would love to hear your guesses!)

Story #1: God is Good!
Praise the Lord, within a few days of my computer crashing, another missionary was able to sell me an extra brand new computer that they had!!! So back to blogging weekly :)

The message on my computer when you turn it on :( If anyone at home would like to try to restore everything on my hard drive... just let me know :)

Story #2: Saying Goodbye
So we were suppose to end school on May 3rd..... well I am not sure what happened, but Sunday I found out that in fact we were breaking TODAY! With all of my computer problems, I had hardly started writing my reports on the 24 kids that I see. Needless to say, it has been a crazy week! My favorite part of the day today was when Sumaya was able to show her mom how we have been practicing walking. Two weeks ago, we were able to get Sumaya a "trial" walker to see how it would go. Sumaya is now 13 and cannot use her hands to hold onto a walker, so we had to get a custom built walker to fit under her arms. Today, we showed Sumaya's mom what we have been doing and her mom helped her walk around with the walker. It was such a blessing to see such huge smiles of joy on both Sumaya's and her mother's faces. Please pray that they can come up with the money to buy the walker.

The photo of Sumaya using the walker got lost with my old computer. But here is one from this week, I just LOVE this girl. Her walker can be seen behind her.

Story #3: Lesson in Luganda on my Handwriting
So.... everyone knows I do not hold a pen properly. My mom will tell you that she tried to teach me and my kindergarten teacher told her I would grow out of it.... and yet here I am at 26 still holding my pencil like a 3 year old. Anyways I can write and that is what I think matters, and if you ask I do know how to hold it correctly! Back to the story, there is a new student Mercy who is constantly talking to me in Luganda. I am constantly trying to tell her that I do not know Luganda... and we have not yet met in the middle.. until this week. I was busy writing my notes from the day when Mercy came up and started yelling at me in Luganda, I quickly figured out what she was saying by her hand gestures.... She was pretending to hold a pencil correctly and then waving her arms and pretending to grip a pencil with her whole hand! This sweet girl was trying to correct me :) (Still didn't work though mom!)

Story #4: Movies in Africa... and where do they come from?
In Uganda you cannot (without paying an outrageous amount) buy a movie. However, there are little stores that sell almost any movie or TV show you can imagine for $1 to $2. I have no idea how these people get their copies... but they do.... and truthfully I am glad. On Tuesday night I was watching the a "movie theater copy" of the movie "Safe Haven". By movie theater copy I mean that someone literally brought in a video camera to a theater and recorded the whole movie.. you can usually hear people laughing and commenting along with seeing the occasional head bob up in front of the camera. (Not going to lie it is super annoying... but what can you do?) Well with about 2 minutes left in the movie... it switched to being a spanish version! (Or at least I think it was Spanish) How does that even happen; especially when it was filmed in a movie theater???????? They must have some how combined two pirated versions of the movie. Who does that???

Story #5: Birthday Cake
It was my little friend Matthew's birthday last Friday. His mom and I had planned to bake a cake together for him, but we could not find an oven to use... so I baked it at a friend's and we celebrated on Monday. Matthew and his friends were so excited!!! They were all sad though that I would only let them have one piece. They do not get baked goods often, so I didnt want to give their little belly's stomachaches! It was so sweet though because these kids are good about sharing everything! They have grown up together as their mom's run two neighboring shops and they are inseparable. While the other kids got up to wash their hands, I gave Matthew a little bit extra cake. When they came back, he fed each of them another bite of his cake!

Matthew so excited for his cake!

The neighborhood kids with Margret - (L to R) Daniel, Daniella, Margret, Matthew, Angel

Daniella's usual "deer in head lights" look :) She is just so sweet. Initially she was so scared of me, and now she lights up every time I come around!

Story #6: I can't believe it finally happened!!!!
In Uganda, most people wear used clothing from western countries. I have seen some obvious stuff from the USA: US Postal services polo, Team USA basketball jersey, Illini hoodie, Cubs shirt, but the icing on the cake happened today. A boda driver came today to pick up one of our students, and under his half zipped up jacket, I could see the top of the Indian head. I was SO excited, I asked him to show me his shirt and sure enough it was a Hawks jersey (no name on the back though). I acted like a crazy person asking if I could take his photo and then made him wait while I ran to my house to get my camera. For the record, he has absolutely no clue who the Blackhawks are or what ice hockey is :) I didnt mind! I have heard that they ship the ready made clothes for the losing team in a championship game to Africa is well. My new goal is to see a 2010 Philidelphia Flyers Stanley Cup Champions shirt! (Because that is the year they lost to the Hawks). So.... probably not what you all expected, but if you know me well, Im sure you are not surprised!

