Arrival
We made it safe and sound to Lira, Uganda. That was an incredible amount of travel… 2 nine-hour flights, a 9-hour layover in London and a full day's drive from Entebbe to Lira! We landed at 7:30am Uganda time, and it was actually very pleasant outside. It took two buses to get ourselves and all the gear here. One bus was full of people, and the other bus was full of bags.. and a couple people.
Personally, I am amazed that people can drive anywhere in this country. Heavy, unorganized traffic in the cities and poorly paved, pot-holed roads in between, made for a slow and tedious ride. We did get to wave at a lot of school children walking home, though.
I'd like to share a little about some of the people we saw on our drive… the BEAUTIFUL people!!! … were working… walking… or waiting… all in the streets. In the cities and villages, the streets are lined with shops and restaurants and gas stations. They use motorcycles as taxis instead of cars, and the women in skirts sit sideways on these motorcycles as their drivers squeezed between fast-moving buses and cars. People were transporting goods on their motorcycles too.. or on their bicycles.. or on their heads… tying insane bulk and weight to these "modes of transportation," and balancing all the while.
Here are a few pictures I captured on our journey from London, England to Lira, Uganda.
(Please note that the images I am uploading from now until we return are for web-viewing only. Unfortunately, I have had to compromise and upload smaller, lower-quality images until I get home to faster upload speeds. All of these images and more will be available in their full-resolution quality shortly after our return to the States.)
The Journey Begins
Friends and family, we are in London! Our flight leaves in a few hours.
Countdown to Mission: Uganda - 2 days
For the Blog: The "Moses Disclaimer" -- I'm not a great writer.. my punctuation is iffy.. at best. I spel pourly when I'm tired. Sometimes I struggle to concentr--SQUIRREL!-- and I jump around with the subject matter. I tend to write run on sentences and not use enough punctuation so it can be a bit difficult to figure out what the heck I just wrote and what I meant by it. Yet, here I am. Halfway packed and about to do it anyway! Okay, God.. Let Your will be done. (In the words of Michelle Tanner..) "You got it, Dude."
Personal
An Explanation
Part of the reason I wanted to go on a mission trip like this is so I could bring some of the experience back to the people at home. Expressing what happens on these things seems to be difficult for most missionaries. Even the most well-spoken person can't really convey the matter. He's overwhelmed with emotion.. but when I'm sitting in as part of the congregation listening to the mission presentation I don't get why. So, I've been thinking and praying.. "God.. how is this going to work? How do I bring the why back to them?" I don't have the complete answer yet. But I did glean one part of the answer from my prayers these past few months... Be Transparent. We will see what God does in the end... but I'm hoping that my transparency will help with the why.
All that was to explain that I think I'll have a personal section in this blog every now and then. We've been told by other missionaries to journal everything. I guess I can do that here. But the point of it all for you back home is to hopefully see with.. like... x-ray vision... the growth that can occur in people while they're overseas with the explicit intent to serve God. I certainly do not want the personal section to be the main section. Not all of you know me.. you're reading because you know someone on the trip and want an update on what they're doing and how God is working through them! Maybe some of my fellow travelers will be willing to be transparent too.. and I can tell their stories as well. I would love that.
The Actual Personal Part
I woke up this morning, and the first thought that went through my head was that I only had "two more sleeps" (mother of 4 young children.. I know toddler-eze better than I know English) in my own bed before we left for Uganda. I have been experiencing some awesome anxiety about this trip!! Some of it is excitement anxiety and some of it is fearful anxiety. I don't know what God is going to do to me over there!!! I just know that I'm leaving my very comfortable, overindulgent, entitled life behind me. God is going to wreck my world and it's going to be a beautiful thing.
Here we go folks. Two days and counting.
Last little booster shot for one of the Hepatitis-es. Check.
Rental gear is in (thank you BL.com!) Check.
All packed. Uhh.. half-Check.
- (But I'm not the only one still packing - I know this because I've seen pictures of other members of the team packing. - Thank you, Facebook, for the blackmail.)
Obligatory "something in the house broke" event. Check.
- (Happened two days ago.. and it still needs tweaking to be fully fixed. This would be a spring for the garage door. Did you know you can't even manually open the garage door to get the car out when a spring breaks? Well, now you do. Thankfully this didn't happen on Saturday!)
Yes. I think I'm officially ready. Once I finish that packing.
Prayer Requests
Please do continue praying for the team as we make our final preparations. Pray for smooth traveling, transitions, and transactions. Pray for the safety of our families and homes as we are away. Pray that God will open the hearts of everyone we come into contact with, from here to Uganda and back again. Pray for each other.. I'm certain our prayer warriors would benefit from being covered in prayer as well!
