ministering in deed and neglecting the Word

Today I spent the day driving around the village of Amakio Jelel with Terry and Kim looking at some of the newly drilled water wells and meeting with the members of that well club. Terry and Kim are here on their annual trip to visit us and see what has happened in the last year. This year is a little different from previous years because Terry will be staying a couple extra weeks to build windmills. It is our hope that we can begin fabricating windmills to put on some of the wells. We were able to spend time with one well club that had just competed their fifth well and were beginning their sixth. Since the beginning of this year, the well clubs have successfully drilled 31 water wells. We are so thankful God is allowing us to be a part of what He is doing here. It is always encouraging to see the fruit of one's labor.  One of the many benefits of being in the water well drilling business is that you get to see tangible results - almost instantly. Missionaries all over the world are doing great work, being obedient to the ministry God has called them to, and yet many times it is difficult to see fruit or to have any type of quantifiable result. It is difficult to measure spiritual transformation in any quantifiable way, but drilling water wells provides instant gratification. Water for All in Uganda is having a great year and God is really blessing the work and the well clubs with numerous successful water wells. The struggle is that it is easy to just fall into the trap of just drilling water wells and not coupling the humanitarian work with the spiritual. It is really easy to just want to drill wells and let the sharing of my faith and discipling take a backseat. However, meeting people's physical needs without addressing their spiritual needs leaves people in just as hopeless a situation as they were in before gaining access to water. So the struggle is to drill water wells but use that work as a platform, an in, or a tool to form relationships. Out of those relationships, you then have the opportunity to share "the reason" behind the humanitarian work. To share why you are doing what you are doing - God's love. Without a relationship I find most folks have no reason to sit down and talk about Jesus's love and why it compels us to love others as He loves us. Please pray we can fight against the temptation to just drill water wells and neglect the relationships and the sharing of faith that comes out of those relationships.

a blog to get you up to speed on some recent events

Well, I have sat down and dusted off the ol' keyboard.  Our blog has been seriously neglected over the last few months.  It is not that there hasn't been anything going on, rather that we have been so busy that we have been unable to sit down and fill folks in.
So here is my attempt to catch y'all up.
I'll just start in December of last year (2015).
We spent most of the month in the capital city of Kampala getting ready to welcome our daughter Corrie Lynn into the world.  Her due date was the 23rd of December, but we were also given the 21st and the 25th.  She decided to join us on the 30th, one week late via emergency c-section.

Colin took this picture of me right before we left for the hospital.  41 weeks pregnant.  I wish now that I had taken a nap that afternoon!  We were in for a long night.

Right after we were checked in.

Many many hours later, Corrie was here and this was my very tired husband's expression.  We both were exhausted!  I will spare you the picture of me at this time, because no one wants to see that.  I looked rough!

Just hours into her life in a new world.

Big sister Aggie was very excited to see mom, and Corrie.

Smother Brother was thrilled to have another sister to take care of.  He really is a great big brother for these two little ladies.

Before we left the city, we got to pick up Colin's dad, William, and his younger brother, Devin, who flew in for a 2 week visit.  

 

A few days after Colin took his dad and brother to the city to fly out, we had the newest members of the Water For All family join us here in Soroti.  Aaron and Hannah Mason are the newest WFA-ers and are prayerfully seeking where God wants them to work.  For now they will be joining us here and learning the drilling process a little better.  

Then, a little less than a week after Aaron and Hannah arrived, my mom came to visit.  This was her first time to meet Aggie and Corrie.  She came three years ago, shortly after we brought Silas home.  

We took mom to the capital and spent a few days in the city due to possible unrest surrounding the presidential elections.  Praise God there was nothing terrible and we were able to travel back home in a couple days.  But our visitors were not yet finished.  Our bosses Kim Edlund and Terry Waller are here now.  They came in this week.  Kim will head back to his family next week, but Terry is going to be staying for few more weeks to do some work with Colin and Aaron building windmills.  

The well drilling has been going wonderful so far this year.  Already we are at 29 water wells drilled this year.  God is really blessing the efforts of the men and women that are working so hard to get water for their families.  It is really great to see the fruits of their labor.  

Please be in prayer with us as we are still trying to get Corrie's Ugandan birth certificate, which we need in order to get her a U.S. birth certificate, U.S. passport, and for the visa process for Silas and Aggie.  We really would love to be in the U.S. at some point this year, but things are just not moving forward because of the elections.  This whole process has taken much much longer than we expected.  We are now looking to see if it would be better for us to finalize the adoptions in Uganda.  That would of course delay our trip back to the U.S. to be with family and friends even longer.  However, we will just continue to pray and follow God's direction. 

We are again so thankful to everyone that continues to support us and pray for us.  We couldn't be here without it!