Yep that's right. Malaria. The mosquito-Anopheles- carrying infectious disease that causes diarrhea, vomitting, coughing, nausea, stomach pain, muscle aches, head aches, fever, chills, sweating, restlessness...and Stacie has developed all symptoms. Of course Stacie, who seems to be the one susceptible to getting all over seas diseases-African skin disease, typhoid, etc...-would get it even though AmyRose is the one who has been failing, consistently, to take her malaria medication and gets bit far more than Stacie does. Stacie began feeling restless and devoloping flu-like symptoms about a week and a half ago, not really understanding how she could be getting the flu when the weather is as constant as it is. She had just got back from praying with Jajja Alma-which has malaria and shared with her that her malaria began with flu-like symptoms-and on her way to meet up with AmyRose at Abba Home, found herself on the ground with people running up to her and trying to help her up. She had no idea what had just happened but she grabbed her stuff quickly and took off, far away from the crowd of people that had formed around her. She realized that she had collapsed and had not been hit, and that this illness she has been experiencing might be something more than just the flu. I rushed home where Krisann urged me to take a blood test. The first test we took came up positive for malaria and we didn't believe it so I took another one and sure enough, the results were positive.
I was very disturbed that I had malaria. I mean, it totally makes sense because lately I have not been wanting to do anything or even be here in Uganda. I have just wanted to sleep, but I couldn't fall asleep. I just laid there thinking all day, okay, God why am I here when I am feeling this way. I should be out doing something, anything...but instead I am just laying here in bed and not doing enough. I blamed it on satan saying that of course satan would want me to be knocked down and not doing anything for God. Then Krisann had said, "You know Stacie, It isn't always satan that knocks us down. Sometimes God knocks us down so that we can find our rest in Him." And that is when it hit me. It was Jesus. Because sense we have been here, I have been going back and forth with the same questions, am I doing enough? What else could I be doing? Am I doing anything that is just wasting time?? Sometimes I think we can all fall into this trap that satan wants us to get in that we miss what is going on right before us. If he can get our thoughts consumed with the need to do more and more, we totally fail to miss what we are able to do for God and that we are just the tool being used. The last five days has been absolutely miserable for me. I have had to allow everyone to wait on me, which really is a difficult task for me to do, and just lay around. It has also been really good for me because I have had plenty of time to "Rest in His arms" and reflect on why I am here in Uganda and where I get my strength and who really is in control of this trip. Continue to keep us covered in your prayers and thank you for all of your support!!
Monday, March 30, 2009
A Day with the Big Brown Beautiful-eyed Babies...
First off let us start of by apologizing for such a delay in our posting. We have been yelled at by several people asking for more posts..so here you go!! Now it is your job to comment on all of our blogs...just so we know that you are really reading them and praying for us...we need lots and lots of prayer. We will go into prayer requests in a separate blog, as for now, let us elaborate how beautiful brown skinned babies are...
Where: The Ssanyu Babies home
What: An orphanage for kids under three- there are 49...ALL ADOPTABLE...children in this particular orphanage. 49 kids and very limited hands in caring for these beautiful unwanted babies.
Our Heart- When we went to the Ssanyu babies home the first time, we were in search of baby orphanages that would allow adoptions to the US. When we were there, we got hold each of the babies for about five minutes each while we fed them a bottle of milk and then had to lay them back in their crib until the next feeding time. The stench of these babies made your nose turn and be so ever thankful for our own mamas who spent much time and labor in making sure that we were well taken care of and bathed if we got to smelling that horrific. Tears came to our heart and we knew that we had wanted to come back and hold the babies for more than just five minutes. We wanted to come and bathe these tiny little ones and hold them for as long as they allowed. We just wanted to show them love. It is one thing when playing with kids whom are older and will remember who you are and remember at one time a very nice "Mzungu" came and played with us and showed us love...but it is a whole different thing when you get to hold a baby in your arms that has never felt love and will probably never remember who you are. I believe this kind of thing is much more humbling and rewarding. We are not getting praised by the kids. We are not getting a Way-buh-lay Nyabo-Thank you Madam. We are just simply doing because we want them to feel the love of Christ through our humbled hands.
