Life is full of God's Faithfulness and Goodness

This week I have been overwhelmed with how I have seen so much of God's goodness and faithfulness while I have been here. He has been so faithful in answering my/our prayers and in consuming all of my fears. Here is a list of 10 things I am thankful for: (by the way, they are not in any order)

1) That the Blackhawks are in the Conference Finals!!!! (Yes... I pray for them!)

I have a special place in my heart for the handshake line at the end of each playoff series.

2) That the internet works even when there is no electricity! (There is currently no power)

3) My friends Phiona and Leslie. How amazing is it that 2 friends that I met here will be living in the north Chicago suburbs!!!!!! Phiona has been mentioned on my blog a few times. She is marrying my (2nd/3rd... not quite sure how all that works) cousin from the States. Andrew met Phiona when he was working here before I came. When he heard I was coming he introduced me to Phiona via facebook. She has been one of the most amazing friends as she understands my American culture but also gives me great insights into the Ugandan culture. Leslie is a wonderful teacher with AIM that works in Mbarara. I was there when she met her fiance, and I am so thankful they will settle for now in Vernon Hills!!!

With Andrew and Phiona at their Introduction Ceremony  back in November

4) I am so thankful for my students here at the school. I learn more from them every day that I  work with them. They are teaching me patience, kindness, love, and so much more! I just love working with them

5) Along with number 4, I am thankful that God changed my heart about working and staying at Kireka Home. I did not share about this back in September, but when I first visited Kireka Home I was scared to death to go back. You can ask any one of my friends here and they will tell you that God did a number on my heart between when I that visit and my first week there. It was just unlike any place I had ever been. I knew though that God would not call me somewhere and leave me there, and he proved to be faithful. I am so glad that he called me here!

Remember this picture? It is the one on my prayer card. I remember when all these faces were just some kids in Africa, and now they are all people that I know and love!

6) I am so blessed to have moved to Africa with such a wonderful organization as AIM. I have such a great support system with them. Even though the women that is in charge of the special needs ministry in Uganda has been gone for over half of my time here, the people and AIM never let me feel as if I was alone. I am so thankful for the relationships I have built with other AIM missionaries and hope that many of them will be life long friends! 

I had been here for less than a month last October, and all these lovely ladies with AIM threw me a wonderful surprise birthday party!

7) One of my biggest prayer requests when I came was that God would bless me with a friend shortly after I arrived. God has blessed me with some wonderful Ugandan friends and I am so thankful for each one of them! They do pick on me and my American ways endlessly.... but I love them dearly and am so thankful for them! And for the record some of them have come to enjoy some of my American ways! Things like playing UNO, watching Nicholas Sparks movies, nail painting and eating  chocolate have become well loved. 

My wonderful friend Christine

8) While I really miss each of you, I am very thankful that I have only had two moments in the last 9 months of feeling really homesick. One day I had just hit my maximum for dealing with a different culture and wanted to run as far away as possible, but thankfully a few hours later God helped me to allow all that to pass and once again be thankful for my time here.

9) One thing I have enjoyed here is living at work... that sounds strange, but it equals no hour long morning commute! That means I have had no excuse to not spend time with God each and every morning. I have come to look forward to sitting quietly with my Bible during breakfast and spending time with God. In the States, I often felt like doing this was something was was suppose to do over being something I wanted to do. I really miss when I do not get to start my day that way. I hope this is a habit that I will not go back on when moving home!

10) I am extremely thankful to all of you. Whether it is your prayers, your skype chats, your emails, packages, Facebook messages, letters, or your financial support, I am so thankful for each one of you. I have felt so well loved while being here and definitely not forgotten!

Just an example of how much you all have blessed me! And I didnt start this til Christmas so it excludes all the birthday cards and other love sent before then!

11) As a bonus.... I am so thankful for the teachers children as well. I just love each of them so much and they make me feel so loved each and every day. I am going to miss them dearly. After being gone for 2 weeks little Esther would not let me put her down. I was going to the market to buy bananas and had to carry her the whole way. It also resulted in her taking a 2 hour nap at my house last week when her mom was away from the school..

Esther sleeping on my couch

Jeremiah, Nussels, Desire, and Esther (Seriously.. you cannot not love those sweet faces!)

And since the kids are back... Meet some of the Kids!

Seemboga

Seemboga does not like me very much, but he loves my veranda. He use to follow the old head teacher around endlessly, but when she moved on to a different job, his spot became my veranda. In fact, even if I come home and he is not there, I usually can tell that he has been there because he likes to find garbage and shove it under the door!!Another thing about Seemboga is he is one of the strongest people I know! He had to get a shot one day and it took four of us to hold him down!!!

