Once a month we have a culture discussion and last night was my first. We talked about culture and Christianity and what to do when something in the culture goes against how the Lord calls us to live our life. We talked about lot of things that I never thought of before. The people here sometimes have what is called an underground culture. They hide things that they think others might condemn or laugh at. They especially hide things from us because they know that our beliefs and ways of living are very different from theirs. A question was raised as to how this should be addressed in the church. Many of the missionaries right now feel that many people do not feel like they can open up and be honest as to how they live and want to live. Men who have many wives or people that believe in witch doctors do not feel welcome in the church. These are such hard topics to deal with, especially since we are not of the culture here. Please pray for the elders of the churches that have been planted here and that God would give them wisdom as to how to reach out to more people without judging the way that they live. Please also pray that when people do come to church and except Christ that the Spirit would move in them and would guide them as to how one should live a life that follows the Lord. Also pray that we as missionaries would not be biased of our own culture and that God would help us to understand the culture here and the purpose He has for it.
My eyes have been open to so many new things here. There is definitely a spiritual battle going on. The Lord is my strength each day and He guides my steps. I hope that you received my brief update and the pictures from my camping adventure.
I know that the Lord is working in all of your lives and I would love to here what He has been doing. I send my love.
Kim
Sunday, September 25, 2005
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
Bajungu, How Are You?
The title above is how we are greeted by all of the children we pass when we walk down the street. Bajungu is what they call white people.
The goodbyes were said last Monday afternoon. I was an emotional draining day but the Lord has definitely been giving the team the strength that they need. It was cool to see the MAF plane come (it is a small 4 seat plane). We have a long grass airfield here in Bundibugyo. I should get the chance to ride in one of these planes sometime while I am here. Since Monday I have just been teaching, doing team stuff, talking with neighbors, etc.
Since I do not have a lot to right about what I have been doing I thought I would write a little about what the culture is like here. In one of Michelle’s comments she asked me if I have met any Christian people and if I could tell whether or not they were Christians. I have met many Christians at church and some neighbors that are Christians. It is not easy to tell because for one I still do not know very much Lubwisi and because of the culture. Ugandans in Bundibugyo really struggle with changing the way that they live even if it goes against what God asks us to do. As you may know polygamy is extremely common here. It is very rare that a man only has one wife. Usually if a man only has one wife that could mean that he is a Christian but not always. The churches here have lots many leaders and elders because of polygamy. You can only be an elder if you agree to only take one wife, if you take a second wife you may no longer be a leader in the church (which is a very good and necessary guideline). Also, ancestry worship is huge. Some people have small little huts behind their house where they make sacrifices to their ancestors. They do this to protect their family from being cursed by other families. Many babies and young children where beads around their wrists and waists as a form of protection. Some people will not admit that they worship their ancestors because culture is changing but they still do because they are afraid not to and its what they have been taught to do. They also believe in witch doctors here. If someone is really sick some people will take that person to a witch doctor before taking them to the hospital. I still do not understand a lot of the culture and I have a lot more to learn, so keep that in mind when you read this.
Yesterday I met with Jennifer, one of the team leaders to talk about things and to pray. We will be meeting once a week. Her and her husband Scott are the two team doctors. Jennifer works at the health and nutrition center and Scott works and both the hospital her in Nuhuka (the area of Bundibugyo where we live) and the hospital in Bundibugyo town, with the pregnant women. Jennifer was telling me how she has already lost two children this week to different illnesses. She talked about how one of the mothers was so hysterical. I could not imagine being Jennifer and having to see this every week. She told me that when some dies at the hospital the family carries the body home to burry there. I could not imagine having to walk down the street carry my dead son or daughter. I have not seen this yet but Jennifer said that I will. I do not know how I will react when I do. It sounds like even the missionaries here have gotten used to death being extremely common here. I have not had to deal with very much death in my life so coming to a culture where people you know die all the time is very eye opening.
As I continue to write each week I will continue to share with you new things I learn about the culture and people here. Please keep all of these things in your prayers. I know that the Lord is working here and he loves the people here very much even if they are not living the way that He would like them to live.
I hope you are all having a good week so far and I would love to hear how you are doing.
