Blackout in Uganda...

Greetings Seekers,

Praise God! Our luggage arrived from Nairobi, but not until we had worn the same clothes for four days. And, Kathy's shirt reappeared. It's been a glorious day!

Now for the bad news....as we began to retire for the evening, we came home to luggage, but no electricity. Blackout in Uganda. The power came back on after 2 hours, but then it was time to eat dinner, and seeing as how we had no lunch, Michelle had to eat three plates of food before anyone could move from the table.

After dinner, as we pushed our chairs away from the table, removed Michelle's plate from her death grip, and… THE POWER WENT OUT AGAIN AND WE HADN'T SHOWERED YET!

Would you like to know what it is like to try and bath with a flashlight hanging from your teeth? We were that desperate. The good news in the calamity is that Jack's Mag light is back.

Just kidding...the power came back on after 10 minutes and we were able to bath in comfortable, lighted conditions. We smell grrrreeeeaaaatttttt now!

Now on to some serious stuff...while there may have been a blackout in Uganda, the light of Jesus is shining ever so brightly in his people here in this corner of the world.

Our day began with our first trip to Bweya Village. While driving, we prayed mightily in the name of Jesus against the enemy that was so present on the last trip. Pastor Peter, the head pastor of Gaba Community Church, gave us on Wednesday a great reminder of the Ugandan history of the spiritual warfare that consist of witchcraft, demon worship and the casting of spells. In fact, Pastor Peter reminded us that before Gaba planted its church in this community, and even after the planting, the head witch doctor in ALL of Africa resided a few feet from where we're staying.

Moving on, we arrived in Bweya to find the bridge washed out. We were forced to find an alternate route. Finally arriving at Mercy orphanage, we found it to be rather sparse with children. There were 3 sick children, one of which appears to be days away from death clearly due to starvation. Much to our surprise, we learned that a Catholic Mission team made a visit and decided to sponsor most of the children for one year of schooling. This is a HUGE praise. However, in talking with the children, we learned that none of them had eaten that day and many of them had not eaten the entire week.

After spending some time with the children, the group left to shop at the open market for food. We bought rice, beans, oil, sugar, salt, onions, cabbage, tomatoes and made rice and beans topped with cabbage, onion, tomato stew that we made and served. The truth we now struggle with is, while they ate today, we don’t know when they’ll eat again. Walking away from this situation is very hard and we know that God cares, without a doubt God cares.

While we were leaving, one of the Mercy boys handed us four pieces of paper. These torn pieces of paper contained the following prayer requests, verbatim:
To be honest and faithful & Christian foundation,
Orphanage funds
Friends to stand with us,
Medicine,
Enough daily food,
God to open closed doors for us

Please join us in praying for these children.

We love you, we miss you, and may God bless you.

Michelle, Kathy and Sarah