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  Mbarara, Uganda
Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Ok, this is a long one, so get comfortable.....

After a week of using a pit latrine toilet we both feel like we've had a good workout on our thigh muscles! Have a look at the photo of the toilet, you'll see what we mean. This is as a result of our 'mission' trip to an area called Mbarara.

We had a busy week before this trip. We visited a local orphanage which was a real example of Christians practically showing God's love to the world. Two men called Joseph and Moses run this home for almost one hundred boys on such a small budget. They have a female colleague who looks after girls at another house. These boys are from the ages of 5 to 20. We took photos of this visit because we took balloons for the boys to play with but sadly our camera memory card let us down and about a weeks worth of photos went missing

Mud huts in Nyungu

. These included photos of the source of the River Nile at Jinja and the Bujigali Falls. We saw a river ferry loaded with people and goods that had no cover and yet was making about an 8 hour journey across Lake Victoria.

Back to the trip....

The way of life in the remote bush area of Mbarara is a life without running water, or much water at all, no electricity, no roads,  limited food supplies and very basic housing. In the year 2007 people still really do live in mud huts in the world, it's not something you can understand until you see it. This meant we carried a weeks supply of water and food with us from Kampala.

We spent 6 days with Pastor Gichuru, Pastor Fred, Aggrey our interpreter and Grace our cook visiting Reverend David who oversees a group of churches for Gichuru under GJET, his evangelism ministry. We visited churches in Kigarama, Ibare, Bushara and Kagaramira.

We were both quite overwhelmed at the reception we would get at each church. Due to the limited facilities at these churches (ie none) we would eat lunch at Rev

Our hosts in Nyungu

. David's house each day and then drive to the churches. The people of the Chucho would be waiting for us and welcome us with songs and smiles. They would often have been arriving at the church since 9am that morning because of the long distances they walked. At one church one of the ladies had walked 30km one way just to be at the service.After the service we would be fed.....always some goat! and maybe some chicken and matoke (steamed banana like mash). We were given gifts of two goats, three chickens and a sheep.

Gichruru asked us to preach at these church services, which were at least four hours long! Sarah started it off on the Tuesday with a great word about worship. Sarah preached for about 30 mins, about a hour short of what they expect, so Pastor Fred filled in too! Tom followed for the next three days with preaches on the Armour of God and the Holy Spirit. We were both blessed to be given the chance to do this and we really felt God speak to us both and enable us to preach, bearing in mind we've never done it before.

One of those chickens we were given sadly never made it back to Kampala. That's because Tom is now an official expert at slaughtering a chicken. Don't read on if you're squeamish. Basically you take the chicken which has it's feet tied together and you rip out some of the feathers on the neck

pit latrine

. You then take a sharp knife and cut through the chickens neck until the head is off. The body moves around a lot so you have to hold on. Once it stops you then remove the feathers. In Africa you get your chicken like this, not neatly packaged from Tesco. Again, see the photo. 

Sadly our trip was cut short by three days because of car trouble. On the first evening whilst travelling there the car fell down a pothole. We weren't travelling on roads but rather tracks, and even these are very bad with BIG potholes everywhere. It was probably about three feet deep and the car actually grounded on the axle, leaving the wheel hanging. It badly damaged the wheel (again, see the photo!) We managed by a miracle after praying to push the car out with the help of three passer's by. We had prayed and God really helped us. If you looked at how the car was stuck, you would have said there was no way you could push it out by hand. That set the tone for the trip in terms of God looking after us because the journey home was one problem after another. We had been driving the damaged car all week over the roughest journeys you can imagine and this had further damaged the buckled wheel. We had no choice but to drive home and hope that the car could be fixed en route. On that morning we woke and found another Tyree was completely flat. We changed it for the spare one which was in very bad condition. The buckled wheel caused the tyre to shred after only a few kilometres. By God's grace we made it to the nearest village which had a mechanic with a tyre pump. We changed the flat tyre for the shredded one and drove on to the next big town called Kazo where the garage there was able to fix the wheel by welding the buckled bolt back in place. We thought the journey home would now be ok. However, another pothole later and the roof rack, which had been damaged due to the first pothole because the impact had caused the brackets to loosen, came flying of the roof fully laden and smashed onto the bonnet. It should have cracked the windscreen but the only damage was a dented roof and bonnet. Praise God. We therefore had to squeeze four of us in the back so that the third row of seats could be filled with the luggage from the roof. The two live chickens we had in the boot seemed unscathed!

We are enjoying our last few days in Kampala, except for the very frequent power cuts! Next stop is Iganga where we are visiting the child we sponsor through Compassion and then on to Nairobi. We're taking the Uganda Post Bus to Iganga which should be an interesting journey.

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Poor chicken!	Sarah preaching	The Equator	The shredded tyre
Tom preaching	Typical street scene in Mbarara area	Villagers in field

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