Love,
Kim
The goodbyes were said last Monday afternoon. I was an emotional draining day but the Lord has definitely been giving the team the strength that they need. It was cool to see the MAF plane come (it is a small 4 seat plane). We have a long grass airfield here in Bundibugyo. I should get the chance to ride in one of these planes sometime while I am here. Since Monday I have just been teaching, doing team stuff, talking with neighbors, etc.
Since I do not have a lot to right about what I have been doing I thought I would write a little about what the culture is like here. In one of Michelle’s comments she asked me if I have met any Christian people and if I could tell whether or not they were Christians. I have met many Christians at church and some neighbors that are Christians. It is not easy to tell because for one I still do not know very much Lubwisi and because of the culture. Ugandans in Bundibugyo really struggle with changing the way that they live even if it goes against what God asks us to do. As you may know polygamy is extremely common here. It is very rare that a man only has one wife. Usually if a man only has one wife that could mean that he is a Christian but not always. The churches here have lots many leaders and elders because of polygamy. You can only be an elder if you agree to only take one wife, if you take a second wife you may no longer be a leader in the church (which is a very good and necessary guideline). Also, ancestry worship is huge. Some people have small little huts behind their house where they make sacrifices to their ancestors. They do this to protect their family from being cursed by other families. Many babies and young children where beads around their wrists and waists as a form of protection. Some people will not admit that they worship their ancestors because culture is changing but they still do because they are afraid not to and its what they have been taught to do. They also believe in witch doctors here. If someone is really sick some people will take that person to a witch doctor before taking them to the hospital. I still do not understand a lot of the culture and I have a lot more to learn, so keep that in mind when you read this.
Yesterday I met with Jennifer, one of the team leaders to talk about things and to pray. We will be meeting once a week. Her and her husband Scott are the two team doctors. Jennifer works at the health and nutrition center and Scott works and both the hospital her in Nuhuka (the area of Bundibugyo where we live) and the hospital in Bundibugyo town, with the pregnant women. Jennifer was telling me how she has already lost two children this week to different illnesses. She talked about how one of the mothers was so hysterical. I could not imagine being Jennifer and having to see this every week. She told me that when some dies at the hospital the family carries the body home to burry there. I could not imagine having to walk down the street carry my dead son or daughter. I have not seen this yet but Jennifer said that I will. I do not know how I will react when I do. It sounds like even the missionaries here have gotten used to death being extremely common here. I have not had to deal with very much death in my life so coming to a culture where people you know die all the time is very eye opening.
As I continue to write each week I will continue to share with you new things I learn about the culture and people here. Please keep all of these things in your prayers. I know that the Lord is working here and he loves the people here very much even if they are not living the way that He would like them to live.
I hope you are all having a good week so far and I would love to hear how you are doing.
Love,
Kim
Sunday, September 11, 2005
Wonderful Weekend
It has been a great weekend. On Saturday I went to this waterfall. We were going to rock climb to the top but It started pouring buckets of rain and all of the rocks got extremely slick. It was still an adventure because we got part way up to the spot where you need equipment and waited there for about 30 min. It poured for about 20 of those minutes so we were dripping wet not to long after it started raining. There is also a little pool at the bottom of the fall, that all of the kids jump into. I jumped off this rock a couple of times, since I was already soaking wet anyways. On Saturday night we had a goodbye party for Bethany and Rachel. The missionaries have a tradition here when people leave to make up skits about them and perform them. Amy and I got to be a part of one that was about Bethany, it was a lot of fun. Tomorrow is going to be a sad day when they actually leave on the MAF plane. Today at church they prayed over Bethany, it was beautiful to see. It is so great to worship with the people here. There service is a lot longer than ours. It is about 2 ½ hours. I love their music and how they are so passionate about singing praises to God. They have a time where you can go up in front of everyone and sing a song for the Lord. Two girls went up today and sang a couple of songs in English. They also have a time of sharing prayer requests and then a time of prayer for the requests. I am really excited to learn more of the language so that I can understand more of what is being said. After church today four ladies from the church came over, so that Bethany could give them a gift before she leaves. They are such kind women, they also prayed for Bethany, and it was extremely obvious that she will be missed. Watching this gets me really excited to develop these wonderful friendships with the people here. Before the women left they were calling Amy and I their friends as well (this of course was all in Lubwisi, so Bethany was translating what she could).
