Pictures pictures and more pictures

We have had a very busy month of March!  Here are just a few shots from what we have been doing!

We spent the first week of March in Entebbe at a Team Beyond Retreat and Silas loved all the time spent with kids his age playing.  He became good buddies with Kate and Levi.

Trying to get all the kiddos lined up for a picture and Silas wanted to make sure they were doing it right.

And this is where he wanted to be for the picture....

We stayed at the BMU (a baptist guest house in Kampala) the week after the retreat while we waited for Terry to come.  They have a washer and dryer in the guest house and Silas LOVED the dryer.  He has never seen one before and it thrilled him!

A typical herd of cattle on the northern part of Lake Keyoga.

The mighty Nile

This child...I can't get enough!  He is very much loved!

Baboons by the Nile.

These flowers come out when the first rains of the season come.  Colin knows that I love flowers so he surprises me with them every so often.

After Terry left, we picked up my mom.  She is the first "grandparent" to meet Silas and we are thrilled to have her here with us!  We were so blessed by mom visiting us.  The company she works for, Hipp Engineering and Consulting, helped pay the way for her to bring us two totes loaded with goodies from the states.  SO a very BIG thank you to Bud and everyone at Hipp.  AND, I can't forget to thank our sending church Paul Ann Baptist Church in San Angelo for providing the funds for my mom to come and see us.  PABC, we love you and miss you and are grateful for all your support! 

You never know what you will see while driving here. 

Typical scaffolding in Uganda.

One of the only forest in Eastern Uganda, Mabiria Forest.

Fields of tea leaves

Mt Elgon

Scoping out the flowers

More tea

Kammy in her glory with baby Joy and little Silas

He loves me...

Bricks for our new church building in Obulle.  They made 8000 in a couple days and then stacked and burned them.  Total cost...just man power.

Bro  

I cut the top of a green pepper off the other day and this guy was looking back at me.

The latest and biggest Farming God's Way garden we have done in Obulle.  

Pretty much always happy happy happy!

These two...Oh my.  

My wonderful husband!  He works so hard and loves every second of it.  He was created for living in Uganda and working with the Teso people.  He is really in his element here.  So very blessed to be married to this man!

Showing mom where we are going to be building our home out in the village.  

My boys...<3 td="">

So these pictures just sort of sum up the month of March so far.  As I went through the pictures I realized that I didn't have any of Terry, so I will have to post some that he took while he was here.
Just a few prayer points as I wrap this post up

• We are still waiting on our work visa to get approved.  All the paperwork is in and now all we are waiting on is the approval.  We are on a special pass currently.  So please continue to be in pray that our paperwork goes through sometime within the next few weeks.
• We are so excited that Terry was here and was able to see what all has been done over the last year. We got the go ahead to pursue building a home in the village.  Please pray that the building process goes smoothly and that funds are not an issue.  We both want to be in the village living with our friends there. 
• We are thankful that we are healthy and contribute that to your prayers, but ask that you continue to pray for our health as well.  Colin's back is still not 100%, but we had heating pads, Bio Freeze and pain meds brought over so we can at least manage the pain now.
• We say goodbye to Mom on the 4th, and that will be hard for she and I.  Just remember us as we say goodbye for a time and that her travels back home go smoothly.

Ready, set, DRILL!!!

After many many many months of not drilling in the Obulle area, we now have the missing piece!  Bentonite!  Thank you Lord!  We have been looking, calling, asking, emailing, and trying other alternatives with no luck.  Our team of guys in Obulle have been ready to drill now for months and have also been involved in the search for our drilling mud.  
A few weeks ago Colin sat down one last time and tried looking up bentonite clay in Uganda, and he found some!  This was a legitimate mining company in Uganda and they mined sodium bentonite (NaBe).  We sent Dan and Emma to Kampala on the over night bus to check it out and when we got the call that everything was good we loaded up a truck.  Less than 24 hours later Colin, Dan and Martin unloaded 80 bags of drilling mud.  God is good!!!

     

Silas Then and Now

I was looking at the pictures that we have of Silas from when he was at Amecet.  I can see where he is the same little boy, but then I can't get over how much he has changed from his first picture ever taken.  He was just a little guy for sure.  

