I'm Alive!

I was in a boda accident today. I was on it with Jen and Caben was in front of us and we went into a ditch and Caben’s boda rolled backward and something on his boda rolled into my leg. I fell off the boda onto my back and felt the most insane pain in my leg I had ever felt in my life. I started screaming and dry heaving but most of that part is a total blur to me. Caben turned into an EMT and handled everything perfectly, commanding each person to go get things and call a car. He cut my jeans off of my leg and then cleaned the wound a little and bandaged and wrapped it with a stint (a wooden stick) and a dishtowel. I just sobbed the whole time, while people held my hand and prayed over me and they worked on my leg. Someone handed me a codeine and the effects of that started making me really confused about whether I should be laughing hysterically or crying hysterically.  After a while Coy showed up with a car and I had calmed down by then but got hysterical again when they tried to lift me to put me in the car. We eventually did it though, and Jordan held my hand and let me lay against her in the back. Caben and Katie rode in the back with me. When we got to the hospital they got me onto a stretcher and then into the room. Everyone was so amazing, they were all there, crowding around making me laugh in the midst of my tears, and helping me decide if we should go to Kampala to get it checked out and stitched up or if we could do it there.  Everyone was so willing to get in a car right away to Kampala if that was what I wanted but after we took the X-ray and talked more about what it was I decided we should do it there right away.  The doctor cleaned it up and then made everyone get out but I asked Coy to stay in the room because he had medical experience and I wanted him to oversee the operation and his voice was calming. He talked me through most of the operation and I felt good knowing he liked what they were doing and told me all these stories about his life so I wouldn’t be thinking about it.

This whole time I was in major trauma shock, whenever the doctor would touch my back or ribs I would cry hysterically, between the shock and the codeine and the pain in my leg my emotions would go from hysteria or laughing in the range of 10 seconds.

It was so amazing to see everyone I know in Gulu, and even one person I had never met before, on the front lines with me, helping me every step of the way, getting me everything I needed and all waiting together in the waiting room for the entire 3 hour ordeal. Jen and Caben even paid my entire bill because I didn’t have any health insurance or any money.

Now I’m okay. I go back Tuesday to get it re-dressed and then Sunday to see if I can get the stiches out. I’m on 5 days of anti-biotics and I got a tetanus booster shot while I was there.

I’ll look at pictures later, maybe after the stiches are out. I hear they could see fat and tendon, 2 cuts, stiches in 3 places. Just happy to see how i loved i am and how good God has been through this whole thing. 

It's Been a While

I haven’t written because I don’t know what to write. Should I tell you what we have been doing? Should I tell you our most recent developments for projects and improvements we are working on for St. Jude’s and Purse of Hope? Should I tell you what God is opening up in our personal growth and spiritual development?

The needs at St. Judes are becoming more and more clear to us and they are overwhelming. We have a new petition for you. Ask everyone you know. This is extremely important and the future of St. Judes will not be okay without it. St. Judes needs prayer. They need prayer for the administration and staff. We need a new head mama with energy and education to come take over Mama Filda’s spot. We need to hire a new nurse who can concentrate on and take awesome care of the nursery and the kindergarteners. We need a reliably liaisons to take responsibility for all the sponsorships we are finding for the children of St. Judes and in the community.  We know that the material needs are endless and the most important thing we want from St. Judes is for each and every staff, caretakers, administration, and teacher to be motivated and passionate to teach and love and care for the children at St. Judes. THIS CAN ONLY BE ACHIEVED THROUGH GOD. So we ask for your prayers in this area.

The only thing I really miss: washing machines. Dryers. Dryer sheet smell. Everything I put on, even after double, triple, quadruple washing it, smells AWFUL. Now I better understand why all my children at St. Judes can’t seem to get clean dry clothes put on them. Its nearly impossible for me.

This week has been action-packed so far. This is probably mostly due to the fact that Jen is already half-way done with her time here and trying to squeeze every possible activity into each day. Its great though because we have been exploring tons of new opportunities and meeting new people so I am happy its all working out how it is. Yesterday we moved! Into our house, finally. Then we spent the morning at St. Judes and during the afternoon we went to Saint Monica’s tailoring center because the older girls there were learning to cook and cater and they need visitors to come and test the food and let them practice their waitressing skills. It was fun. After we were served each of the girls had to walk in one by one in front of all the visitors, parents, and faculty, and do a spin and show their nails and be graded on personal hygiene and presentation. It was kind of disturbing and we mostly just felt really bad for the girls. After we left Saint Monica’s we went to town for light bulbs and water and then did a little unpacking. At 8 we went over to the purse of hope girls house and watched Mrs. Doubtfire. Super cute. During the movie it started to storm, so we hadn’t to walk a long distance at 10:30 to find a boda.