Tomorrow will be a short school day because we will be getting out early to go see Rachel and Bethany off. If you read this on Monday, please keep Rachel and Bethany in your prayers, along with everyone else. It is not easy to say goodbye, especially when you have known a place as your home for awhile.
I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. Please let me know how you are doing either by posting a comment or sending me an e-mail. I love you all!
Kim
Tomorrow will be a short school day because we will be getting out early to go see Rachel and Bethany off. If you read this on Monday, please keep Rachel and Bethany in your prayers, along with everyone else. It is not easy to say goodbye, especially when you have known a place as your home for awhile.
I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. Please let me know how you are doing either by posting a comment or sending me an e-mail. I love you all!
Kim
Thursday, September 08, 2005
My Living Quarters
Here are a couple of pictures of where I live. I will not always be able to put pictures on my blog because it took a really long time. This first picture is a picture of our Cho or otherwords it is our bathroom. This is located behind our house. You may be asking youself, Where is the toilet? Well, that is an excellent question. You see the little purple stick. If you lift that thing up, there is an extremely deep hole. It is quite an experience. I have to squat to use the restroom everyday. The funny thing is that we are the only house left with a cho. The rest of the mission houses have toilets inside their house. It is not so bad. The worst part is going at night and walking to it after it just rained, like this morning, in order to get to it I had to walk through 3 inchest of rain.
These next few pictures are of my house. The shower room, part of the living room area, the kitchen, and my bedroom. I tried to download a picture of the front of my house but it did not work, maybe next time.
Weel, I hope you enjoyed these pictures. Sorry that there is not very many. It is going to be hard for me to get pictures of Bundibugyo and the people because they do not like cameras here. They think that we are taking pictures so that we can sell them in the U.S. Well, my time is almost up. I hope you are all doing well. I am about to head to our team meeting which we have every Thursday. Until next time.Love,
Kim
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
Here are a few pictures. It will only let me do a coupld at a time. One is a picture of the front room of our house. This is for when we have vistitors. The other two pictures I took on my way to Bundibugyo from our vehicle. They are of a small market that we passed. I hope I am able to download a couple more before my time runs out but if not today, then tomorrow.
Friday, September 02, 2005
Wesaayo (good afternoon)
It feels like forever since I have gotten to write an update. Things have been so crazy. I want to start out by saying that I finally got my bags. My trunk came to where we were staying in Kampala on Monday. It was pretty much destroyed but everything was in it. I ended up getting money from the airline to make up for the damages and for losing my bags. My clothes bag ended up getting delivered to Bundibugyo on Wednesday night which is pretty amazing in itself because no one in there right mind really delivers things to Bundibugyo, especially when we gave them the option of leaving it in Fort Portal which is an easier town to get to. I am very happy to have my bags though; it definitely has helped me feel more settled now.
We left Kampala on Tuesday morning. You may remember me saying that I thought it only took a few hours to drive to Bundibugyo, well I was so wrong. We left Kampala at about 9am and got to Bundibugyo around 6pm. The drive was so beautiful. I will admit that I did fall asleep a little at the beginning because I had not been sleeping well the couple of nights before but I did see most of the ride. I said in one of my previous blogs that it is extremely green here. It is a green that I have never seen before. It is nothing like Washington. Everything is so luscious here, it is hard to describe. When we left Kampala we got to drive on a paved road until Fort Portal, which is the last descent sized town closest to Bundibugyo. From Fort Portal to Bundibugyo it is all dirt. This drive was about 3 hours because of the road. The road did not start off to bad but it got worse and worse as we went. I would say that it is definitely worse than even Mexico roads and many of you know how those are. In order to get to Bundibugyo you have to go around the mountains so we went around some crazy corners and a couple of times I feared for my life, well not really but we did get close to the edge a couple of times.
I was so excited to finally get to Bundibugyo and to see where I would be living. I am not going to go into a lot of details of what my house looks like because I hope to put some pictures on my next entry. I can’t wait to show you. I have been trying to think of ways that I can describe to you what it is like here. What it is like to walk down the road, to go to the market, to visit people at their homes but there really are not any words that can fully describe the experiences I have been having. The missionary houses are not really on a compound where it is just missionary houses. We are kind of spread out and we have Ugandan families living all around us. For the most part, everything is within walking distance. I walk to school, to the market, and to the health clinic. I will definitely be getting my exercise, especially since it is really hot here. I already have tons of bug bites all over my arms and other parts of my body but nothing I should be worried about.