Seemboga hanging out by my door

Doris
Doris is a really sweet girl. She is in the most advanced group and is working on learning to sew in class. Doris enjoys coming with Lucky and Sumaya after school and play games with me. One thing I love about Doris is she is willing to help me with whatever I ask without even batting an eye!

With Doris on her first day back to school

Winstone
Winstone is quite interesting. I originally started seeing him for physical therapy because he has so much joint stiffness and swelling in all of his joints. He looks like a teenager with severe arthritis! So when a physician visited the school I asked him to figure out the cause of the joint damage. The doctor explained to me that if anti-psychotics are prescribed without proper vitamins it could cause joint damage. I learned something new that day! However, Winstone does not seem to have any pain and is fully functional. He loves to walk around the school and fine all pieces of wire and make toys. However, he literally REFUSES to put his things down. His house mom has tried to take them away while he is sleeping and he will wake up! I was trying to have him hold his toy for you in this picture, but he got scared that I was trying to take it and hid it in his pocket!

Winstone

Well that's all for now. I hope you all enjoyed a burger on Memorial Day for me! Thanks for everything!

Germany & Switzerland

I have to admit that while I absolutely loved Europe and decided that I would love to live in Munich, I am very thankful to be back in Uganda. At the airport in Egypt getting ready for my last flight back to Uganda, a man greeted me, asked how I was, and then sat in my row at the gate. I knew instantly that he was Ugandan because he stopped to greet me and was so excited to be almost back to Uganda.

Munich

The first thing that caught my eye about Munich is how clean it was. I am not even comparing it to Africa clean, it was far cleaner than any city I have ever visited in the USA! Plus they have such a good public transportation system, and so many people bike that there are very few cars on the road! It was amazing! 

One of the streets, I loved the look of all of the buildings in downtown Munich

So what did we do in Munich besides just walk around and eat lots of pastries, sausages, and white asparagus?....

Nymphenburg Palace
The first place we visited was the summer home of the Bavarian royalty. We were kind of disappointed though because this place was so large and we were only allowed to tour a very small amount of it. The grounds were beautiful, but because it was so rainy and cold we also missed a lot of that too.

With Greg and Amy out front of the palace

A beautiful chandelier with the painted ceiling in the ballroom

Residentz Palace
This is another Bavarian palace, but it was their Munich home. This palace was OVER 400 ROOMS! So while we didnt see much in the first palace, we saw more than enough at Residentz!!! The only down side is many parts of the building were destroyed in WWII. After the war, they restored the building but most of the furniture was lost. So most of the rooms did not have the same feel because they would have office furniture instead of bedroom furniture and etc. But seriously.... who needs 400 rooms!!!???

Beautiful door way into the ballroom

The cathedral that was mostly destroyed in the war. You can see the new bricks on top of the old bricks

Greg & Amy in front of a beautiful fire place. This fireplace was in a huge room full of busts of people (I think busts in the proper word???)

Dachau Concentration Camp
Dachau is about 30 min outside of Munich and it set the example for the rest of the concentration camps that were built in Germany in WWII. It is hard to describe the experience of being there, but to say the least it is very humbling. I do think it is good to visit places like this as it is an example of how horrific our hatred can be. I would love to say as a whole the world has learned from this, but mass killings over race still occur. I have learned a lot about this lately as my friend Hollie has been traveling to research the history of genocides. You can read more about what she has found here.

The most humbling part of being there was walking the path the prisoners walked as the entered the CC

The train tracks and landing that prisoners were dropped off at

The fencing.... it was much more severe when it was in use. They had examples of the trench followed by the barbed wire on the ground and then the external fence

The gate the prisoners entered reads "Work will make you free". The building directly to the right is where prisoners were stripped of all dignity they had left

The view from the far side of the CC of the remains of the barracks. The building at the end is a reconstruction of one of the barracks

A photo from when the CC was in full operation

One of the hardest things was imaging what it would be like to have 2,000 prisoners  put in  a place that was only meant to hold 200.

The Jewish star on one of the memorials that is now at the CC

Viktualienmarkt

One of my favorite places was this market. There was a beer garden, tons of fresh produce, stands of cheese, dried fruit, seafood, meat, basically anything German that you could imagine was there. I walked through the market 3 of the 5 days I was in Munich! I wish we had one like this in Chicago!!!

 

The sign in the middle of the market. On the lower right it describes which beverages are for sale in the garden

Sorry for the blurry picture - Dad and I in the garden in the middle of the market - It was packed there all day!

 Walking Around

 We also really enjoyed just walking around exploring Munich.

Greg and Amy on the bus - public transportation was so easy there! (Although Dad and I still got lost twice....)

Greg and Amy by the old town hall. Above them is the Glockenspiel that went off 3 times a day.

View of the old town hall from the top of the cathedral - Gorgeous!

