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!

A few prayer requests

It is not very often that I feel the need to post about prayer needs, but this morning as I wait for it to get light enough to run I just can't get these few things off my mind.
First, three weeks ago Colin was trying to remove one of the Land Rover's tires so to fix a flat.  Here in Soroti you have to bring a tire iron and a jack if you want your tires fixed and you have to remove the tire and put it back on.  While he was doing this he managed to hurt his back.  Now three weeks later sitting, laying down, and driving are all painful, to the point where he physically looks like he is in pain.  Please pray for healing for him.  We really have no other way than the healing power of God in this matter.
Second and lastly, the NGO board has not met in about two months and our paper work for our work visa is sitting on their desk.  With the holidays coming it could be another month before they do meet.  Please just pray that our paper work does go through when they come together and the rest of the process is simple.  Having our work visa will allow us to attain legal guardianship of Silas and we can then work on getting him a passport so he can travel with us.  It also means that we will not have to leave country every six months, and at this point if we have to leave Silas can not go with us.
Thanks for all the prayers that are already offered up on our behalf.  We hope everyone enjoys the holiday season!

more stuff we've been doing lately

our chicken, Loretta Lynn, likes to come in the house and pick up all the food that Silas leaves in his wake.  She was given to us as a gift when we went and spoke at a church in Amuria.  Our other chickens are Wynonna and her chicks - the Judds, and our oldest and most loyal chicken is Reba.  We sort of have a country and western theme going on here with our chickens, not really sure why...

Dan demonstrating just how dirty you get with our drilling method.   This drilling method is called  the "cochina" method (cochino means pig in Spanish) in Boliva and the "baptist" method in other places - mainly because you get really muddy and you don't just get sprinkled but you get fully immersed in the mud.

these two snakes were killed at our church.  Colin wanted to hold them up to  show how long they were., but he isn't tall enough to do it justice.  Every snake that is killed is called a cobra, but I don't think we've seen even one true cobra yet.  Not that I'm looking!

Our friend Charla at Veribest ISD sent us Flat Stanley.  Flat stayed with us for a few weeks and toured Teso, hung out around Soroti, did some well drilling, worked in the gardens, went to market, met a lot of interesting people, and then made the long journey back to Veribest, TX.  In the background you can see Soroti Rock, which is the famous landmark for our town.  We'll miss you Flat!

We have been busy drilling wells, but also busy tweaking our drilling method, our materials, and our design.  When you move from one area or country to another you find different materials.  We have had to make some adjustments in our technology to accommodate the heavy use our wells are getting in this area.  As we drill more and more wells in a given area, the use on each particular well will reduce and we will not have to beef them up quite so much.  Here is a homemade piston we are using made from some inner tube, flip-flops (slippers), a bolt, a couple washers, and nuts.  Pretty simple, but it's bringing water to the surface for people to use.