Today, we went to St. Judes with Scovia and Juliette the two most wonderful girls ever and they taught us a lot about taking good, culturally sensitive care of the babies. We were floored with their ability to take care of the babies so well with the simple resources they were provided with. We took them out for soda’s after and got to talk to them about future planning for their own lives and how they could continue the volunteer after we are gone and even go on someday to get jobs with them after they go to university.

We have been dreaming up a huge new action for St. Jude’s: sponsoring a nurse. The one they have now only has time to be with the special needs kids but our kids have the flu, and colds, and pneumonia, and ringworm and skin infections and we need someone with them everyday administering medicine and then we need the caretakers to be adamant about administering the medicine at the correct times throughout the day. So were going to assist the nurse during her visit tomorrow morning and then working on getting a salary to pay for another nurse to come in take care of our babies. Other projects we are working on: partnerships between our college and high school to have volunteer opportunities to come and volunteer, making a volunteer guideline for future volunteers to come, making systems for organizing and finding the kids clothes, and spending time every day with the social worker to help her stay updated and on top of everything. Jackie, the social worker, is so educated and helpful and energetic and we want her to be so involved with everything we want done but instead of burdening her we first want to take as much of the work burden off of her so she has time and energy to help us make major changes and meet bigger needs.

Tomorrow is thanksgiving! We are so excited and planning a great day with the purse of Hope girls and Kelsey and baking whatever might be possible to make here.

It's Been a While

I haven’t written because I don’t know what to write. Should I tell you what we have been doing? Should I tell you our most recent developments for projects and improvements we are working on for St. Jude’s and Purse of Hope? Should I tell you what God is opening up in our personal growth and spiritual development?

The needs at St. Judes are becoming more and more clear to us and they are overwhelming. We have a new petition for you. Ask everyone you know. This is extremely important and the future of St. Judes will not be okay without it. St. Judes needs prayer. They need prayer for the administration and staff. We need a new head mama with energy and education to come take over Mama Filda’s spot. We need to hire a new nurse who can concentrate on and take awesome care of the nursery and the kindergarteners. We need a reliably liaisons to take responsibility for all the sponsorships we are finding for the children of St. Judes and in the community.  We know that the material needs are endless and the most important thing we want from St. Judes is for each and every staff, caretakers, administration, and teacher to be motivated and passionate to teach and love and care for the children at St. Judes. THIS CAN ONLY BE ACHIEVED THROUGH GOD. So we ask for your prayers in this area.

The only thing I really miss: washing machines. Dryers. Dryer sheet smell. Everything I put on, even after double, triple, quadruple washing it, smells AWFUL. Now I better understand why all my children at St. Judes can’t seem to get clean dry clothes put on them. Its nearly impossible for me.

This week has been action-packed so far. This is probably mostly due to the fact that Jen is already half-way done with her time here and trying to squeeze every possible activity into each day. Its great though because we have been exploring tons of new opportunities and meeting new people so I am happy its all working out how it is. Yesterday we moved! Into our house, finally. Then we spent the morning at St. Judes and during the afternoon we went to Saint Monica’s tailoring center because the older girls there were learning to cook and cater and they need visitors to come and test the food and let them practice their waitressing skills. It was fun. After we were served each of the girls had to walk in one by one in front of all the visitors, parents, and faculty, and do a spin and show their nails and be graded on personal hygiene and presentation. It was kind of disturbing and we mostly just felt really bad for the girls. After we left Saint Monica’s we went to town for light bulbs and water and then did a little unpacking. At 8 we went over to the purse of hope girls house and watched Mrs. Doubtfire. Super cute. During the movie it started to storm, so we hadn’t to walk a long distance at 10:30 to find a boda.

Today, we went to St. Judes with Scovia and Juliette the two most wonderful girls ever and they taught us a lot about taking good, culturally sensitive care of the babies. We were floored with their ability to take care of the babies so well with the simple resources they were provided with. We took them out for soda’s after and got to talk to them about future planning for their own lives and how they could continue the volunteer after we are gone and even go on someday to get jobs with them after they go to university.

We have been dreaming up a huge new action for St. Jude’s: sponsoring a nurse. The one they have now only has time to be with the special needs kids but our kids have the flu, and colds, and pneumonia, and ringworm and skin infections and we need someone with them everyday administering medicine and then we need the caretakers to be adamant about administering the medicine at the correct times throughout the day. So were going to assist the nurse during her visit tomorrow morning and then working on getting a salary to pay for another nurse to come in take care of our babies. Other projects we are working on: partnerships between our college and high school to have volunteer opportunities to come and volunteer, making a volunteer guideline for future volunteers to come, making systems for organizing and finding the kids clothes, and spending time every day with the social worker to help her stay updated and on top of everything. Jackie, the social worker, is so educated and helpful and energetic and we want her to be so involved with everything we want done but instead of burdening her we first want to take as much of the work burden off of her so she has time and energy to help us make major changes and meet bigger needs.