Well, we got to the home and sadly found that we were too late for the bathing and their first feeding time of the day. They sternly told us that the babies do not get "disturbed" throughout the day...which means we were not able to hold them like we had planned. Heartbroke sunk in as we were led to the older class of kids. In this class of 4-9 month olds, we were introduced by the only two teachers in the room, to twenty pupils who were sitting on the ground, surrounded by toys and told we could not pick any of the kids up. We were just like, are you kidding us. We cannot hold any of these children. Appearantly in this class they were being taught how to sit up on their own and learn to play by themselves. So we, as in Amyrose, Kelsey, Virginia and I, all played with the kids while being reminded countless number of times to, "Put the children down." We are so amazed by these two women who took care of this many babies. Even with the four of us assisting the two of them we felt extremely exhausted and ready for a long nap after only three hours of being there. Running after tissues for snotted noses, trying to quiet down the screaming children, and changing soiled diapers became exhasting rather quickly.
A few days, and four showers later we continued to get whiffs of the soured milk and it brought back the memories of the snot dripping down the warted faces and how precious the tears flowing down from the big beautiful brown eyes...And how God loves all-even if their aroma is not as pleasing as we desire....We know that the faithful God we serve, adores these unwanted, untouched, undesirable babies, and that is why we are here-because God has given us a yearning desire for more of what He desires-The Orphaned.
Where: The Ssanyu Babies home
What: An orphanage for kids under three- there are 49...ALL ADOPTABLE...children in this particular orphanage. 49 kids and very limited hands in caring for these beautiful unwanted babies.
Our Heart- When we went to the Ssanyu babies home the first time, we were in search of baby orphanages that would allow adoptions to the US. When we were there, we got hold each of the babies for about five minutes each while we fed them a bottle of milk and then had to lay them back in their crib until the next feeding time. The stench of these babies made your nose turn and be so ever thankful for our own mamas who spent much time and labor in making sure that we were well taken care of and bathed if we got to smelling that horrific. Tears came to our heart and we knew that we had wanted to come back and hold the babies for more than just five minutes. We wanted to come and bathe these tiny little ones and hold them for as long as they allowed. We just wanted to show them love. It is one thing when playing with kids whom are older and will remember who you are and remember at one time a very nice "Mzungu" came and played with us and showed us love...but it is a whole different thing when you get to hold a baby in your arms that has never felt love and will probably never remember who you are. I believe this kind of thing is much more humbling and rewarding. We are not getting praised by the kids. We are not getting a Way-buh-lay Nyabo-Thank you Madam. We are just simply doing because we want them to feel the love of Christ through our humbled hands.
Well, we got to the home and sadly found that we were too late for the bathing and their first feeding time of the day. They sternly told us that the babies do not get "disturbed" throughout the day...which means we were not able to hold them like we had planned. Heartbroke sunk in as we were led to the older class of kids. In this class of 4-9 month olds, we were introduced by the only two teachers in the room, to twenty pupils who were sitting on the ground, surrounded by toys and told we could not pick any of the kids up. We were just like, are you kidding us. We cannot hold any of these children. Appearantly in this class they were being taught how to sit up on their own and learn to play by themselves. So we, as in Amyrose, Kelsey, Virginia and I, all played with the kids while being reminded countless number of times to, "Put the children down." We are so amazed by these two women who took care of this many babies. Even with the four of us assisting the two of them we felt extremely exhausted and ready for a long nap after only three hours of being there. Running after tissues for snotted noses, trying to quiet down the screaming children, and changing soiled diapers became exhasting rather quickly.
A few days, and four showers later we continued to get whiffs of the soured milk and it brought back the memories of the snot dripping down the warted faces and how precious the tears flowing down from the big beautiful brown eyes...And how God loves all-even if their aroma is not as pleasing as we desire....We know that the faithful God we serve, adores these unwanted, untouched, undesirable babies, and that is why we are here-because God has given us a yearning desire for more of what He desires-The Orphaned.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
An Afternoon in Kajansi
Monday was Mercy Home of Children day. A generous friend from back home, and former resident at Mercy Home, had sent us with $ in order to purchase a goat (a.k.a.--a meal) for the children of Mercy Home. We have never gone goat shopping. Nor have we ever purchased a live goat--or transported a live goat.