Sorry there is no meet the kids section this week! Ill work on that for next week. Thank you all so much for your prayers last week, all of my sick friends are doing much better! Be praying for more consistent electricity... it is driving me CRAZY! And I updated a few more prayer requests on the right.

As always thank you so much for your prayers, love, and support!

Dell Computer Down

So I apologize that I do not have a blog post for you all today... and I am late to even post this. My computer died this week..... (I HATE DELL!) (For the record we have a long history that brought about his hatred). Praise the Lord, my dad is coming in 3 weeks, so that makes options easier. Also, God has blessed me with amazing friends in Kampala that have offered up extra computers to help me in the time being, just haven't quite figured it all out yet.

I do have many additional prayer requests for you this week though:
- Please be praying as I am doing another wheelchair distribution tomorrow (Saturday)
- Please pray as we have many kids that are sick at the school and a good friend of mine was just diagnosed with typhoid
- Please pray for my health as I have the Ugandan flu (cold)... again.... 3rd one this year
- Please pray for the kids as we prepare to break again on May 3rd.
- Pray that God would give me wisdom in navigating some aspects of Ugandan culture - some things are just so different from my culture, that I really have not figured out how to best relate to my friends when they are in the middle of these cultural things
- Pray that God will give me wisdom in the best solution to my computer problem... and that everything on my hard drive is still there (7 months of pictures in Africa!!!)

Alright, friends and family, please be patient with me in both blog posts and communicating as I try to figure out the computers I am borrowing!

Love you all so much!

A Nile Adventure; Plus Meet Some Kids

Whitewater rafting on the Nile
This weekend, I was able to join two friends from AIM (Dayna and Julie) to go whitewater rafting on the Nile. Let me also clarify that it is considered Class 5 rafting..... from my understanding the highest is 6 and that generally is considered unsafe! The last time I went whitewater rafting was in 7th grade with the team that went out to the Navajo Reservation in Arizona. I do not remember much from that trip except Steven Angelos (Now my cousin-in-law) holding me in the boat when we got stuck on a rock and me being terrified!. All that being said, I was TERRIFIED about going rafting. I told Julie I wanted to do the family rafting trip - and basically she informed me that if we were going to do this, we had to go big.... so we did!!!!

After not dying on the first rapid, I had so much fun! There were 8 rapids in total on our course, and our boat flipped on 3 of them. The company we went with, made me feel extremely safe. They had 5 kayaks along with a rescue boat that would grab you right away if your boat tipped! I was never left to float down the Nile and meet a crocodile! (For the record, we did not see any crocodiles or hippos where we were.) Also, before each rapid, our guide would tell us what to expect as we went through the rapid, and what we needed to do if we fell out. This took away my fear of the unknown making it so much more fun! If you are ever in Uganda, I definitely recommend rafting the Nile... and this is coming from the biggest chicken ever!!!

Life jackets - Check; Helmets - Check; Water - Haven't made it there yet! - With Julie Matthews

This is the first rapid... I think it is about an 8 foot drop. But... I picked this picture because see the girl in the front with the yellow helmet and her terrified face. That is my friend Julie who got me into this adventure. See me behind her all smiles :) Thats right Julie :)

At the bottom of our large drop!

No clue what is going on here... except we are being blasted by a large wave.... I cannot even tell you where I am sitting!

I think this is the first time we flipped.  I am the one in the red helmet hanging on for dear life!

Meet the Kids
Sorry I have not introduced you to more kids in awhile! My new goal will be to every week introduce you to two more of my kids! But this week you will meet three :)

Sunna
Sunna is one of my favorite kids to work with. Not only is he unable to walk, but he also has no speech. He uses hand gestures and noises most of the time. He loves coming to therapy AND he LOVES my matchbox cars! Yesterday, I got him up standing in the standing frame, and he immediately started acting like he was driving a car indicating he wanted to play with my cars. He knows a small amount of sign language, but he mainly makes stuff up as he goes using his own gestures. This is great for me since I know very little sign language, and I just make up gestures back to him!

Sunna reaching for a puzzle piece in therapy

Ethero

Ethero and Sunna are best friends. They are almost always inseparable. Except every once in awhile when another student has taken Sunna's wheelchair, Ethero leaves his friend to try to get to the dining hall or class by himself.  Ethero and Sunna are perfect for each other in that Ethero also has no speech. So they communicate with their gestures and noises perfectly together! Ethero is one of the few students that does not live at the school. His family owns a little store just down the road from the school, and Ethero lives there.

Ethero & Sunna

Maria

I absolutely love Maria. She is quite a hard case to work with. She had cerebral malaria as a young child and now has severe cerebral palsy as a result. Even her facial muscles are involved. To add to her complications her tight muscles have dislocated one of her hips making her leg quite painful to move. However, even though she has no speech and has difficulty moving any of her limbs, she finds ways to communicate what she is thinking. When we do art projects, she is VERY particular about how it is put together. We are working on using her mouth to write (which is VERY difficult since all of her muscles are affected). But, I wrote her name and then we traced it together. She was SO EXCITED! She recognizes her name, but to be able to "write it" was something new to her.