View of the new town hall from the top of the cathedral

This picture does not do this man justice.... he was so funny standing there playing the bass (I think) with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. There were so many bands on the street at night!

Switzerland
We only spent 2 days in Switzerland. One day my dad had meetings so I went to the nearest "larger" town from where we were staying and walked around. The other day we took a train car (best way to explain it) up a mountain. It was absolutely beautiful there! And I saw snow!!!

The view from where we ate dinner one night

By the fire in the restaurant.... I was COLD!

The pizza oven out back of the restaurant. Not a bad view while they cook your pizza!

Out to coffee with some of the members of Laser Institute of America - this organization is the whole reason dad needed to be in Germany - By the way, notice who the only one with a blanket is!!!

The only snowball I threw this winter..... well maybe I threw a few just then

Wishing there was enough snow to snowboard!

Dad and  I up in the mountains

And thats about it! It was a great week, and now I have an itch to go explore more of Europe!!! However, I am quite glad to be back in Uganda. I am so glad that God has placed me here for this time. By the way, I finally figured out how to get photos to update to my blog with this new computer, so if you want to see more pictures from my dad's time in Uganda, I updated my blog from two weeks ago. 

Oh and I remembered one more thing for my list from last week:

11. It was so nice to sleep without having to crawl under a mosquito net!

Thanks as always for your love and support!

Out of Africa

For those of you who have not yet seen the pictures on facebook, I am fully indulging in a week back in the western world! My dad had to do some business in Germany and Switzerand so I was able to tag along! It was such a huge blessing to also be able to spend some time with my cousin Greg and his wife Amy in Munich! They are spending the year in Paris while Greg works on research for his PhD. It is just so crazy to meet up with family in a different part of the world! We had so much fun exploring and catching up on each others lives in different cultures! I also have spent the week enjoying luxuries that I am no longer accustomed to. Todays post I am just going to share about the things I didnt even realize I missed, and next week I will talk more about my time in Europe. I hope it will be enlightening for all of you as well, as many of you probably do not even think about not having some of these things. (I didnt!)

1. First of all, I have to say that I have enjoyed the time with my dad! Everyone knows that I am a daddy's girl, so 8 months without my dad is a long time!!!

On the plane to Munich with my dad

2. A comfy cozy bed with a down comforter and a hot shower!! I think I have discussed before that instead of a cold shower I opt for a warm bucket bath. Unfortunately it does not quite have the comfort of a hot shower!

3. Different fruit and veggies!!!!! One thing I have missed terribly are berries. Occasionally you can find blueberries in our supermarket, but they are VERY expensive! I found strawberries for 2.50 Euros for 1/2 kg! I was so excited and ate all but 5 of them in one sitting.... lets just say my stomach was not very happy with me! My dad and I also enjoyed white asparagus. We love asparagus at home, but the white asparagus in Germany is even better!

My strawberries :)

On many street corners are these produce booths. You can see the white asparagus! They also had blueberries and cherries, but they were still too expensive. I did enjoy some blackberries though!

4. MEAT- I NEVER order or buy meat in Uganda. Not that there is anything wrong with it, but I do not enjoy meat on the bone :) So in Germany I ate like the Germans and enjoyed lots of meat :)

One of the German meat stores.... it smelled so good!

5. Safe Water - One thing I have grown use to is brushing my teeth with only bottled water and having to filter all of my drinking water. At the hotel I asked my dad if the water was safe and at the first restaurant I asked if the "still" water was safe... the guy probably thought I was crazy!

6. STARBUCKS! Enough said...

Just ignore how they spelled my name! 

 7. Baked Goods - Germany has WONDERFUL bakeries everywhere! We ate lots of pastries and German pretzels. I may go through withdrawals next week!

Some sort of raspberry dessert. YUM!

8. Warm Clothes - This sounds silly but one thing I look forward to at home is the change of season and change of clothing! It has been kind of nice to need a jacket. HOWEVER.... this girl is FREEZING! It was only 1 degree Celsius today!!!!!! (my dad said it wasnt accurate... but I was COLD!)

9. Ice cream - Ice cream in Uganda is just not the same. In fact, I never eat it except if I am at Matoke Inn. I think my dad and I managed to get ice cream every day but one!

:) 

10. Shopping - When Amy and I went into the first department store, I was VERY overwhelmed. There were just so many choices!!! After I got over that though, it was very nice to do a little shopping! 

11. It was nice to sleep without having to crawl under a mosquito net!

So..... sorry this turned into a materialistic post... but these have all been things that I have tried to soak in and enjoy as I will do without them for another 3 months. It sounds strange, but when I am in Uganda I really do forget about most of these western world comforts. However, while in Europe I have tried to take it all in! Next week I will fill you in a little more on what we did... besides eat :)

Thank you all so much for your love and support!