Countdown to Mission: Uganda 2013 -- 7 days...
Seven days and counting!
One week from now we will be in the air, Uganda bound!
Thursday night was the final meeting before take-off. We held a 'Packing Party.' We sorted the donations of clothing, shoes, medicine, and toiletries by gender and age group. Then we packed them into bags for Lira and bags for Seeta, weighing them to make sure they carried no more than 49.5 pounds each. I was impressed by how quickly we completed the task. It only took two hours for everyone to unload the stuff from their cars into the building, unpack and sort the items, then repack, weigh, sort by city, and label each bag. It felt so organized and smooth. It was noted in the meeting afterwards that this has been the least stressful pre-trip experience to date, and that's saying something, because this is the 10-year anniversary of the trip. Praise God! The prayers are being felt! The path is lit! Now we get to put one foot in front of the other and follow it!
Please be praying with us this last week before our departure!
Helping Hands
So many clothes! (Praise God!)
Unpacking and sorting
Putting together IV packs
Glasses galore
Sorting jewelry
Sorting medicine
Stuffing it full
How many people does it take to close a bag packed for Uganda?
Weighing bags
Weighing bags (LIFT!!)
Labeling the bags by color and number
Bag pile for Lira. It is the Lira pile early on. It about doubled in size by the end!
Final meeting
Last minute details. (Note the pile of trash on the left. Not even the half of it.)
Pray.
Countdown to Mission: Uganda 2013 -- 9 days...
Nine days from today, I will be headed for Uganda, Africa with a medical mission team. Obviously, I'm not a doctor.. or a nurse.. or medical assistant. In fact, the most medical experience I've got is applying Band-Aids and administering small amounts of medicine to young children. For at least 7 years I have imagined and prayed about traveling to Africa to document a mission trip. I'm still in disbelief that this dream will become reality in less than two weeks. This post, and any others that are posted before our trip begins will likely be more personal, but the goal of this blog is to help journal the stories that bloom on this journey.. whether they are mine, another missionary's, or one of the Ugandan's I meet along the way.
The preparation for a trip like this is pretty involved. For myself.. it started over a year ago. In May 2012, the team was getting ready to go on the 2012 trip and I had decided I wanted to go the following year. I talked briefly to my husband about it, and he said we'd have to find someone to watch the kids before we could even consider moving forward. I called up my sister-in-law and talked to her about it, and a month later she bravely agreed to care for my kids. There has been a lot of prayer and discussion over the last year. A lot of brainstorming and "vision sessions," trying to figure out the best way I can document a trip like this. In the end, I believe God will give me what He wants to be seen and heard. It's up to me to be maleable and empty of myself, so that whatever comes is simply... God.
Team preparation has been happening too. The team has had meetings since November/December 2012. Meetings about medical supplies, types of clinics that can be held, up-to-date passports, visas, plane tickets, vaccinations, what to pack, what not to pack.. the list goes on and on.
One of the big discussion items at these meetings is of course finances. The biggest fundraiser we had was a Gourmet Dessert & Silent Auction event held at New Life Church in the World Prayer Center. This year, Dr. Patrick Opio, a surgeon from Lira, Uganda - one of the cities we'll be serving in - was the special guest speaker. He shared a few of the stories from the war-torn area of Uganda in which he works, often withholding gory details for our sakes. The strength in his testimony astonished me. Here was a man who had actual faith in God.. a faith that could be felt all throughout the auditorium that night.
Dr. Patrick Opio
It may have been the biggest of our fundraising events, but the Dessert Buffet & Silent Auction wasn't the only one. There were others. For example, my church has eight members going to Uganda this summer, and they held a benefit concert to help us raise funds to pay for it.
Mr. Tony Ray
The Wilfong Family
Jody Adams and the String Dudes
My own personal Mary Kay consultant, Renee, had a party for me on International Women's Day and donated all of her profits to help us go. Mark, owner of borrowlenses.com, saw my fundraising letter and has offered any equipment I need, saving me almost a thousand dollars in equipment rentals. Some of my latest photo sessions were done for donations to the trip as payment instead of my normal fee. These are the fundraisers I was involved in, but I'm only one of almost 30 people... so imagine all that work.. times 20 or 25...
And there is more preparation ahead. Tonight is the Packing Party. We will meet one last time to pack the 75 some odd bags we'll be taking full of medical supplies and donations. And then... we're off!
Uganda has gone from being a country I had hardly heard of to a daily thought. As the departure date draws nearer, it is almost constantly on my mind. I am so grateful that God has given me this opportunity. I have never been on a mission trip before. People who come home from these trips are often unable to express what it is that happens there. I'm going to do my very best to bring this experience home. To accomplish this, my focus will be on God, and my prayers will be never ceasing.