Thursday

This shall be a shorter report than our customary epistle to our readers back in America. Our fearless dance team leader, Katie, is already asleep. Today proved more challenging than previous days at the schools. As we arrived at Idoome, all three of us (Katie, Jenna, and Alex) were feeling unwell. However, with God's help, we managed to push through this and maintain enough energy to dance and even play "tag" and "island" with the kids. And praise God for the breeze!! We prayed at the beginning of the day that it would persist throughout the day and it did! It even got stronger as the day went. One highlight at Idoome school was listening to the kids sing along to the songs that we have been dancing to this week. At Gateway, despite still feeling under the weather, Katie led the kids in finishing up their dances to perform tomorrow. Although sick, when Katie was dancing, she had as much energy and enthusiasm as the kids! We are bushed, but we can't wait for tomorrow's performance!

Sixty minutes down the pot-holed, red roads outside of Jinja, we (the Widows & Orphans team) arrived in the poorest section of the town. Filled with women and children, the simple mudpacked homes were surrounded with piles of fermenting garbage. As we left the bus, we were welcomed by the usual mob of children; big brown eyes and white teeth, welcoming us to their home. We brought shovels and rakes, put on gloves, and, along with an old wheel barrow and a dozen plastic bags, we began to rake the littered garbage into piles that would later be burned. The kids followed us and, while most of the women watched us curiously from the doorway of their homes, there were a dozen or so who pitched in with the effort to help. After three hours of work in the hot African sun, we managed to clean a small portion of the slum area. After lunch, we had the opportunity to visit the home of the pastor who ministers to these people. Although he could afford better, he has chosen to make his home in the middle of this desperate place. His wife greeted us and presented us with gifts of earrings and necklaces that she had made. It was a humbling experience. After this, we gathered in their church which ammounted to a scaffolding of tree branches over which they threw a blue tarp. The rest of the team prayed while Chris presented the gospel to a group of women and children. At the end, three came forward to accept Christ. Most of the women we spoke to were HIV positive. We praise the Lord that many of them already knew the Lord. The children, some of whom did not even have clothes to wear, clung to our fingers as if they couldn't get enough love. We left with much to think about.

The Construction Team had another busy and productive day at the job site. We continued repairing the trusses, including patches, alignments, reinforcements, and finishing. The day included man handling several old trusses into the repair staging area, requiring the entire team on the site to participate in the heavy lifts. Bolt repair and hardware refurbishing continued to allow for use in the trusses. Old timbers were sorted, cleaned and stripped of usable hardware. No brick work today as the rubbish pile had been reduced of most all usable bricks, which were now smartly stacked on the perimeter of the rubbish pile. Lunch today was peanut butter sandwiches and granola bars....a welcome rest and re-energizing. We also got to meet Steven, the new EMI Construction Manager who will be supervising several projects of which Lubas is one. At the end of the day, we hopped on bota bota's for a quick motorcycle ride back to our lodgings.