Home sweet home

I know that my last post might have provided some insight into the apartment that I live in. It has definitely kept us on our toes the last 2 weeks, as we're never quite sure what might work or what won't work. But to me, that is just part of the adventure. It's a cool lesson that God has already taught me since being here. I wake up every morning completely thankful IF there is hot water to take a shower. I told Desarae this morning that I feel like I've gotten spoiled because we've had water for the past 4 days. Just learning to go without much water and having to conserve that water that we did have taught me a lesson of thankfulness. Water is something we just take for granted in America, but here it is a special blessing. I can't tell you how many times, just out of habit, I've gone to the faucet to get some water to drink or make some coffee before I remember that I have to get that water out of the filter. It's a new kind of life to get used to, but I feel like God is teaching me things everyday just by learning to adapt to life in Uganda.

Even though our apartment is maybe not the most reliable always, it has been an incredible blessing for us to be here. It's in a great part of Mbarara, and we are surrounded by beauty every we look. There are only a few other people living in our building right now because all of the university students are on holiday break, so we haven't gotten to meet many neighbors, but we have gotten to know our landlord Mbaga pretty well. He is such a blessing and has been so good to us. There have been numerous days that we have had to call him several different times to come help us fix things or whatever. Each time, he comes right away and stays until everything is working perfectly. We've even called him late at night before when our toilet wouldn't stop overflowing and we were out of water. Through it all he has been very gracious and helpful. Today as we were walking in from church he asked where we'd been. When we told him, he said, "Next time I will go with you." Des and I had been talking about how we wanted to invite him to church because a lot of our friends are probably around our age, and then he went and invited himself. It was pretty great. We usually don't have church on Sunday nights here, but tonight we're having a special praise and worship time at 4 so he is going with us. Please pray for him and pray for us that maybe God can use us to reach him.


I know that a lot of people have been asking for pictures, and I finally was able to load a bunch onto my picasa website. The picture below is a picture of our apartment building. Our apartment is on the back side of the far right of the apartment complex. It is still very much under construction as you can tell from the picture. If you click on this picture, it will take you to a bunch more of the inside of our apartment. And just a warning, be prepared to take a pretty indepth tour of our apartment. I had a little too much fun taking pictures of everything, but I know everyone is curious about what it looks like, so that's how I justified it! I miss you all!