Sara's Garden

While I waited for KIDO planting projects to begin, I got my gardening fix in our own yard.

Here are the humble beginnings of the garden beds:

This being a hot, tropical place, things got growing very quickly:

And now, Anthony and I don't have to buy any greens at all.  We can eat all we want from my garden!

Here you can see some local greens (malakwang - related to okra), sweet potatoes, and sunflowers.

There is also grain amaranth, egusi melon, okra, tomatoes, onions, jackbeans, cowpeas, pigeon peas, lima beans, cucumbers, roselle, collard greens, and carrots.

And don't forget the luffa, lablab, tepary beans, winged beans, malabar spinach, peppers, and liana beans.  I think that is everything for now.

The fence became necessary after the chickens decided that everything in the garden was worth eating...

Also, a blog post just wouldn't be complete without a few animal pictures.

Like Lokey the goat trying to eat a mango whole (goats only have front teeth on their bottom jaw, so you can imagine how tricky this would be - hence the crazed goat eyes).

Partner's Forum

Last week we were a bit out of our routine in that we were in Kampala the whole week for World Renew Team planning meetings, and a Partner's Forum.  The meetings were a good chance for us to get to know the staff better and learn more about how World Renew works.

The Partner's Forum is a gathering that World Renew puts on for all of its partner organizations.  The bulk of the time was spent on training the partner staff.  The theme this time was accountability, governance, and accounting, and the teaching was very well done.  It was educational, but Sara and I are both glad we are not accountants!  God gives us each different gifts. 

There was also time for each organization to give a presentation about the development work they are doing in their communities.  All of World Renew's partners right now are church organizations connected with PAG (Pentecostal Assemblies of God) or Church of Uganda (Anglican).  Here is a photo of KIDO's presentation.  Remember that KIDO is the partner organization of World Renew that we work with the most. 

Here is Simon Opolot, the manager of KIDO.  He is a good friend and we have the opportunity to work with him regularly.

After the partner presentations, Sara had the impromptu idea to give a presentation about how to make presentations.  She showed the good and bad ways to use PowerPoint (such as don't fill a slide with 400 words, the exact words you are going to say).  It was short and fun and we heard from many people that they learned a lot from it.  It's funny how it can be so helpful to teach about things that we take for granted that people know.  We grew up using PowerPoint all the time for school, but that is not the case for most people in Uganda.

At the end of the forum, we were able to play our Bible trivia game with some of the World Renew staff and members from other organizations.  I was the host asking the questions, and it was the women versus the men.  The women handily won both games we played even though there were more people on the men's team.  Come on men, we need to get into our Bibles!

Views of our neighborhood

We thought you might like to see what our neighborhood is like.  On our walks we took some photos to show you.

On one walk we went and met some of our neighbors and took photos of their piglets.

Visit to Pallisa

A couple weekends ago, we traveled to Pallisa to visit a friend who we taught at Pentecostal Theological College in 2009/2010.  It was an interesting adventure because we drove ourselves there on a route that was new to us.

Along the way, we saw this overloaded truck filled with cattle and baskets and people.  And it was not the only one - there were three such trucks in a row!

Another interesting aspect of the drive was how we drove from light into the darkness of a massive rainstorm.  You can see here how the sky ahead was so dark.

Once we reached the place where it was raining, it was really raining.  We crossed several spots where the road became small rivers.

But by the time we got to Pallisa, the rain had slowed down and we passed through areas with beautiful scenery.  The rocks reminded me of the Needles in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

So we picked up our friend Boniface in Pallisa town and then drove from there to his home in the village.  The roads were very muddy from the rain, but we managed to get through...until we reached the path leading up to Boniface's house.  There our vehicle got stuck in the mud in a spot where we had to squeeze between a stack of bricks and a ridge and couldn't avoid the mud.  Thankfully, all of Boniface's family and his neighbors came running and helped us get out.

The kids from the neighborhood had a great time drawing in the mud on our vehicle.  This picture only shows you a little bit of their fun - they would draw pictures with their fingers, then would wipe them out and start drawing again.

It was very fun to see our friend Boniface again and to see his family and where he lives. 

Boniface was a very good student at the Bible college and also the oldest student.  He is currently 60 years old and still very active and energetic as a person and a pastor.  We enjoyed sitting with him and talking over the evening.

Here are some photos of his house and some of his family:

The next day, Sunday, we drove to the church where Boniface is the pastor.  We drove off and suddenly realized that there were children hanging onto the back of vehicle.  After stopping to tell them to get off, we found them there again.  Finally, we left them behind.  Unfortunately, we later discovered that the bumper had broken off on one side because they were standing on it.  This later led to all sorts of excitement with car repairs that lasted a whole day, but that is a story for another time.

We arrived at church and met a very lively congregation.  It is always a joy to worship with our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Anthony preached and enjoyed himself thoroughly in telling the story of Joseph and his brothers from Genesis.

There was more music from talented young people.

 

I gave a brief teaching about why Christians should want to take care of God's creation.  People appreciated hearing some ideas about how they can do that.

After church, we headed over to the home of one of the church members.  They fed us and all the church leaders quite the feast.  There was a very wide variety of food:

Eventually, we had to leave and go back the way we came.  Although there was no rain on Sunday, the rain from the day before had made its way down to low points in the area.  When we reached a certain swampy area, we saw a huge crowd on the road ahead and wondered what could be going on.  As we got closer, we realized that the road was covered with water!  There were lots of young men there who were earning some extra money pushing vehicles through the two-foot-deep water.  It was a good thing they were there because we only made it halfway across before getting stuck and needing a push.  In the end, we were thankful to make it home safely.

Our Family, Caleb and a Skink

Here is a picture of some of our family at home.

Just for fun, here is a video of Caleb that we think is funny.

And a cute picture of him and Sara.

And pictures of when I had to take Caleb to the vet for his vaccinations.  Sara already was away with the vehicle so I took my bicycle.  He did very well, except for when it started raining on us, then he almost bailed.  The first picture shows our failed first attempt.

In other pet news, a guard left a small part of the gate open during the night and the two hedgehogs we had ran away.  (Although the little one died, a guard had given us a 2nd adult).  But now we have none :(

Here is a very beautiful grasshopper.

My big chameleon is not doing so well.  We had a flurry of flying white ants (large termites) coming out of the ground and the chameleon ate about 40 of them.  I saw big piles that it threw up later.  I think its stomach may have burst.  It looks like it is dying, but so far it is hanging on.  Maybe it's just taking a long time to digest.  I put him in one of the trees of our yard because we were given another large chameleon and the cage is not big enough for so many.  So now we have two big ones, and one small one.  Here is a photo of the wings of the white ants just in a small section of our porch.  Likely there are no bodies in the picture because Caleb probably ate them all during the night.

And here is a skink we found in our yard.  The species is Peters' Writhing Skink I believe.  It moves and looks like a snake, but it isn't.

We added a couple more species of fowl to our household too: a turkey and a guinea hen.   We were startled one day when we came home to discover a second guinea hen in our yard with the first.  It turns out he is just our guinea's boyfriend who comes and goes as he pleases (from who knows where).

Last,  a giant beetle.  These are on our porch most mornings.