Tomorrow is thanksgiving! We are so excited and planning a great day with the purse of Hope girls and Kelsey and baking whatever might be possible to make here.

Tailored Tuesdays Teaching Toddlers

My body is still pulsating from my day at the children’s home. I had my hands full today – literally – holding multiple children at a time. And I like the older ones so these were not light babies. My muscles must be getting a lot stronger. It was a little drizzly today and the children were very grouchy and teary today. We had a lot of tears. Lauren and Jordan went to go help out in special needs for a while so I was by myself with the toddlers and their mama’s. I’m noticing a lot more illness – fevers, coughing, and skin diseases. Do all babies have runny noses or just these ones because they are ill? Lauren and I are both fight sore throats, coughs, and nausea and we have a feeling the kids are playing a large part in that. Its worth it, SO worth it, but were trying to think of ways to stay precaution against getting ill ourselves (Jordan is so immune). I really wish I had a book about the common illness of African children so I could read up on what’s going on with them and how best to help. I think a nutritious diet would make a world of difference but from 1 year old they are eating only beans and posho for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Steven came and helped me a lot today again. He is so good with the kids and they love him so much. We talked a lot about the differences we see between Africa and America and what we like and don’t about both. He was able to be really honest with me about his distaste for most African men and their habits of laziness and drunkenness and abuse and debt. He was telling how he’s always trying to encourage his friends to save their money and be smart and take only one wife and have only the children they are able to provide for. His adopted father is Elio, the owner of St. Judes and Elio loves and respects and has given Steven so much. The most valuable thing Elio has given that I have seen so far is Stephen ability to process life correctly and handle his pain and life devastations in healthy ways. Steven works as a video editor when people need promotional videos or wedding video etc. He makes pretty good money, sometimes up to 200 a video. I told him in the U.S. a good promotional video can be charged up to $6000. That probably wasn’t very encouraging. He told me, if he can afford it, he wants to adopt one of the children from St. Judes someday. Every week he buys all of the children a treat out of his own money. Today they had these sweet cookies made out of banana that they loved. He told me all this as he rocked Regina (my favorite little precious one) to sleep.

A cute 10 year old named Jennifer came this morning and gave me a long letter illustrated with colorful pictures. She told me all about herself and her life in it and asked if we could be friends. It was very sweet and cute. I have 4 mosquito bites on my foot and they are itching bad. I got to talked to Jenevieve and Kelli and Meghan on skype today so my friendship cup was really filled up. 

Muddy Monday

Today was a good day at St. Judes. We spent the morning at Café Larem rewording the history for Gulu for the St. Judes website and fixing up the facebook page we made for them. We made it to the children’s home around noon. It was perfect timing because we got there just as the children were sitting down to eat and so we washed all their hands just in the nick of time before their food was ready (I guess the mama’s didn’t find that important today??!). As the children ate we grabbed the broom and pee rags and the bar soap and soapy hand water and scrubbed the concrete the babies sleep on. Then we got the plastic/straw mats they sleep on and scrub brushes and scrubbed off all the poop and washed out all the pee. The mama’s were happy we were helping and kept bringing us water and better scrub brushes. After we finished we were really pleased to see a couple of the mama’s giving their assigned children baths and we were happy to help get them dressed and off the toilets. Jordan even gave her first bath and threw away their waste from the potty training seats (she almost barfed). I got Regina in my arms as soon as she was clean and brushed and I was so happy to see them putting medicine on her neck and back for her exema.  I held Regina and Acen and Debra for about an hour each (I play favorites, and those are definitely them). One little boy about 10 came up with a song he had written in Lulo on a piece of paper and sang it to me. It was SOOO cute! This guy Stephen who I had talked to a little bit on past days came down and sat with me while I was holding Debra (she has the flu). Stephen is an adult who lived in the orphanage when he was growing up. He was really affected by the war and is now writing a book with a Professor at NYC called Under the African Sun (everyone should buy it). He’s flying to New York next month to have it published. We talked for like an hour or so and it was super awesome to get to know a native Ugandan who had been raised in the orphanage and is now so intellectual and ambitious and doing things with his life. I’m also so scared that these precious children I’m holding are all just going to become boda-boda drivers and destitute child house wives. But he was inspiring and seemed like a really cool guy which is hard to find here. They are mostly all lazy and drunkards, which is why all our NGO’s are help for women and children. The men are hopeless. I was thinking today about education and how lucky we are that even if we have nothing we have the opportunity to get a loan, go to school, get educated in a way that could really help people and earn enough money pay back the money we pay for our education and to live comfortably. America is so lucky! Anyway, it makes me want to go to Med School. I’m feeling those inclinations more and more lately, although I know I’m extremely fickle with my vocational plans so when God wants me to know what he has me doing, he’ll tell me.