Silas's very first picture of his little life.  This is the one that hangs on the wall at Amecet.  When we go and visit the staff that took care of him, I always go and show him his picture.  We also spend some time looking at all the little ones that have come through Amecet over the years.  When looking at the wall of photos, if there is picture with a little star sticker it means that that little baby died.  Sadly there are a good number of those stars.  However, this little picture doesn't have one.  God was protecting little Silas as he lay abandon and sick.  In my heart I know that God's plans for this baby are bigger than anything I can think of!

This is that same little boy about 9 months later!  Colin and I can not picture our little home without him.  He is ALWAYS happy and singing and talking and laughing.  God's plans to restore us are made abundantly clear when I think about Silas and his story thus far.  What a huge blessing this little man is in our lives.  We are thankful that God has given him to us.   

Farming God's Way Training in Soroti

Many of you have seen or read about the new way of farming that we are working with in the village.  If you go back a few blog post you will see the gardens we have been working on. We attended the first Farming God's Way training in August of last year and took Dan and Charles along with us.  Charles then attended a second training in Mbale a few months later.  The guys had already put in one small test garden and built the compost pile by that time.  The second training was good for Charles (along with four other guys) because he was able to ask the trainer, Chris, questions that you would only have if you have in fact tried this way of farming.  

We decided to invite Chris to come to Soroti and we would host a FGW training here in the Teso area.  

The last day of training in Obulle.  

Making compost.

One of our teammates from Soroti/Pamba area, Steve and the crew he brought to the training. 

The first two days were at Global Care.

It was a great training and both Colin and I are excited to see what God does.  We have a very large group in the village that are putting in FGW plots and we are more than thrilled to see that even more want to know how to do this new way of farming.  We were just at the church last night and our friends, Dan, Charles, Emma, Martin, and Michael all told us that their wives want to know how to do this as well.  So it looks like I will be teaching the ladies of our church the "how-to's"!  It is really neat that the ladies want to know how to do this.  Often times the husband goes through the training, but unless the wife is on board, it has a hard time getting off the ground.  Once the planting is done in the traditional method, it is mainly the wives that do the garden work.  So if I can get the women of Obulle on the same page as their husbands, then we will be in the FGW business!

A little extra

I just wanted to fill those of you in that were praying for us.  I mentioned a few weeks ago that Colin was needing prayer and that we as a family were needing visa paper work to get a move on.  Colin's back is on-again-off-again pain.  He will be feeling better then go and do some work in the village or carry two jerry can's of water at once and he is back to not being able to pick up Silas.  And now the pain is working it's way up to his neck.  It is very much out of alignment, so bad that even I can feel it!   So please continue to lift him up in prayer for healing.  Then with our visa situation.  Due to the holidays the NGO board has still not had any meetings.  I am sure that now the new year is here and the holiday expenses have piled up many will be wanting to get back to work.  
I will be sure to update once things get moving and thank you for all your continued prayers.  

     

December 2012

Silas and Naboth are good little buddies!

Our shop in the village is really coming together.  Colin and these two spend a bunch of time out there. Here they are working on making a slow sand water filter.

Our living room all decorated for our first Ugandan Christmas. 

On the 27th, Colin and I celebrated our 4 year anniversary.

My sister Cassie and me on Christmas Eve about 1989 or 90.    My mom still has that little rocking chair, but sadly I do not have those killer red pj's.

Our church had their first nursery school graduation early in the month.    This is the first of many!

After the children received their certificates I loaded them all up in the Land Rover and we drove about one mile to the trading center so they could march through the center singing their praises to God.

Our friends, Dan and Charles, teaching about Farming God's Way to both adults and children at our church garden.   Every week the church members get together for a garden work day.  This gives the guys an opportunity to teach the FGW principles.

Margaret playing guitar, Elliot, Silas and me.  Silas is a trooper in the village and loves playing with the all the kiddos.  A bath is always needed when we get home though!  He likes to eat sand and get it in all his cracks and crevices.

He loves his new shades!

Some of the MANY sweets I feasted on over the Christmas holiday!

The cast of our "low budget" play of the Nativity at our church.  They did a fantastic job and may even do one on Easter! 

One of the families on our team works with the Street Kids Ministry here in Soroti.  They had a Christmas party for them and it was really great to meet the kids and hear about their lives.

And it wouldn't be Christmas without a creepy Santa giving out candy to little kids!