Lets Blog!

So, i know it's been a while since a proper blog, so i guess lots should have happened but at the same time lots hasn't happened! Life goes on with bible reading (of which i'm behind) lectures, work duties (more cleaning the classroom) and cooking!!
Since my last 'proper' update i had a late birthday celebration during work duty- joel poured the water we'd been using to wash sheets straight over my head! apparently that's the tradition here in Africa when it's your birthday you get soaked! 9 i might have to bring this tradition back to england!) i also broke my toe (i think) by dropping a hoe on it whilst weeding! luckly it's doing much better now :)
lectures have been on prayer and intercession, praise and woship which was deffinatly on of the best weeks so far, and mission evangalism. During praise and worship week we did a personality test, i am a conscientious instigator (and no i didn't have a clue what that meant either) but bacially i'm organised and i like to get jobs done! however it also means i'm quiet pffffffffffffffffffft!!!!!!
We've also had Tess' birthday, she joined the 19 club and for her birthday we had a dance party which was so so much fun :) We also continued the clebrations with a day trip to Kampala as me Tess and Becca, it was muchous fun, we started of our day with breakfast (fancy coffee and pan au chocolat) and then wonderd around the 2 small shopping centers, got pedicures and a dreadlock (which is now half fallen out :( ) we got pizza for lunch at New York Kittchen which had these massive slices of pizza and cup cakes galore (i was to full to want a cup cake but nect time i'm there!!!) what was funny was that we all experienced slight reverse cultuer shock! everything was so western compared to base and we felt like proper tourists rather than missionaries- i can't even imagina how excited i will get over things when i get back to England!
During that week our small group (chosen generation) also had a meal which me and Katie cooked in true western style- we had grilled cheese and fruit slad with yoghurt and the crepes with lemon and sugar and butter an cinamon! It was such an amazing meal!
The week of the 17th saw lectures on spiritual warfare and the start of getting up at 5am! the point of which is to conduct spiritual warfare as we perpare for outreach so the timming was prettu good! unfortunalty my body objects to getting up at 5am and running on so little sleep and i spent 2 days in bed! At one point my staff thought i had malaria but PTL it was just over tiredness and now i am getting to rest more duing the day so hopefully i will continue to cope (however you can continue to praye for me!!!) Lectures that week ended on thurday because our teacher had his werdding introcuction at the weekend (wanna know what that is? read on!!!) so on friday we got a pretty chill day as we just had to clean the class room and then we got to go and relax in town which was needed after a long aand exhausting week! That day finnished in the awsome way- cheese fondu!!! I love having a swiss girl on our DTS!!!
Saturday- susan and charles' introduction. This is a ugandan tradition and is the official engagement of a couple, it's hosted by the girls family and the boys family turn up and there's a big joke running throughtout and they pretend that they don't know what they're there for! But then the girls family all parade and dance round as a welcoming thing and they choose the boy out of the crowed of the boys family! It was very colourful and fun even though it was long and lots of talking in luganda which we didn't understand! It ended with the boys family bringing gifts and gifts there were so many at leats 50 fruit baskets and then other gift boxes and a sofa and arm chair and a cow and chicken and lots more! unfortunalty i don't have many pictures because my camera broke- bit after many hours or praying and a nail file it's fixed! :D we had to wear traditional wear of a chicoi ( i think i spelt that wrong) i cant describe it so here's a picture:

Then this past coming week has certainly been a different one! We stared the week preparing for our adventure (keep reading!) which involved a zulu dance- not for mzungu's! and lots of skit rehursals! Then on wednesday we had a love feast to say farwell to some people on the base so we got some amazing food and then headed of on our adventure to lingera island! we took a 2 hour boat ride to the island which has to ben the most crazy journey i have ever had! First the bus got stuck driving down the the lake edge, we ended up leaving 2 hours late and so and hour in to the jouney (at 7) it got dark, and then the storm hit! No joke we had wind and thunder and lightning and ouring heavy rain and iour boat- basically a canoe with a motor on the back! we got drentched without any jumpers or coats- but being typical chirstians and YWAMers we didn;t let this dampern our spirits and the second half of the journey consisted of lots of praise and worship songs!!!
Our stay on the Island way just as exciting, the base there is tiny! we had smaller rooms and so me Tess and Dama shared a room, me aand Tess shard an almost double bed- which was so so comfy! :) lessons continued as normal in a md hut! how crazy is that and then in the afternoons we had a crusade- basically we set up speakers in a field and preached and did our dances and skits and saw so many people get saved :) i got to spend this time lust showing love to the little kids although i couldn't understand them it's amazing how God can just promt you to meet there needs and so it was amazing to see and 7 year old girl light up when i held her baby sister so that she could join in the dancing! the whole experience was great and then when we went back the next day the kids came back and found us and we played games and sang songs like the hokey kokey with them- unfortunatly the crusade didn;t actually happen because the rain hit and it hit hard!!! we ran to find cover and eventually hid on a tin hut which turned out to be the police station! Me and tess then went back ou in the rain to watch the local football match- the school kids beat the community, but it was the craziest match the whole 'pitch' was a puddle and most of them were playing without shoes! Saturday was our last day on this island- we got up at 6 and climbed the hill of the island- the view was beautiful you could see so far and the other islands in Lake victorian and just miles and miles of water! our time ended with a talk from Aunt Catherine about the YWAM base on Lingera, the base does such an amazing job in administeing health care to the island and surroundithen ng islands and giving immunisations. However the base needs prayers they are lacking in staff (only 3 of them) and they also need provision of things like a computer and photocopier! so pray people! We left the sunny island and travelled back in the day- i finally have a watch strap tan and got back on the bus just and the rain started to fall!
and now? we are relaxing in flavours as base internet still isn't working but i just had a bacon and egg sandwich so it was worth getting up early to wash all our muddy clothes so we could get into town early :)