Weekend Fun

This weekend was marvelous. Saturday we started the day at Larem Café, using free internet and sipping on some green tea. I got to read up on lot on OneMangoTree (check it out, seriously), KissesfromKatie (look at that one too), and get familiar with Twitter, all to get educated on my job before I start. I’m so excited that the first job I’ll have after college is a social media job in Gulu, Uganda. How cool is that. Anyway, at 11 o’clock we went with Lexi, a friend we ran into at Larem, to yoga at Ben and Holly’s house. Ben and Holly are super cool. They live in a beautiful house here in Gulu with 2 other families. They have lived here for 5 years and just adopted a precious little girl named A’Leah from St. Judes! Another couple in the house has 3 kids, all very young. The husband of the last couple in the house is an architect and designed the house that they live in. It is beautiful and simple and filled with African pillows and curtains and furniture – so cool! Anyway, Holly is an awesome yoga instructor and led about 9 of us through the practice. We ended around 12:30 and went to get lunch at San Kofa. Lexi was there, again, surprisingly, which was fun. After lunch we spent some down time in the room, showering and catching up. Then off to Purse of Hope! Good to see and be with the girls for a while. They sang for us and talked to us and we got to spend a lot of time with the aunties. We left with Kelsey to go to the market and get vegetables and drinks for dinner. Then after a quick stop back to the hotel (all through boda-boda) we went to John and Sean’s for an awesome time of fellowship and dinner and games. We talked incessantly about Bob Goff, and tons of other enlightening and interesting topics: kids with special needs, good books, twitter, Cairo, and cocaine. I find I like to listen so much more than I like to talk. Kelsey made homemade ravioli and veggies and salad. She is so inventive with the limited resources and gives us a lot of hope for what you can do with a kitchen and recipes from the internet.  

Sunday morning we walked to church at Watoto and I was really happy because they played a song that I had been wanted to hear the day before. I love when the Lord remembers me like that. After church we went to Kelsey’s and had a sweet time of fellowship and lunch. We ate and then listened to a sermon on podcast and then all talked about the sermon and how we can be more of a community and more vulnerable and it was such an awesome talk. Then we fell very organically into a great time of worship and prayer and more worship and more prayer. We were there doing that for over 4 hours. So awesome. I left feeling revived and rejuvenated and excited about Christ and what he has been doing and how lucky I am to know these people and… yeah.

I am ALWAYS light headed here. I can barely ever stand up with blacking out for at least a couple seconds. I eat enough, I drink enough, I sleep enough, and I don’t feel so affected by the heat, so its super weird.

I am about to give Chris the OK to extend my flight and I’m super excited and super nervous about it all at the same time. I worry about getting more malaria medicine, and about what will happen if/when I get malaria and Girardeau (the long-timers here say its UNAVOIDABLE if you’re staying as long as I am). I worry because the house I’m moving into apparently just doesn’t have power.  That sounds kind of awful. But its okay, and I’m still excited. I’m excited about my job and being able to continue working at St. Judes and with Purse of Hope. I’m excited for the opportunities I know I’m going to encounter.

After Sunday naptime (and a special phone conversation to my mother) Lauren and Jordan and I went to get Indian food, trying to avoid the crowd of expats at San Kofa. There again we can into Lexi and her roommate Naomi. God obviously has plans for us with Lexi because that was the third time we ran into her at a different restaurant at perfect timing for sitting down together. She hugely encouraged us at dinner by saying that our presence among the expats at changed the vibe of the community and that a lot of people were feeling more open and ready for true community with us there. She also shared a lot of really awesome, personal things about herself and her life and her spiritually so it was a really great time together. After dinner the 5 of us went back to the hotel room to share 2 beer bottles and fellowship. Really special. Now bed : ) goodnight  

Religion that is Pure and Faultless... James 1:27

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGyYsA62CxY&list=QL&playnext=1

This video is so inspiring.We also found our 34 babies who we love and now we trying to find a way to meet some basic needs for them. In reference to our previous post our hearts are breaking for these children. Many have bacterial skin infections and most are wearing soiled clothing for days in a row. We are currently working on purchasing reusable baby swim diapers, figuring that this is the best current solution. At this point the 3 of us plan to give the money to Jen to buy 35 diapers. She is leaving California on the 10th. We are asking if any of you have reusable diapers or know of friends who have some and are willing to donate. There will be other needs these children need met but this is the first one we are choosing to tackle. If you have any ideas about fundraising or companies that would be willing to donate please let us know. There are numerous medical, sanitation, and dental needs that we have noticed and will soon address. Our hope is to have a continued relationship with St. Judes Orphanage even after our departure from Uganda.