Luweero Weekend

Hello everyone! Sorry my weekly update is a little late in coming. I usually try to post over the weekend or on Monday, but our internet has been down for the past several days. It was frustrating for a little while, but then most of us realized how much more time we had to do other things when we weren’t glued to facebook…funny we come to Africa and the facebook trap still ensnares many of us. I try to limit my internet time to just checking email, facebook, and updating my blog, but it’s such a temptation to waste time online. So we had a break from the chains of the internet, but most of us were happy yesterday to put them back on. It’s good to be able to communicate with friends and family back home. Maybe I’ll be able to upload a few more pictures. I have fallen drastically behind on that, but the internet just doesn’t move fast enough.

Ok. So last week absolutely flew by. I really don’t remember any major happenings. Mostly I just attended class and hung out with my family. I made some no-bake cookies, read a good book, and began plans to direct a skit. The skit is for a worship service that our studies group is in charge of leading. It’s a campus wide service, so we’ll have an audience of several hundred people at least. I’m directing a skit to a song by Lincoln Park that I learned on a missions trip a few years ago. It’s interesting to be in the directors rather than the actors role, but I am enjoying it. We’ve had a meeting/rehearsal and are having another this week…so far so good. I think it’s going to go really well. Performance day is one week from yesterday! It’s an exciting opportunity to lead a campus worship service and minister to our fellow students.

This week the pace is beginning to pick up as far as school goes. I counted the days today and realized I only have 25 days before the school semester is finished and we leave for our Rwanda trip. That’s crazy! In that time, I have some 3-4 papers to write as well as several projects. I need to get kicking on some of these assignments, so I am going to try to get myself motivated this week to begin working towards finals. Maybe the internet needs to crash again…It’s hard to motivate myself to do school work when all I really want to do is hang out with my friends and family here. Time is short and I am realizing how much more important people are than homework, thought my profs might not accept that excuse. At any rate, finals week is stressful every semester, no matter where I am (Uganda or the US) and I always manage to get through it. It’s good to keep things in perspective 

This past weekend was potentially my favorite class trip we have been on. We travelled about 2 hours to a town called Luweero. It’s a fairly rural area. The purpose of the trip was for us to speak with an Anglican Bishop, a Catholic Priest, and to see a ministry called Jesus Cares. The clergymen were amazing examples of what missions to one’s own people can look like. They love their people so much, and they suffer with them a great deal too, but the love of God is revealed all the more through this suffering. Luweero has a high percentage of the population affected by AIDS. Although I’ve been in Africa now for nearly 3 months, it’s been easy on the college campus to ignore the reality of AIDS. It’s not something that people talk about very much—it’s often a taboo topic, like everyone likes to pretend it doesn’t exist. There is still an issue of stigma, so even people with HIV-AIDS often try to hide their status.

The Bishop and the Priest both talked openly about the reality of poverty and AIDS in the area. When we asked Father Gerald, the priest, how he responded to so much pain and suffering, his response was simply “Sometimes there is nothing you can do; all I can offer is to be present with my people.” He’s so present with his people that he declined an offer to study for a masters degree in the US to continue working in the parish. That’s true love. I don’t know very many Ugandans that aren’t dying to make it to the US, and yet he would rather hold dying babies and preach at funeral services than leave his people for the opportunity of a lifetime. I have a lot to learn about true love and compassion.

Jesus Cares is a ministry for AIDS victims run by one Christian family. It’s two parents and their four children. The parents, who are both teachers, saw a need in their community and decided to meet it. They and their four children (all adults) each contribute 10% of their salary to the mission. They have 6 AIDS families that they care for currently. Three of them are single mother households (where the mothers and most children have AIDS), one is a family of AIDS orphans run by a grandmother, and two familiers are child-headed households where an older sibling cares for the younger. In the six familes there are 25 children, and 17 of them have AIDS. We traveled to a house on Saturday where we met with the family who runs the missions as well as the families they minister to. They invited children from the village to join us, so there was a total of around 80 children there. We couldn’t tell which children had AIDS and which didn’t, which I thought was excellent. Our sole purpose was to play with the kids. We divided into four teams called Alpha, Omega, Unity, and Peace. Each team had about 8 white students and 20 children on it. Then we played games in the yard for 3-4 hours. We did relay races and funny games. One of the adults marked points for the teams. My team was Peace (ironic considering my Luganda name means Peace) and we got second place, which was cool. We served lunch to the kids (it made me think of my cafeteria job at Milligan) and then the children on our teams taught us traditional songs and dances which we performed for each other. It was such a good day. Probably my best day in Uganda, just loving kids and acting like one myself.

On Saturday evening we were free for a bit and some friends and I went tree climbing. I haven't climbed a tree in years! It was a lot of fun. My friends were surprised I could climb so well--they said I climbed like a country girl, so I guess I did Kentucky and Tennessee some justice. I am one of the only southern girls in our group. After climbing, we found some strange green fruits on the ground--they were round and about the size and weight of a softball...then we found a stick about like a bat. So you can imagine what we did then. It was kind of like a homerun derby except when you hit the fruit really hard it busted everywhere. So we had a blast and mostly ended up covered in this bitter, sticky fruit juice.

Well…that’s about all of the exciting things about my recent days in Uganda. I’ll have another update for you soon. Prayer requests include: all of the students as our time winds down in Uganda and finals approach; our families who host us and that our remaining time with them would be blessed; my sister-in-law Prose who recently had a baby (Tendo Israel)—just for her and the baby’s health; this upcoming Sunday when I am teaching Sunday School to around fifty 7-9 year olds, that I will get my lesson worked out and God will help me relate it to them; that I find my Bible, which seems to be missing since this weekend. Thanks everyone!

--Danielle