Dts Graduation and holiday!

So the reason that i haven't blogged since we've been back is coz i've been on holiday!!! :) the first week back on base we just got our selves re-situated! at the end of the week my mum dad and brother flew out for graduation... graduation was a big day here we "put on smart" (looked pretty) preperation included prealling hundreds of irish potatos and cutting piled of greens!!!! Our graduation service included worship, speaches from our base and school leaders and performances of song which saw the DTS on our feet dancing our little cabina's off to some African pop! haha! we clebrated our first night of freedom with a trip to flavours cafe for dinner it was really great way to celebrate with our friends and some of our parents too!
while the parents were out here the took the tour of Jinja (not sure of what they thought of the cramed minni buses boda rides and posho and beans that i now call home!) it was really good to be able to share my new livestyle and living conditions with them though i now wont have to try and explain things so much when i come home because they know what things are like now! We took a nice holiday and gorilla safari tour in Queen Elizabeth national park and Bwinidi forest! i nearly got kidnapped by a chimp that very nearly landed out of a tree onto my head, and i have now officially been to the equator and trecked in the rainforest, which was very steep and so many times i got caught in the undergrowth and fell into some holes!!! However i did see gorillas which are amazing animals HUGE but so beautiful and they have such personalities, we also got to see an 8 month old baby which was thr cutest!!! The hotel lodge we stayed in nearly sent me into cuture shock, we had big beds and hot water and A BATH!!! i nearly cried!! haha, we then spent a few days in Kampala with Becca, unfortunatly i got sick with what has turned out to be a parasite! (YAY!) it was good to explore the city a bit more, if yyou ever find yourself in the city check out 1000 cups coffee shop for some amazing drinks and the national theatre for some more cultural experience, i'm sure Tim thoroughly enjoyed dancing up on stage whilst making music with a pot and spoon!!!
We ended the 2 and a bit weeks of family time together back in Jinja with a white water rafting trip on the nile! Mum and dad did surprisingly well the boat stayed upright the whole time however i did end up in the river twice, once bumping onto a rock and getting a lovely bruise, the second time the boat was stuck in a surfing wave and had to be evacuated however i had already been thrown overboard and was floating fdown the river on a kyak!
It was really good to see the family for a few weeks and catch up with home and recieve a whole suitcase of presents!! Thank you to every9one who sent me presents letters and cards! It's been sad to watch Mum dad and Tim return to nice sunny (hem i mean freezy freezy england) but i am excited to start work in the pre-school on base for the next 2 months and i know that i'm not ready to leave Uganda yet!

Bye for a while!

Okay so this is my last post for the next 8 weeks!!! I will be vannishing off the face of Uganda and vthe world of the internet to go and spread the good news of the gospel of Christ!
You might think its going to be really hard for me to be in a technology free wold for 2 months, but actually I'm really excited about it, i feel like i spend so much time checking facebook notifications i could have saved many spiritual lives in that time!! Don't get me wrong, i love catching up with people on facebook and e-mail so don't stop talking to me! But I'm excited to see how much God can use me when I'm away from these distractions!!
We leave on tuesday (hopefully) the date keeps changing but i know we'lll get there eventually in God's perfect timing! However not knowing what's happening (in true frican fashion) is something i do struggle with regularly!
and now some last minuit prayer points for the next 8 weeks:
Saftey as we travel and stay in new places
Good health and freedom from illness
Unity in our group
freedom from cultural difficulties
open hearts of us and the people we minister to so that we hear God
that we really reach peopl with the word of God
Peace as we minister in new and maybe challenging  environments
for God to work in our lives
That we don't get homesick over chirstmas!
For a fun, joyfull and blessed trip

Thanks! SSpeak to you in 8 weeks!!!

Week 11!!! DTS lecture phase nearly over!!

Happy Bonfire Night!!!! (i hate that i'm missing it!) Welll this week has been quite quiet, what's starnge is that it was our last full week of lectures before outreach, we have 3 days lectures and 2 days prep next week and then it's off to kenya which is crazy!!! (please pray that our visa's get sorted as we have no idea what is goin on with them right now!!!) This week base has been 'soaked' in worship thanks to the Precious Jewels team from the Philipines (they work with children who suffer trauma) It's been an amazing week and we've just been really submerged in worship (except wednesday night when i was so tired i fell asleep) but friday night (which was meant to be a bonfire and would have been perfect timing for fireworks night but it rained!!!) God really spoke to be though the lyrics "i'm tradin my sorrows, i'm trading my shame, i'm laying them down for the joy of the Lord" that just really struck me, we accept the forgiveness of our sins because it makes God happy, we may feel unworthy and like we don't deserve it (which is true) but that souldn't stop us recieving freedom in Christ because that's what God wants us to have it!! If we don't accept it then Jesus died in vain- which quite frankly sucks!!! Aside from that this week we had prayer and fasting for our outreach for our unity and God's provision! Lectures this week have been on world view which was pretty interesting and extremly useful for outreach! I think thats about it for now! We leave for Kenya in 7 days which is crazy but hopefully i'll get one more blog in before i leave!!! Be praying for our preperations and that we get everything sorted with peace!

