Friends and random pictures

My friend Jill and I went shopping together for clothes to take on the trip and knowingly bought the same exact shirt but then ended up wearing it on the same day by accident. We obviously could have changed before we left the house but we really didn't care :) There is also a picture of Jill and her husband Matt in the mix and they are one of our favorite friends here in Colorado :)
In another picture, there is a group of us praying for two ladies. These ladies were walking by the church, saw us all in their praying and came in and asked if they could receive Jesus as their Savior. Can you believe it! I was so awesome!
There is a picture of 3 African girls, Barbara, Gloria and Julie, who were our favorite girls of the bunch. They just really bonded with the girls on our team and will always have a place in our hearts!
The two pictures, before the last picture are of the group eating at a food court in the mall in Uganda. I think I had Chinese food and Curt had Greek food. There was about 6 different restaurants that you could choose from and it was all great food.

The very last picture is of Dean, (who is on the far left) he is the reason that Curt and I met, and he led our team, Pastor Robert; who is the pastor of the church we help plant in Wakiso and then Bill from China who is a great evangelist that came to minister with us.

The End :)

Noah

This is Noah, one of the boys that we support to go to school. He graduates this year and has good enough grades to get him into law school :) We are so proud of him. This was my first time meeting him, Curt millionth time. He was so sweet, very shy around me but sweet.

Curt Preaching

Curt preached Sunday morning at his friend Pastor Emmas church. I think the church was only about 3 months old. It was definitely rural :)Curt did such an awesome job. He just has an amazing way with people and they love him!
Im sure it was his preaching that kept the people so enamored, but then again, they could have been thinking, "I had no idea they made men that large". :)

Ugandan Food

Here are pictures of the Ugandan food they served us for lunch. Actually, the first picture is of a fish that we got at a restaurant on our way to the airport, leaving Uganda. The fish is called Talapia and they give you the whole fish and you just pick the meat off it. Some people actually ate the eye but I wasn't that nuts. What some people will do to get attention :) Next to the lovely fish in the green bottle was my favorite drink called, "Bitter Lemon". I had this drink a lot when I traveled Europe and I think the best in the world is in Germany, but Ugandan bitter lemon is pretty good too :)

So the food on the tables in no specific order - The stuff that looks like flour tortillas is called "chapatti". Its a thin deep fried bread that is to die for. I think I ate that whole plate. Then there is a picture of a pumpkin. They peeled the pumpkin, gutted it, filled it with veggies , wrapped it in banana leaves and cooked it over an open fire. It was pretty good and any kind of fresh veggies that you got you would eat because they don't have a ton of them.
The brown, poop looking food was peanut sauce. That was really good. They usually put it on rice to eat it. I love Thai peanut sauce, but Curt does not like it, but he likes Ugandan peanut sauce. Thai peanut sauce is sweeter than Ugandan, just to give you an idea.
In two of the pictures, there is a plate of yellow mash looking stuff that is called "matokie". Matokie comes from the banana family, it looks like a little banana when they are still green. and they grow in clusters like the banana. Matokie is a staple in Uganda; it doesn't really have a flavor, has the consistency of spaghetti squash and mashed potatoes mixed together. They pour a really good meat broth over it and eat it that way. I liked it but Curt hates matokie :)
The purple and white looking food is their version of a yam. Looks nothing like our yams, has a chalky consistency and not much taste. They always had fruit, bananas, pineapple or mango. Their fresh fruit was the best.

Random Pictures

These are random pictures of Ugandan life. The 3rd picture down is a huge billboard that says, "Say no to Sugar Daddies." It had a picture of a council man, a student, a sugar daddy and a community member. I guess Uganda has a huge problem with young girls, basically selling themselves to rich men for college fees. The rich men will take care of them during college in exchange for other fees. So much so that they need billboards to promote saying no. We drove by it everyday and it cracked us up every time we saw it.
Every morning we drove straight through the city on our way to Wakiso and every morning we would see huge groups of men standing around. We still dont know what they were doing....maybe it was their job to stand around? I dont know :)

They had a few supermarkets there but they were mostly used by foreigners. The natives used small markets that were every where. You could basically set up a stand in your front yard and sell products. Then of course they had large open markets where people brought their products to sell. All the meat was out in the open. Its not cut as nicely as our meat here :) They just start hacking away at the meat and leave bone and fat on it. So when you eat it, you have to eat around a leg bone, not like ribs here :) It was quite interesting.

The Hill

So the driving in Uganda is indescribable. Chaotic to the point that you think..., "how are we even getting anywhere" or, "how are we even still alive?". Thank the Lord that we had the BEST driver in the universe taking us around everyday. But not only was the driving from one side of the city to the next everyday bad enough, before we got to the house we had to encounter the "Hill". I swear to you this thing was straight up. And Cabugo (probably not how you spell it but it is phonetically correct) was a master at getting the 30 passenger bus up it everyday. I kid you not, there were houses on one side of the hill and a cliff on the other. I swear to you I got saved again every time we drove up it. One time it had rained so much and it was to slippery and muddy to make it up the hill so he had to stop in the middle, let us all out and we walked the rest of the way. The pictures of the hill are us walking down the hill the next morning to get to the bus that they had to park at the college. And yes, that is a road in Uganda.