It is Sunday morning in Uganda, and we have had another busy week. With Henry now back to work full time with I AM,on Monday we made our lists of weekly goals and made plans for next week’s book distributions in eastern villages and towns of Uganda.
We traveled to Kampala twice last week, once for computer problems and once to meet with our artist and a potential new printer. Although Kampala is only about 65 miles away, the trip always takes the entire day. But I now have in my possession the complete original drawings for Book Two, The Disobedience, and most of Noah book illustrations are complete. I expect to get them to the printer on Wednesday. We met with a new printer we hope will be able to give us better quality and service. I am anticipating a price quote from him and pray that we will be able to move forward.
We leave on Wednesday for a four day trip delivering books and having training sessions with church pastors and leaders in four different places. We are expecting to meet with 40 pastors/leaders of various denominations on Thursday and 60 on Friday. Saturday we travel deeper into a village, and I am not sure how many we will meet. I will try to get pictures and post documentation next week upon our return. I received a call last night at 9:30 from a pastor in western Uganda, Stephen, who is anxiously awaiting a visit from us. He told me he will be presenting the book this morning at his church and he was so happy to have it.
ORPHANAGE UPDATE: Many of you are interested in the work we are doing at the orphanage. We have purchased material to begin making new uniforms for all students, both boarders and day students, approximately 230. Once we learned that the children do not have underclothes, someone at Grace Church in Austin, Texas, undertook the effort to send at least two pairs of underwear for each boarder. We will be having our first visitors on Feb.25, my sister Sally and her husband Bernie Boudreaux from Austin. We are all excited to have colaborers joining us. We had a workday on Saturday at the orphanage, cleaning the grounds, the gardens, the entrance, and installing the first clothesline poles. We dug a new garbage pit for burning the trash and moved the one that was so unsightly right outside the hostel. The chicks are doing great. Akimu has spent every night inside the coop with the chicks, adding charcoal to the stoves and feed and water. It is almost a NeoNatal set-up, and we are proud to report that we have only lost 2 of the 306 chicks! They are beginning to put on feathers, and once they have their feathers, we do not need to keep them so warm. Akimu has enlisted the help of three of the orphans to help him and they seem very pleased with their responsibilities.
January had a work day removing cut trees and limbs from the newly turned ground for the gardens. He rewarded all his helpers with $.50 worth of sugar cane. He will be planting seeds Monday morning, maize and beans, as the rains have already started here–earlier than previous years when rain came in March.
Many of you have expressed concern for Norah. On Thursday, Norah approached me that she would like to talk to me about setting up a business selling matoke. We did not discuss the details at that time and I did not know what would be needed. However, on Friday night I learned that someone in Austin had made a contribution for Norah!! On Saturday, Henry and I met with her and gave her the $26.00 she requested to get started—less than the donation had been!
It is now 8:00pm and I am just returning from all of the day’s activities, church until 1:30; after church we went to a boarding school to see some of the former residents of the orphanage and take some necessary items to them. Late afternoon we traveled to Nama to minister there. I will try to upload pictures tonight and tomorrow.