Our dear friend/right-hand-man Ivan was unavailable for the day, so we took with us our friend Geoffrey, and our day-guard, Charles. Upon arriving in Kajansi, we stopped at the nearest butcher and learned that he did not have any goat meat to sell us, and also did not have a live goat to sell us. Geoffrey, however, found a man who did have goats to sell. So we stayed behind while our two men travelled apparently quite a long distance on foot (they were gone FOREVER) in order to find our goat. We had quite a few interesting conversations with various locals while waiting. We chatted with the MTN (cell phone service) workers, handed out dumdums (suckers), stared down a crazy man, and chatted up a storm with an elderly congolese man, who upon learning he would only receive ONE dumdum, and not two, got up in a furry of rage, and hobbled off on his cane.
Geoffrey finally returned on a boda-boda with a very alive young goat straddled across his lap. Quite a sight! We then grabbed our 20 kilos of rice which had been purchased earlier in the day, and all hopped on boda-bodas to head towards Mercy Home. The journey was quick and we arrived safely, but when the goat got off the boda, he decided to become quite stubborn and hid himself in a bush, which Geoffrey had to very forcefully coerce and pull and yank him out of. The goat finally budged, and we were able to enter the premises and deliver dinner. The residents and staff of Mercy Home were all very thankful and also glad to see us. We plan to return soon in order to visit with them and also to partake of the goat feast!
The ride back to Entebbe on the taxi-van was probably the most entertaining taxi-ride we have had to date. Any sort of 'sweetie,' or candy, is popular and craved by ALL Ugandans--adults included. And we just happen to have many dumdum leftovers with us on the taxi. Stacie was able to have a nice conversation with a very friendly Ugandan woman after we passed out dumdums to the entire taxi crew. Geoffrey and Charles were also quite entertaining, as they decided to strike up a conversation in Lugandan with the conductor and several passengers, which we are assuming had something to do with us, and was probably not something we really wanted to know about--as they errupted in laughter every few seconds but refused to tell us what was being said by either party.
This is why we want to learn Lugandan :)
In other news, our Kapchorwa trip was postponed, but will hopefully take place within the next week some time. We were also finally able to meet up with the warden of the Children's Remand Home (children's prison) and set up a bi-weekly schedule to come and visit with and minister to the kids. The warden was very pleased to meet us and excited to learn that we are interested in sharing Jesus with the kids.
Our dear friend/right-hand-man Ivan was unavailable for the day, so we took with us our friend Geoffrey, and our day-guard, Charles. Upon arriving in Kajansi, we stopped at the nearest butcher and learned that he did not have any goat meat to sell us, and also did not have a live goat to sell us. Geoffrey, however, found a man who did have goats to sell. So we stayed behind while our two men travelled apparently quite a long distance on foot (they were gone FOREVER) in order to find our goat. We had quite a few interesting conversations with various locals while waiting. We chatted with the MTN (cell phone service) workers, handed out dumdums (suckers), stared down a crazy man, and chatted up a storm with an elderly congolese man, who upon learning he would only receive ONE dumdum, and not two, got up in a furry of rage, and hobbled off on his cane.
Geoffrey finally returned on a boda-boda with a very alive young goat straddled across his lap. Quite a sight! We then grabbed our 20 kilos of rice which had been purchased earlier in the day, and all hopped on boda-bodas to head towards Mercy Home. The journey was quick and we arrived safely, but when the goat got off the boda, he decided to become quite stubborn and hid himself in a bush, which Geoffrey had to very forcefully coerce and pull and yank him out of. The goat finally budged, and we were able to enter the premises and deliver dinner. The residents and staff of Mercy Home were all very thankful and also glad to see us. We plan to return soon in order to visit with them and also to partake of the goat feast!
The ride back to Entebbe on the taxi-van was probably the most entertaining taxi-ride we have had to date. Any sort of 'sweetie,' or candy, is popular and craved by ALL Ugandans--adults included. And we just happen to have many dumdum leftovers with us on the taxi. Stacie was able to have a nice conversation with a very friendly Ugandan woman after we passed out dumdums to the entire taxi crew. Geoffrey and Charles were also quite entertaining, as they decided to strike up a conversation in Lugandan with the conductor and several passengers, which we are assuming had something to do with us, and was probably not something we really wanted to know about--as they errupted in laughter every few seconds but refused to tell us what was being said by either party.
