Off to Lira & Back to Kampala

It's now Wednesday Oct 23 and I catch a bus from Gulu to Lira. I sat next to an Indian guy who has only lived in Uganda for 2 years and is the manager of the Crane Bank in Gulu - he spends half of each week in Lira looking after that branch as well. We had a good chat & he told me a lot about growing cotton in the area which may come in handy for Live Connection.

After arriving, I caught a boda boda to the Lira Hotel, I nice place that I have stayed in previously. The power was off but it was comfortable. Tom, Miriam's dad, picked me up on his bike about 12.30 pm and we went to Shadrack's school (Miriam's son). It's a privately owned Primary School with 1000 students! I had lunch with Tom & Margaret, one of their sons Lawrence, two of their daughters, Santa & Molly, as well as two old neighbours that they care for and keep an eye on. I went back to the hotel to do some work at 3 pm but fell asleep instead!

At 4.30 pm, I headed off to Atin Africa (Child of Africa in the local Lou language). This ministry takes in street kids, cares for them, gets them healthy, loves them, gets them back into school and tries to get them back with their families. It was founded by Chelsea, a young Canadian woman who I met at Wakisa 3 years ago and have kept in touch with. She has an amazing heart for these kids and co-runs the ministry with Morris, a local Ugandan guy. Chelsea has a job until the end of November when she goes back home for a while, so she didn't arrive till about 6 pm. In the meantime, I chatted with two other Canadian volunteers and met some of the boys and the pet animals. I needed to go back and have dinner with Tom and the family, but agreed to come back and be involved in the kids praise & worship session about 8.30 pm. Dinner was good as usual and the family very hospitable and caring. About 7.50 pm the heavens opened and down came the rain. Tom had borrowed a car to take me to Atin so we jumped in and headed off. Unfortunately, 200 mt down the road, we broke down - we tried to get the car going for about 30 minutes and then we had to give up - I went back to the hotel in the rain on a boda boda and Tom had to sleep in the car for the night! And what happened to Chelsea - well, when I checked my phone, she had sent me a text saying that because they still didn't have any power, she had sent the kids to bed early!  TIA.

The next morning (Friday 25 Oct), I still had no power and I discovered that the water was off as well - so I decided that I may as well walk into town and get on a bus back to Kampala - luckily I caught the first bus out of Lira at 6.30 am and was back in Kampala about lunchtime! I spent the afternoon doing some work on the computers and the network at Wakisa. While I was doing that, Carol dropped in. Carol was going into Senior 4 at the beginning of 2012 but her pregnancy test came back positive. Her sponsorship was therefore halted. I asked her if she had been with a boy and she denied it - was it a false positive, I don't know. Anyway, an uncle (her father's brother) agreed to pay her fees so that she could finish Senior 4, the equivalent if the School Certificate. This year she has been doing a hair and cosmetics course at the equivalent of TAFE, and is doing very well - she hopes to open her own solon when she completes the course mid-way through next year.


On the Saturday, I spent the day installing the water tank. This involved totally emptying the tank, moving it to the other side of the yard, crawling inside to instal the outlet tap, mounting it onto its stand and connecting it up to the guttering. It all went reasonably well with only a drop of 50mm or so from the gutter to the tank. At 3 pm, I when back to the guesthouse for a shower and change as I had agreed to meet Florence ( a 26 year old, ex-Wakisa girl that I have been sponsoring to university for several years but have since stopped) and spend some time in prayer at Prayer Mountain, a property set aside for just that purpose. She showed me around African Bible University on the way (she had studied there for 2 years before transferring to Uganda Christian University). Up on Prayer Mountain, we prayed separately and together from 8 pm till 1 am, before retiring to the men's & women's tents (on opposite sides of the property). It was a real time of blessing! However, I wasn't really prepared for sleeping in a communal tent - I had no warm clothes, no mattress and no blanket. Fortunately, God provided an angel of a man who gave me a mattress and a blanket without me asking - I don't know where he came from nor where he went - but I know I was grateful. We got up at 8 am and headed off, Florence to a church service in town and I back to the guesthouse to Skype with the family.