Maria in her new wheelchair

And a bonus picture just because Jeremiah is so cute :)

Jeremiah looking into the therapy room

Oh and one more picture.... I had Mexican food for the first time in 7 months last night!!! I was sooooo excited! BTW, the plate was burning my hand as we took this picture

Well, that is it for this week. Please be praying for patience this next week. I have realized more than ever how much I need God to help me control my emotions. I am going to try to update my prayer requests on the right with a date, so you can tell when I updated it last!

As always, thank you all so much for your love and support!

Baby Elephants & Easter

So if you know me well, you know that I LOVE zoos!  Any new place I go, first thing I do is look up the zoo! I know it is ridiculous, since I live in Africa, and I can see animals living freely, but I still LOVE the zoo! This week I had the pleasure of going with two of my Ugandan friends to the zoo. They had never been before, so being this close to animals was definitely new to them. We had so much fun!!!! 

First stop, taking advantage of the cut out face pictures :)

They made me take one too :)

So there were obviously many differences between the Ugandan Zoo and the zoos at home, I was quite surprised when the zoo guide handed Christine this elephant femur (thigh bone)!!!

Another difference, the monkeys were EVERYWHERE. No I did not zoom in on this monkey. She literally just did not care that I was about 2 feet from her!

Next stop: Camel Ride. Christine was so scared at first that we almost had to stop! The man responsible for the camels, told our friend Geraldine to come stand next to us for a picture... well the camel got a little too curious about her... and he thinks Geraldine running away is as funny as Christine and I do :)

Which way do we go next????? All the animals at the zoo are found in Uganda. It started as an animal refuge and grew to be a zoo.

For the record, this ostrich could have bit off Geraldine's fingers if she stuck her hand over that fence!!!

When we first got to the snake aquariums, Geraldine didn't even want to look she feared them so much. I was so proud of her for conquering her fear and petting the Rock Python.

Watching the sleeping leopard

We sat and hand lunch while watching the lions sleep

 And now my favorite part of the day... meeting chance the one and a half year old baby elephant!!!!! He loved us, and would run right over whenever we came close to his enclosure. For the record, he has another enclosure in a restricted area, and only comes to this area at special times. (He could probably break it down if he really wanted to). He was so sweet. And to answer questions that I heard on facebook :) Yes he is hairy. Apparently all baby elephants have some hair. They usually lose it by this age, but they think because he is in captivity and on a slightly different diet that might be why he hasn't lost the hair yet. How did they acquire him? Poaching is still a VERY real problem in Uganda. The rhinos here have been poached to extinction. Chance's parents were killed by poachers when he was only 3 days old.

Chance

Christine trying to get the courage to pet him

He was VERY curious with his trunk. You seriously had to watch out. I left with elephant boogies and dirt all over my arms, my purse, my feet, my clothes, even my camera lens!

He was so sweet!!!

Trying to shake "hands"

He was sooo curious!!!!

Yes I took a million pictures with the elephant. The girls did not quite grasp how rare it is to be able to touch a baby elephant!!!

I just loved him. I decided I wanted him and it would kind of be like having Clifford the Big Red Dog!!!

Easter
I spent the holiday weekend at the school with my kids. I really enjoyed spending the holiday with them and just hanging out! You can look at the pictures to see my African Easter :)

Esther getting her drum to bring to church

Sunna and Shimri were SUPER excited that I was at church with them.

Teacher Loyce sharing the Easter story with the kids. I was so impressed how many kids knew the answers to her questions about why Jesus had to die for us.

Sorry for the bad photo - Singing in church - Teacher Loyce leads church for the kids every Sunday in the dining hall

Andrew & Kevin playing the drums - the kids are really good at giving a good beat to sing to!

Komba happily praising the Lord by playing his drum

With Teacher Loyce's kids after church - Ann, Jonathan, and Esther

After church Desire and Benita came over to make some jewelry

I bet this pot looks quite different than your Easter dinner cooking! - This is the matoke (a specific type of green bananas) that is cooked in banana leaves

An African Easter lunch! - Matoke, chicken in soup, and greens (cooked spinach type leaves), with a soda

Easter Monday, the kids and I colored

As I read through the Easter story in John last weekend, my favorite part was the last few verses. I am so thankful for God sending his son so that we may spend eternity with him. I cannot wait to hear the stories of God's miracles throughout the world in heaven some day!

"This is the disciple that testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true. Jesus did many other things as well. If everyone of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written" - John 21:24-25

"But these these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name." - John 20:31

Much love,