We've meet the government officials and started construction

On Monday Pastor Francis took us to see the government officials. We visited the police Commissioner, the Deputy Mayor and the Chief of Internal Security. They welcomed us and encouraged us in the task we have ahead of us - the start of the building of Bethel Bible College. They greeted each of us individually. The Cheif was particularly interesting as he spoke about the LRA attacks on Soroti in 2003. 

We have really enjoyed getting to know Pastor Francis and his wife, Maggie and three young children. They have a wonderful attitude of praising God and often will lead us in an African Christian song (so much soul in it!). 

We went to Pastor Francis' church on Sunday and were greatly encouraged that in a small shelter made from sticks people were praising God and giving him honour and glory. Our team sang three songs from the front (with Steve's guitar - they were very interested in this as they had no musical instruments, but they certainly did not need it for timing or tune)

 

There is poverty here but lots of warmth and friendliness. People are constantly walking along the road with loads on their heads or riding on the back of bikes (they are the most popular taxis here). When they see us white people (mzungus) they look and stare and when we say 'Yoga' (spelling?) (hello) they wave and call back 'Yoga'.

 

Work on the building started today. We are building like people have been building for thousands of years - all manual and no machinery. This means we are carrying small loads of mortor (like concrete) around the site to the brick layers in mortor pans, and passing hand made bricks along a long line from the pile to the brick layers. We enjoy the interaction with the local builders. It is unusal to see girls building so they get a kick out of joking around with them. We made much progress.

 

More building tomorrow. We'll keep you posted.

 

Our love,

 

The Ugandan Team

(Naomi Tondl)

safe in soroti

hopefully this works, because we really dont know what we're doing when it comes to blogs. But we'll give it a shot!

 

the rest of the plane trips were uneventful, and we arrived in Entebbe on Friday afternoon. We were warmly received by Frank's bacpackers for our first night and even woke up to a tropical thunderstorm on Sat morning. Very loud thunder!

 

From Franks we set out on the road adventure of a lifetime to Soroti, it was at this point we relised we weren't on Australias well kept roads anymore with pot holes the size of small swimming pools and cyclists as far as the eye could see and even in blind spots. The road rules are ... different... but praise God the team arived safely to a warm welcome from the members of a local church. After breif introductions we were treated to a great home cooked meal by the pastors wife, Maggie. That drew us to the close of that night...

 

This morning we went to our first Ugandan church service. What an amazing experience that was. We were again so warmly welcomed even though we think we made it start an hour and a half late...(but thats the beauty of African time) We sang praise songs with the Ugandan people - with the language swapping often between English and Eteso, the local language here. Some members of the team shared their testimonies and we also sang some Aussie worship songs.

 

We were treated to a lovely morning tea and had time to bond with some of the members of the congregation, particularly the many children.

 

Thankyou so much for all your prayers, we really do feel that we are being held in his mighty hands.

 

Team Uganda :)

Flight to KL OR is that flight to Khell

ok we are in KL air port, and it's about 3am oz time...

we made it safely after a colourful flight here where we exprienced turbulence that was generally conceived to be the worst any of the team members have ever seen.

to describe it in full, the orange juice of the girl in front of us left her cup to head straight for the roof, where it remaned for a least a full 5 seconds, time enough for the girl to pick up her pillow and cover her head so than when the orange juice eventually fell she was able to catch it.

The whole plane was screaming apart for those of us on team who for them, this was their first flight.... Thats right Matt and Steve, who were also stoked that the food was 'free', were too confused by the screaming to regester the severity of the turbulence.

Mum's and Dad's
none of your childrens are damaged and will all be returned to you in perfect working order...we hope.

final thought on the turbulence...
it was preceded by a good half an hour of hard core laughing, mostly initiated by those of us who's reaction to shock is laughter....
thinking about it now is still making us laugh

we are about to depart for Dubai, and then Uganda - still with another 12 or so hours of travel ahead of us, we are feeling tired but verymuch in high spirits.

Blog to you soon
Team Uganda

Summer Teams Training

The team is having a blast getting equipped and prepared for heading overseas!

Welcome to the Uganda Summer Team blog!

Welcome to the International Teams Uganda Summer Team blog. Here we will be sharing our experiences, updates and prayer points whenever we get a chance to jump on the internet. There might not be heaps of opportunity to update this whilst we are away, so if you don't hear anything we're fine... it's OK Mum - I'm fine!!!!
Photos coming soon...