This is why we want to learn Lugandan :)
In other news, our Kapchorwa trip was postponed, but will hopefully take place within the next week some time. We were also finally able to meet up with the warden of the Children's Remand Home (children's prison) and set up a bi-weekly schedule to come and visit with and minister to the kids. The warden was very pleased to meet us and excited to learn that we are interested in sharing Jesus with the kids.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
En Jac Ooo Sahmba!!
We have officially moved into our new home! We live in a guest house behind the Pease family. They are a missionary family from Dallas, Texas and have come under the International Mission Board in order to minister to the people of the Islands. We met the Pease family at a house church we attended a couple Sundays ago, and they have graciously invited us into their home for the remainder of our time in Uganda. They are WONDERFUL!!! Krisann and Eric have two young children, Colby (11yr.) and Emily (7yr.) who are quite entertaining and a joy to be around. It has also been such a huge blessing to be able to just live with and be with a family. Right now we are sitting down to watch the disney movie WALLE, just after stuffing ourselves full of homemade apple crisp.......
This past weekend we had planned on traveling up to Kapchorwa in order to check out the area and determine whether it would be a prime place for the future NGO. However, we both became a bit ill (never really figured out what it was) and so decided to stay home rather than attempt to travel upcountry on a bus for 7-10 hours when already feeling quite nauseous. Postponing our trip due to sickness actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise (quite a common occurrence here in Uganda) as we learned from Kelsie and Travis there is a missionary couple up in Kapchorwa who is friends of theirs, who also has an NGO and is looking to partner with another non-profit organization. So the plan now is to contact this couple as soon as possible so that when we make the trip we will be able to meet up with this couple and discuss NGO plans and visions and such.
We were finally able to purchase shoes for the Abba Home kids!!! This has been quite a hassle as shoe prices tend to vary greatly and of course b/c we are Muzungus they jack up the prices as soon as they see us coming. We tried to buy the shoes through a pastor friend of ours, but soon realized that he was actually ripping us off, rather than giving us a great deal. Not uncommon, sadly. We resolved to make a trip to the Kububu (saturday Entebbe market) this afternoon to purchase the shoes ourselves, without any middleman.
A little background on the shoes.......... because Uganda's school systems are under British influence, the children must not only have official school uniforms, but must also have black leather shoes in order to attend school. If they do not have either, they simply cannot attend. Apparently teachers are very strict about this sort of thing. You would think that because Africa is such a poor country, that it wouldn't matter what they wore to school...Oh but it does.
After walking to the market, we made a deal with Vincent, a certain shoe salesman that we would purchase 26 pairs of shoes at 16,000 UGX per pair (that is about $8 per pair, and they usually charge about $15-$20 per pair). But just after we had struck this amazing deal, we realized we had left our notebook full of all the children's shoe sizes--back at our house. So we trekked back to our home, retrieved the notebook, and that's when the ridiculous shoe-shopping process began.......
Vicents shoe stand had only about ten pairs of black shoes, which we knew that if he didn't have the right shoe size or enough shoes, than his neighbor stand would generously hand his shoes over...and if his neighbor didn't than he would ask the other twenty stands that were there at the market...and so on and so forth until all 26 pairs were found. Okay so the way that they measure feet is slightly different than the way we do it in the States. In the states, you ask someone what there shoe size is, they say it is a size 6. You ask a Ugandan child what their shoe size is and they will tell you to get a piece of paper with a pencil and trace their foot on the paper; which is what we did that for all twenty-six kids. So we pulled out our notebook with 26 traced pages and began sizing the shoes up!! Vicent had the first five pairs of shoes, but after that, he began calling out his neighborly partners and then the shoe craze started---We had about fifteen different people in our faces with their shoes hollaring out that their shoes were the best and that we needed their shoes because they provided real leather unlike the others!! It got quite insane in the market today. Not only were they hollaring because they had shoes, but they also had kisses they wanted to deliver and kept saying, "MY COLOR, MY COLOR KISS ME!" Finally, MuMu called back ENJAKOOSAHMBUH---which translated to Enlish is I WILL KICK YOU!! They back away very quickly with those sweet words.