Not as many people speak English here as I thought they would. The only phase the little children know is “How are you?” which they repeat all the time and then if you ask them how are you they know how to say I am fine. It is so cute and the children are so beautiful. I had my first language lesson today. I learned how to say good morning, good afternoon, what is the news, how are you, I am fine, goodbye, welcome, thank you, and what is you name and my name is. I will share some of these with you but I do not have my paper with me right this minute and I do not want to spell them wrong. I also was taken to the market to practice. It was a lot of fun.
I have started setting up my classroom; school starts next Tuesday which seems so soon. My schedule is pretty crazy because I am teaching young kids and older ones. I will describe more to you about my teaching schedule and the MKs when school starts and I get going. Every Thursday evening we have a team meeting where we study the word and pray for one another. We also make pizza and have fellowship till pretty late in the evening. I really enjoyed getting to know all the missionaries more. Well, I could definitely continue writing but I feel like I have already written a novel. Ask me any questions that you think of or let me know what you are curious about. Again, I hope to have some pictures next time so that you can see where I am living and what I see on a day to day basis. It is still unbelievable that the Lord has brought me here but I am so thankful. I hope you are all doing well, let me know how you are doing and what has been going on in your life. I love you all and you are always in my thoughts.
Christ’s Humble Servant,
Kim
We left Kampala on Tuesday morning. You may remember me saying that I thought it only took a few hours to drive to Bundibugyo, well I was so wrong. We left Kampala at about 9am and got to Bundibugyo around 6pm. The drive was so beautiful. I will admit that I did fall asleep a little at the beginning because I had not been sleeping well the couple of nights before but I did see most of the ride. I said in one of my previous blogs that it is extremely green here. It is a green that I have never seen before. It is nothing like Washington. Everything is so luscious here, it is hard to describe. When we left Kampala we got to drive on a paved road until Fort Portal, which is the last descent sized town closest to Bundibugyo. From Fort Portal to Bundibugyo it is all dirt. This drive was about 3 hours because of the road. The road did not start off to bad but it got worse and worse as we went. I would say that it is definitely worse than even Mexico roads and many of you know how those are. In order to get to Bundibugyo you have to go around the mountains so we went around some crazy corners and a couple of times I feared for my life, well not really but we did get close to the edge a couple of times.
I was so excited to finally get to Bundibugyo and to see where I would be living. I am not going to go into a lot of details of what my house looks like because I hope to put some pictures on my next entry. I can’t wait to show you. I have been trying to think of ways that I can describe to you what it is like here. What it is like to walk down the road, to go to the market, to visit people at their homes but there really are not any words that can fully describe the experiences I have been having. The missionary houses are not really on a compound where it is just missionary houses. We are kind of spread out and we have Ugandan families living all around us. For the most part, everything is within walking distance. I walk to school, to the market, and to the health clinic. I will definitely be getting my exercise, especially since it is really hot here. I already have tons of bug bites all over my arms and other parts of my body but nothing I should be worried about.
Not as many people speak English here as I thought they would. The only phase the little children know is “How are you?” which they repeat all the time and then if you ask them how are you they know how to say I am fine. It is so cute and the children are so beautiful. I had my first language lesson today. I learned how to say good morning, good afternoon, what is the news, how are you, I am fine, goodbye, welcome, thank you, and what is you name and my name is. I will share some of these with you but I do not have my paper with me right this minute and I do not want to spell them wrong. I also was taken to the market to practice. It was a lot of fun.
I have started setting up my classroom; school starts next Tuesday which seems so soon. My schedule is pretty crazy because I am teaching young kids and older ones. I will describe more to you about my teaching schedule and the MKs when school starts and I get going. Every Thursday evening we have a team meeting where we study the word and pray for one another. We also make pizza and have fellowship till pretty late in the evening. I really enjoyed getting to know all the missionaries more. Well, I could definitely continue writing but I feel like I have already written a novel. Ask me any questions that you think of or let me know what you are curious about. Again, I hope to have some pictures next time so that you can see where I am living and what I see on a day to day basis. It is still unbelievable that the Lord has brought me here but I am so thankful. I hope you are all doing well, let me know how you are doing and what has been going on in your life. I love you all and you are always in my thoughts.
Christ’s Humble Servant,
Kim
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