If I only had a picture

Today we had an interaction with Joyce (the girl who lives with us) and it really made me laugh. I wish we had a video...There are things living in a developing country that when we were in the U.S. we never thought of. Add onto that the fact taht we live pretty far into the bush. Well today Mary was trying on her Gomes (local Kiganda dress) that she just had made and I was talking to someone in the front room so she gave Joyce the camera to take a picture of her. Joyce was absolutely mezmorized by the video display, the fact that everywhere she moved the camera the picture on the screen changed. I walked in to watch her in total amazement, it reminded me of someone who was on some serious halucinagenic drugs. She just looked and slowly moved the camera and smiled. It is hard to explain but to see it would just crack you up. Joyce had never had a camera like that in her hands, but only seen people using them and never got a close look. So a whole new world was being shown to her and she was just amazed. In a world where ipods are something only to imagine and technology is a distant rumor a digital camera can be amazing. Just like yesterday, Geoff and Toby went to a village somewhere deep in teh bush(that means even deeper than we live) to look for a certain type of tree to make timber and the place we went is rarely visited by white people. So Toby drew quite the audience, some of the children there most likely have never seen a white person. They often will try to come up and touch you if they are not too afraid. There have been times when Geoff has tried to be friendly to a small child only to have them run away crying as they are so afraid of this strange creature. Something to get used to????? The picture is of one of our other girls, Angel carrying Kevin on her shoulders.

My two front teeth...etc.

Yest that's right Toby has lost his two front teeth. And just like you would expect he speaks with quite teh lisp. He is really enjoying all the comments about his gap, goal, pass thru you name it people have come up with some fun comments. The other picture is of some of "our kids" roaming the forest where we are clearing for our house. Today we had the pleasure of announcing in church the intentions of our family father "Uncle Mulu" to marry one of the other staff members later this year. The process for getting married around here would certainly be foreign to most westerners. It is not arranged, but the process first begins with getting permission from Uncle Jonnes to even consider the young lady. Then after much counseling and separate meetings the lady would be told of the mans intentions. Dating is highly discouraged and not allowed amongst staff members. But it really works to help people walk in integrity and purity. It also protects against heart ache and disease prevention. So yesterday we went shopping for the ingredients for supper for 35 people, 2 stalks of matoke, 18 pounds of rice, 7 1/2 pounds of meet, tomatoes, onions and cooking oil. A real feast for our kids, but they are excited and wanting to celebrate with them. ***Let me edit this. The number of people we had there for supper was 51...Wow we are a large family. That is 24 children living in David family and then the other extended family 2, old boys and the staff families that work there. It was good. We sang, shared some encoragement, ate cake before dinner and then of course had the feast. Good night

Lack of Ideas

It seems that most of the time when I sit down to write one of these I am so tired and tonight is no different, so please excuse my lack of creativity :-/
Let me explain the pictures. The first one is Mary working with our kids from David family on their reading. She has made it a practice that during their school holidays they come over every day for an hour of reading tutoring. The way the school system works here is on a trimester system, where each year is divided into 3 terms. In between each term they have 4 weeks off of school. So when we first moved here we thought that the holidays would bring a slowdown to our lives, but as we quickly found out it actually adds to our schedules. The next picture is of the carpentry students at NHVI completing their practical end of term exam. The next pic is of some monkeys looking in the window of the guest house where we stayed last weekend, and our own monkey (Kevin) in his super suit doing some sort of super maneuver...

Yesterday Geoff traveled deep into the bush to counsel and meet with one of our young men that is currently running from the police, not fun but truly fruitful as he told me that he was willing to do anything to get free including going to prison to serve his time.

Today Geoff went to Luweero to pick up two 12 ft x 12 ft steel doors that were made for the maize mill. He had to find transport for them and negotiate the cost (this was hilarious). He then watched 10 men load them in Luweero, travel 12 miles down a bumpy dirt road sitting on them in the back of the lorry, unload them and then argue amongst themselves about who woule get what share of the six dollars (total) they were paid for the work. Each man went away with 1000 Uganda shillings (about .60 cents)and that was considered fair pay!

Our house plans are fully drawn up and "soon" construction will begin. The forest is still being cleared, it takes quite a while to clear 2 acres of dense jungle forest. They clear all the underbrush and the trees that are not good, keeping only the fruit trees or any that will serve for good shade. Today it looks like they found 2 very old graves maybe dating back 50 years. What will be done with these?? I will update you later. They rest right where our front door will most likely be... Any way enough of my lack of creativity.