I Made It!

Hello from Kampala, Uganda!!

After two nights of travel with VERY LITTLE sleep, our group arrived in UGANDA!! I still can't quite get over the fact, I am in AFRICA!

We arrived at 7:45am today Uganda time,-11:45pm yesterday IL time. It took us about 1 1/2 hrs to go thru customs, and then another hour to get to our hotel. After arriving and getting checked in, we had about 1 hour to RELAX, before eating lunch and heading out to experience Compassion in Uganda. We went to the Kansanga Child Survival Project which has a program which focuses on teaching new mothers family planning, prenatal care , and infant and toddler care. The project manager, started with a worship and then expained what they do here. We got to sit in on a class for mothers and their infants and learned about the home visits they do with the mothers once or twice a month to make sure they are giving proper care to their child. There are approximately 30 mothers they minister to and I think almost every one of them, and their little ones were there today. One thing I like about Compassion is how they show us everything they do. Today they had on hand the infants records, which have recorded every visit they have had with the mother to document her progress. It also has the child's immunizations, Dr. records, everything you could think of, to make sure the child is being treated correctly.

We also watched as some of the women there, made necklaces, out of strips of paper,. They sold these to help support their families. They even asked us to sit down with them and showed us how to roll up the paper on little pins, then when it was completed were used as the beads.

Lets just say that I have NO future in jewelry making! It was also neat to watch them sit around in a group,while doing this, and every once in awhile, one of the women would start singing a worship song very softly and before you knew it, they were all belting it out dancing and praising Jesus. It was almost like you had stepped back into another era in time. Things definitely move at a slower pace here, unless you are on the roadways, then its a whole different story. We also went on home visits of three different women in the program. More on that later.

Well, its really late here, and I have to be up and ready to go at 7:00am. I will leave you with some pictures from today. The kids are awesome! Always smiling and happy, even when, their living conditions are horrendous. As you will see they are big HAMS and love to have their pictures taken and look at themselves in the viewfinder. We started out with babies today, but the older kids just kept showing up.

Enjoy!