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 :)

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!

Month uno!

So my mum told me that I haven't blogged in a while and I guess she's right so....

I've officially been in Uganda a month which is totally crazy- it doesn't feel like it's been that long at all and although I don't want to wish my time away it's nice that time is going by without too much effort!

The last week has been a bit of a roller-coaster, Sunday I went to Calvary chapel church which was good a bit of a mix between engligh/african church so that was interesting. We then went to flavours for lunch and I got these amazing kebab things and hot chocolate brownie with vanilla ice cream! YUM! The internet wires got stolen on Monday so we were cut of from the outside world again! We had work duties on Monday which involved cleaning the whole of the massive dinning room- that wasn't so fun! We did however got porridge afterwards, african porridge is very runny and you drink it, it's surprisingly nice especially with nutella!

On wednesday I did my first African grass cutting- know and slashing- you get a mettal pole with a sharp and an hack at the grass- it's hard work and blisters are inevitable! Gardening also happened on Friday when we spent an hour pulling up weeds, it had just been raining so we got extremely muddy! Thursday I got ill which was nasty I had a stomach ache and headache for a couple of days.

On the plus side, the talks were good (once they started, our speaker didn't turn up for the wek so we had a DVD instead!) I learnt a lot about deliverance and demons which was interesting!

Saturday was the best day I’ve had here so far, Iran! (about 1mile) Then had a lazy couple of hours before me Becca and Katie went into Jinja we went to the source for lunch and I got a cheese burger and an iced mocha! Which was amazing and cost the equivalent of £1.10 :D

we then went to Shalom orphanage in Bugembe (one of the local villages) and spent just over an hour there, they have about 20 kids there from 2-16 and we played games with them and they showed us their dances which they perform in churches and places which were really amazing. We joined in for a bit but the kids kept laughing at us so I guess that means we weren't very good!

Sunday I spent 2 hours washing and went into Kakira for some luch, we bought Rolex's which are chibatti and egg- LUSH :) I also got hit my a boda-boda, I’m not joking it just drove straight into me while I was talking to someone. I'm not hurt PLT however it did continue to try and drive through me once it realised it had hit me! That wasn't so fun!

I think that's all for now! I'll be back soon!

Finally internet is back!

 

Fellowship

so I have to tell you about Thursday night fellowship at Tim and Jackie's (the base leaders). It's a gathering of whoever wants to go on the base, there were about 15 people there, Tim spent some time sharing about holiness and how we should strive to live a holy life, it was a really powerful message and really encouraged us to pray for hatred of sin. We then played some AWSOME games!!! I will have to show you them once i'm home, but I was so much fun. I felt so at home and relaxed there, maybe for the first time I didn't leave something feeling exhausted or as if it had been effort which was such a blessing. So right now i'm just thankful so that time that allowed me to be refreshed and feel at home. The bad news was that the internet was taken down by a storm and repair is taking a while!

So we went into Jinja on saturday for some shopping and then we went to the kindfisher hotel on the edge of lake victoria which has an awsome swimming pool :) I got a cheeseburger and chips which was to die for!!!!!! it was good just to chill out away from the chaos of the base or town. There was an orphanage group in the pool when we were there and we played games with them and has them singing high school musical which was really funny :)

also been to out first african church service we went with our base leaders- curch starts at 9 so we went at 10:30 and it still went on till 1!!! it was exciting but the preach just went on and on and on and on....... it also rained during the talk so we had to stop and worship for a bit because you couldn't hear a thing!!

Dinner time here is exciting when we get chibati :) normally we get some combination of Irish potatoes, beans, rice, cabbage, spinnage and posho (which is don't really eat) so the food is mostly edible but not varied. Peanut butter has become my best friend especially with banana sandwiches for breakfast!!! I am however missing chocolate but rice and nutella for dinner one night was my best food invention so far! Pineapple here is actually amazing and seeing as I don't like it at home thats saying something, I’ve also braved eating watermelon and avocado so far which weren't as bad as back in England!

In other news, we have rats in our room, it fell through the hole in our celling one night and although the boys have gone up through the hole and found the nests they haven't got round to killing it yet!

I also braved going for a run! A couple of laps round the football pitch, good exercise but I missed the smooth paths of home rather than playing dodge the holes and jump some brambles, it was more like a steeplechase!

Work duties have started and so far I have had to clean the floor or our classroom by pouring buckets of water over the floor and then sweeping it out the door, I had my first experience of African farming, dropping seeds into holes and covering them with soil using my foot, after a couple of hours my feet we're a couple of Kg heavier and everyone was covered in mud!!!! I had wash up today which luckily wasn't to bad although didn't do my back any good which is currently killing me (prayer hint)

This week our speaker has been talking about sin, repentance and forgiveness, it's been really interesting to here what he has to say.

I have so much else to say but I just cant think right now! Anyways sorry about the really long post!