The rest of the team leaves tomorrow to go on safari, which leaves us with the 3 members of the new team that just arrived today. Church on sunday was neat; your standard 2.5 hour service. about an hour of worship, a half hour of talking/announcements/community life, and about an hour of preaching and prayer.
Finishing the guesthouse by myself is a little daunting, but I will have the Ugandans who have been helping us. I'm assuming that New Hope will want me to keep working on it. However, Sam from the IT department is really pushing to put my computer expertise to work. We'll see. It will certainly make my days a little easier. Computer work doesn't start until 9, and you get off at 5, and you're not dripping with sweat hanging from a truss 15 feet in the air in the blazing sun.
So I should explain. New Hope has this class that runs for 4 months twice a year, called New Hope Institute of Childcare and Family. It is basically a prerequisite to being on staff at New Hope, and teaches all aspects of the work that they do here. But there are many people who take it who do not plan on coming on staff, but take it because they are pastors and want to be better equipped, or whatever. We actually thought about taking it, but it didn't work out. So there are local Ugandans, Ugandans who have come from other parts of the country, and white folk, ( like Tim, he's from Arizona, and James from Northern Ireland.) Anyway, about half of them live in the same set of huts that we do, and the other half commute from the two closest villages. I've been getting to know a few of them, and it's been really good. I'm probably the youngest one of all the guys I hang out with, and I'm the only one who is married. The institute students leave just after we do, so we have a good amount of time to get to know one another. As part of their course, they learn and study a good deal of theology, so at dinner time we get to join in with them in their discusssions.
Feb 9th
We are making some serious progress on the guesthouse. I'll put up some pictures later. We make all the trusses from scratch, and put it all up "Egyptian style" as we've been saying. (meaning all by pure human force. no cranes here.)It is quite an experience. I have pictures and video.
Some of the muzungus from the team and I went and scrimmaged with the New Hope soccer team in preparation for their game tomorrow. That was fun, but man we were beat after that. And my calves got totally fried. This doxycycline really makes you sensitive to the sun. I had even put on sunscreen twice, but still burned. I never burn on my legs. I only let one goal in while playing goalkeeper, and stopped a couple of goals while on defense. Good times. Another amazing thing about playing soccer with Africans: We never saw them drink water. We played for a good hour and a half, not including warm-up and stretching, and no one brought a water bottle except us.
Ellie for the time being will not be in the class that she was in, which is a good thing. We will go to church tomorrow at New Hope, which should be an experience. The service will probably be around 3 hours or so. I heard them practicing some songs, actually even now I can hear them, and some are familiar, which is nice.
here is our hut.
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