mini update!

So internets still down and i i don't have loads of time to give you a full on update right now, i'll get there at some point. But i have some prayer points:
Internet is still down because they need to get some more cables in, pray that this happens quickly!
This week we started getting up at 4:45am to pray for outreach for an hour before quiet time, i'm starting to understand why this is so improtant, we need to be eqipped and it's an awsome way to show God how serious we are about serving him. BUT i need more grace and understanding, i also need to me physically cabable, my body responds to early starts and lack of sleep y being sick (not very helpfull) in order to get abough sleep i also have to go to bed really early, this makes getting other things such as Bible reading done very difficult so i can feel myself starting to get stresses about it. So please just pray for me about all of this!
For me you can also pray that during this time of tiredness and illness i continue to seek and find God, it can be very difficult to lose focus and just get angry rather than remebering why i'm here! After tha amazing breakthrough that i had i really don't want to fall back now!

Outreach , comes in 3 weeks now, we have lots to do and as a DTS we are all struggling with the tthings we have to learn and prepare, we never seem to stop! so we all just need peace and rest and strenght during this time. We also need saftey on outreach and god just to show us where he wants us!

As a side note, i am doing really well, i have been ill but am recovering now, it's not all negative here honest! We took a trip to kampala on sunday which was really good and we got to sit in a proper western coffee shop and eat pan au chocolate and pancakes and have pizza for lunch! So as life goes on it's hard but it's good and i know everything i am doing is worth it even on the tough days!

Week 7

 

I'm currently sitting in the source cafe in Jinja with a chocolate chip cookie and an iced mocha :)~ so you could say i'm doing pretty good, internet on the base is still down, I think they got it back for a few hours before the wires got stolen again!

Well this week my small group leader Nehemiah told me that I’m getting louder, I guess that means I'm officially at home here now! Tuesday was an exciting day because we finally found out where we're going on outreach! Kenya and the Tanzania! Not sure exactly where in those countries or what it is we'll be doing there but it's good to know now where we are headed, it's going to be a good yet testing time for us, no less because starting next week until the end of outreach we have to get up at 5am to spend on hour praying for outreach before quiet time! I am excited for going on outreach though but I know we are going to be stripped back to basics even more than we already are and I know that these experiences e.g. sharing a mattress with 2 others will be challenging but will really grow me!

This week I also started reading 1 of my books for my DTS, “it is really you God?” by Lorren Cunningham- the founder of YWAM, it tell s the story of YWAM and how it started but it's also really encouraging so I would recommend that you find a copy and read it!!!!!!

Thursday we had a day (morning) or prayer and fasting, which is funny because this weeks ;lectures were on orayer and intercession, so we got to prectice what we had learnt! I think the most important thing I learnt this week was to pray with expectancy and faith that what you are praying for will happen, I mean sometime we don't have faith because we don't want to be let down when our timing doesn;t fit with Gods, but i've learnt that this week we just have to have faith and more faith and more faith and continue to have fait that our prayers will be answered when the timing is right! I feel it was a very productive morning and am excited for some things, but I cant tell you about them yet.... hehe

Friday, ah yes Friday, I think I broke my toe..... I know I need to stop cutting. Hurting my feet, thus time it wasn't hitting a rock or falling over. I dropped a hoe on my foot whilst weeding for work duty! My foot is now steri stripped and plastered, partly to stop the dirt getting in, partly to stop me trying (and failing) to bend it and partly to stop the nail falling off! I'm fine tho! :) I was even fine enough to (stupidly) try and run during boot camp- that failed but I did get a good ab work out :)

I think that's about it for this week! Although one last strange thing this week I have been homesick for lakeside- typical Essex girl I know! Hahaha! So if you wanna pray for me about that then please do, and also that I have a very clear instruction about what God wants me to do at the end of this year! Missing y'all ( in the words of Becca) have a blessed week!

