Wow, it’s been two months since my last update! But if you follow me on FB I do a lot of updates via pictures and posts. Our building project is going incredibly fast. Our dormitory is so huge that we were able to put a dividing wall and turn it into both the boy’s and girl’s dormitory. This is going to save us a lot of money and time. Also, during the school year almost all of our kids are in boarding school except the 14 and younger group, which is shrinking every year. Our giant dormitory should be finished in about another three weeks.
Meanwhile, we are beginning the Administrative/Temporary Staff Living Building. The roof is going up on the dormitory so the bricklayers can begin on this other building. Because we do not have the funding for my home, or the other missionary or the Warden (Children’s Manager) homes, we will have to live in our offices until we do. I really pray that won’t be for longer than this year. It’s really very difficult to live where you work as we have been doing it for over four years now and for myself, it is beginning to wear me down as there is never a moment of quiet. My mornings of “quiet time” with God always come with music blasting in my ear buds to drown out the kids right outside my window, literally. Really praying to have mine and my staff’s own little houses before this year ends, just for our emotional well-being.
But before these little homes we still must build our kitchen and storerooms for all our food. This Wednesday we are preparing to level the land for both the Administrative building and the kitchen, believing and taking huge leaps of faith that they will be built by July. Where we live now, there is a big piggery combined with a giant rabbit and chicken farm. It is literally less than 100 yards from my bedroom window and our kitchen. The odor is overpowering so I sleep with my windows closed at night in this hot and dry season. So, I just tell God that we simply must get out of here and I have only paid rent up to June. We are walking in incredible faith because we have an incredible God who knows incredible people who sow incredible seed.
In January I got typhoid and took my treatment for ten days. One month later it returned. Then I had to do a fifteen day treatment with drugs so strong that my joints all over ache, even now five days after being done with my treatment. Yesterday, I got a typhoid vaccine as obviously mine had run out. It lasts three years. Well, in posting these things, a wonderful friend from California has offered to pay for every one of our kids and staff to get the vaccine! We are beyond thrilled, seriously.
Our kids get typhoid three, four times a year sometimes. While at school they drink from a borehole, many times just cupping their hands to catch the water to drink and there is no soap to first wash their hands, yet all day they touch everything! Typhoid can be passed even in food if the cook does not properly wash hands after using the latrine. All this to say that we are extremely happy that our kids and staff will be typhoid free for three years, saving us a ton of money on medicine and tests and driving back and forth every day to get an IV drip twice a day for five days per kid. It consumes us at times. We praise God for this blessing!! The hospital in Kampala City, the one most missionaries go to, are the ones who are going to come out and give us the vaccines at our home!
I am just so excited about and supremely humbled by all these things that God is doing in our lives. After four years of waiting, we will finally get to move to our new home this summer. I just know it in my spirit. Things in South Sudan are still not good. They are currently on lockdown due to high numbers of Covid and they don’t have the medical equipment at the largest hospital to handle any of these things. A friend of mine just lost his daughter as the doctors stood around and did nothing because they didn’t even have oxygen for her. I really don’t know what would have become of us if we were still there. Daily I thank my God for all that He has done and I thank Him for ALL of the many, many people who have helped us and continue to do so. I will never get tired of saying thank you! Because of you and because of Uganda’s huge heart for the refugee, we do not feel like refugees. May God bless you ever so much more in every way.