We began hauling the twenty-six pairs of shoes off in an oversized rice bag only to find Vicent and about twenty others trailing behind us telling us to dump the shoes for counting...We were all just thinking, "Oh no!! They are going to try to tell us we didn't pay for some of the shoes or they might just try stealing some of them back.." We had no idea but we panicked..and then from out of the bushes came these military men in green with machine guns and that is when we almost ran for it, twenty-six pairs of shoes and all!! Vicent assured us that they were just counting for their own records, the military men disappeared just as quickly and as sneakily as they came, and then we packed up and left for bliss-the Peases home!!
This past weekend we had planned on traveling up to Kapchorwa in order to check out the area and determine whether it would be a prime place for the future NGO. However, we both became a bit ill (never really figured out what it was) and so decided to stay home rather than attempt to travel upcountry on a bus for 7-10 hours when already feeling quite nauseous. Postponing our trip due to sickness actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise (quite a common occurrence here in Uganda) as we learned from Kelsie and Travis there is a missionary couple up in Kapchorwa who is friends of theirs, who also has an NGO and is looking to partner with another non-profit organization. So the plan now is to contact this couple as soon as possible so that when we make the trip we will be able to meet up with this couple and discuss NGO plans and visions and such.
We were finally able to purchase shoes for the Abba Home kids!!! This has been quite a hassle as shoe prices tend to vary greatly and of course b/c we are Muzungus they jack up the prices as soon as they see us coming. We tried to buy the shoes through a pastor friend of ours, but soon realized that he was actually ripping us off, rather than giving us a great deal. Not uncommon, sadly. We resolved to make a trip to the Kububu (saturday Entebbe market) this afternoon to purchase the shoes ourselves, without any middleman.
A little background on the shoes.......... because Uganda's school systems are under British influence, the children must not only have official school uniforms, but must also have black leather shoes in order to attend school. If they do not have either, they simply cannot attend. Apparently teachers are very strict about this sort of thing. You would think that because Africa is such a poor country, that it wouldn't matter what they wore to school...Oh but it does.
After walking to the market, we made a deal with Vincent, a certain shoe salesman that we would purchase 26 pairs of shoes at 16,000 UGX per pair (that is about $8 per pair, and they usually charge about $15-$20 per pair). But just after we had struck this amazing deal, we realized we had left our notebook full of all the children's shoe sizes--back at our house. So we trekked back to our home, retrieved the notebook, and that's when the ridiculous shoe-shopping process began.......
Vicents shoe stand had only about ten pairs of black shoes, which we knew that if he didn't have the right shoe size or enough shoes, than his neighbor stand would generously hand his shoes over...and if his neighbor didn't than he would ask the other twenty stands that were there at the market...and so on and so forth until all 26 pairs were found. Okay so the way that they measure feet is slightly different than the way we do it in the States. In the states, you ask someone what there shoe size is, they say it is a size 6. You ask a Ugandan child what their shoe size is and they will tell you to get a piece of paper with a pencil and trace their foot on the paper; which is what we did that for all twenty-six kids. So we pulled out our notebook with 26 traced pages and began sizing the shoes up!! Vicent had the first five pairs of shoes, but after that, he began calling out his neighborly partners and then the shoe craze started---We had about fifteen different people in our faces with their shoes hollaring out that their shoes were the best and that we needed their shoes because they provided real leather unlike the others!! It got quite insane in the market today. Not only were they hollaring because they had shoes, but they also had kisses they wanted to deliver and kept saying, "MY COLOR, MY COLOR KISS ME!" Finally, MuMu called back ENJAKOOSAHMBUH---which translated to Enlish is I WILL KICK YOU!! They back away very quickly with those sweet words.
We began hauling the twenty-six pairs of shoes off in an oversized rice bag only to find Vicent and about twenty others trailing behind us telling us to dump the shoes for counting...We were all just thinking, "Oh no!! They are going to try to tell us we didn't pay for some of the shoes or they might just try stealing some of them back.." We had no idea but we panicked..and then from out of the bushes came these military men in green with machine guns and that is when we almost ran for it, twenty-six pairs of shoes and all!! Vicent assured us that they were just counting for their own records, the military men disappeared just as quickly and as sneakily as they came, and then we packed up and left for bliss-the Peases home!!
Saturday, March 7, 2009
The picture where all the kids are sitting in a line is at the baby orphanage!! We had arrived just in time for "Potty time" where all the kids sat on their potties and went to the restroom...possibly on of the most adorable things ever!! And then the new Mzungu in the pictures is our dearly beloved Kelsey!!
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