On Sunday morning we got to go to University Community Fellowship (or UCF; the church that we are joining in ministry with) and it was such a blessing to be back there. This is only our third trip to Uganda and to UCF but there are many people that remembered our names and greeted us as friends. It was a joy to worship with them. The church is currently raising funds to build a more permanent building (they have been meeting in a tent for the last 8 years or so) to worship in and so there is construction happening all around. Currently they are working on the foundation and the progress has been slow because of the soft ground that is all around the city.
Monday was spent in language class in the morning followed by an hour with our language coaches before lunch. After lunch we studied the new phrases we learned by listening to the recordings we made with our language coaches, and we played cards with Erin and Trey.
Today (Tuesday), after language class, we took a trip to downtown Kampala and my language coach, Rhona, was our guide. A taxi took us to the "taxi park" which is a large open lot with thousands of taxis (van-type vehicles) waiting to be loaded with people going to various places. It is so chaotic! We spent about 3 hours in town looking at places to shop and trying to get our bearings. Rhona took us to a couple of places to look at some used cars to get some ideas of what we could expect when we make a purchase. When we got back from out trip we were so tired and dirty that we just laid low this evening.
Tomorrow we will gear up for another day of language learning with this basic schedule:
8:15-8:30 devotions
8:30-10:00 learning strategies and practices for language acquisition
10:00 break for tea time
10:45 head to a place nearby to practice our new phrases
11:00-11:45 walk around and try to use our new phrases and words with the local people
12:00-1:00 meet with our language coaches to learn new phrases and review
Thursday and Friday will hold similar schedules, and we may go eat at a traditional Ugandan restaurant on Thursday afternoon. At this point we will probably stay here at Matoke a bit longer than expected since there is not a place for us to move into yet. We are thankful for your prayers and encouragement we have received during this time!
***I am sorry if some of you are wishing for more pictures on here and I just wanted to explain why:
Most places we go we stand out like sore thumbs, there is usually the four of us white people (locals call us "mzungus"), sometimes we are with another missionary too. We get stared at or called to and it is hard to blend in or be discrete. What would make us stand out even more is if we were taking out a camera to snap pictures of these people or places. In order to keep our profile as low as possible we try not to do things that make us stand out even more (i.e. taking pictures). We try to take our camera as often as possible and I hope that I gan get some more photos up in the future to give you ideas of where we are and what we are doing.
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