Take a deep breath week 6 was a busy one!

So sorry this post has taken a while! Internet went down at the weekend again because a wire has been missing! It's hard to think back on what has been happening actually!

We had our Holy Spirit week starting on the 26^th lectures felt like RS lessons at times with discussions about the trinity and all the omni words! On Wednesday Ella came down to Hopeland, she is a Year For God student that started in February and is on her placement in Soroti at Amacet orphanage, talking to her has really confirmed to me that I want to go up and do that so come January I plan to head up there for at least 3 months of my placement and then I will come back here (to Hopeland) and finish up my time at the pre-school!

Thursday was my birthday!!!!! It was a very emotional day! I had a pile of cards that had been sent from home which was really nice but did make me miss home a bit! But the girls then did a really good job of cheering me up with chocolate and other gifts which was very very sweet of them and I love them so much for it! We also got a cake at fellowship at Tim and Jackie's which was AMAZING (thanks Ella!) I also got to skype mum and dad on my birthday for like a whole hour which was really nice and such a birthday blessing PTL.

Friday... what a day! We concluded holy spirit week with a baptism of the spirit, and that was quiet an amazing time, to start with our leaders were totally humbling and washed our muddy, smelly feet! And we spent some time in worship, God just really moved in that time, people had their eyes opened to Gods heart and other people received deliverance from things like lies which had taken hold of them and how they viewed themselves, the enemy really stood no chance at that time!

As for me, I had spent the morning session sitting in prayerful, tearful worship as I committed everything I have, had and will be over to God. Letting go of anything is hard and although I'd thought that coming to Uganda was the end of me holding on to my plans it has become increasingly obvious over the last few weeks that I am still holding on to a lot. I have to admit that I left that morning session rather annoyed because I felt like God hadn't worked in my life, it's like I was giving and giving but God wasn't hearing me or I wasn't hearing him (much more likely) but the main point was that I just didn't understand why I didn't feel any different!

I sat through lunch, which we had as a DTS and was amazing food with chicken and beef, but I really couldn't enjoy my time I just felt mad and upset so I went back to the room and collapsed onto my bunk, what happened from here is hard to explain but what I can say is that after I don't know how long lying their crying with pins in needles in my head and this strange pain that I felt was consuming me and people surrounding me in prayer I finally sat up feeling like a different person, in fact feeling more like me! It was like I'd been freed and released from the person who was trying to live my life! I know that probably sounds odd but I don;t know how else to describe it! God had really worked in my life, I knew it this time for sure, I had my breakthrough and and it was amazing! Now don't get me wrong this was no quick fix, I know that I still have to continue committing myself and my life to God, I also know that I have to continue in prayer asking God to work on my character and turn me into the person he wants me to be. But for the first time in what seems like forever I feel like I’m facing in the right direction and what's funny (sort of) is that it wasn't until this happened that I even realised I had been facing the wrong one! So yes life is pretty good right now, in some ways it's got harder because being more 'myself' has made me realise how much further I still have to go and has also made me feel more homesick (prayer hint) but all I can do is glorify God for this, and to celebrate (well actually my birthday) we went...

WHITE WATER RAFTING!!!!!!!! yeahhhh I can officially say that I have swam I the river Nile! And been thrown into it by a 6ft wave! I had the life scared out of me but it was so so much fun and when we actually made it through a category 5 rapid without being flipped out of the raft I think our whole boat was pretty chuffed! However floating down the rapids was also pretty sweet (thank God for life jackets!) we also got some great food that day! Lunch was chibatti wraps- I had salami, ham, cheese and ketchup in mine :D I don't think I have ever been so excited to eat that type of meal that we would class as 'basic' at home!

Sunday we continued the birthday celebrations with Chinese food :) which was lush :) although I did have to move seats at one point as rain started coming through the ceiling in the middle of the massive storm! I also got to chat to some of the lovely people of Christ Church Billericay, unfortunately I couldn't skype them but it was lovely to chat to people and really made my day :)

Oh and I forgot about the party on Friday! To celebrate the birthday that month we had a 'surprise' party in the DTS classroom, what I find funny is in Uganda when it's your birthday they call you baby, I don't think I will ever find it normal for everyone to be saying to me 'we have a baby in the house' but I do like the fact that in this culture they only cut up and hand out half the cake and you get to eat the rest of it!!!!! how amazing is that- I might be remembering for my next birthday!

Now I’m pretty sure this is the longest post I’ve written yet and I do hope you haven't died of hunger or boredom before reading this sentence, but for now I will leave you and write about this weeks adventures another time!