For All the Sponsors! And anyone else...

Chris will be returning to Oregon on July 11th.  He is flying home to be in his friend's wedding, but will also use the time to do some of the work we want to accomplish for the home stateside.  If you have letters you want to send the kids (they want to hear back from you) or pictures, any resources, anything you think your child would want, we will post an address in the next few days and Chris will be able to bring all of it back to the home on the plane.  

For those of you who read the blog and aren't necessarily supporting a specific child and would like to help, this would be a perfect chance to do it as well.  Old clothes, donations for pens, pencils, school supplies, shoes, or anything else you can think of would all be greatly appreciated.  He will return Aug 4th and pack as many bags or trunks as needed.  

THANK-YOU FOR ALL YOU HAVE ALREADY DONE AND CONTINUE TO DO FOR THESE CHILDREN!  

Life always gets busy

It seems a lot has changed for Kami and I since 6 months ago.  Leave the loads of experiences, lessons and growin up we've done aside, and still a lot has changed.  Although it was intense at first, we settled into the home the first two months and found such a peace.  A silent calm that lasted no matter how crazy things got lost somewhere in the perpetual breeze, and brilliant dusks that lasted for hours.  Just as it is any time you move to a new place, at first the circle is so small.  Your world is what you see and what you see is all you know.  But steadily and surely, our world has continued to expand here until now where I look at an average day and actually remark, "what happened to the simple times."  Our cell phones are full of contacts working here for endless amounts of reasons, our plates are full with teaching, accounts, hiring and firing, projects, plans, fundraisers, and so much more, our vocabulary has expanded every day to the point I look around now and actually know what people are speaking about in Luganda in the next circle, (well every 3rd word or so), we travel with ease through the country, riding with chickens and goats, know every inch of the city and best places to get the cheapest posho and beans, what times to drive, which alleys to take if police are out looking for bribes, and I even take the occasional Sunday morning motorcycle ride to a place you can get real coffeee and sit on a porch!  So like any place, after you settle in, the world starts expanding and your as intrenched in business as you were when you left.  Besides the expansion of our world though has been that of the home and of the kids' with all the visitors we have had in the last few months.  With traffic the airport trip is a full 4 hour ordeal and I've been driving it too much lately.  (I'm just kidding, if you want to come, I would love to pick you up from the airport!)  It started with our great friends Kip and Megan from Oregon, moved to many people we met in Kampala, then more, then 8 great visitors from Colorado, then our friends Johnny and Courtney who worked with Invisible Children and last Tuesday brought in the newest member to our workforce Joe Hedrick, a good friend of Kami's from North Carolina.  The kids have grown to know all our movements and can't even try to tell us something not true anymore.  They look up, see we know and then smile sheepishly and produce the real answer.  Everyday still brings with it new challenges and the future of the home is always in our minds.  Sam's health is really leading him towards retirement and Kami and I are working diligently on coupling the home with an incredible mentorship program here called Cornerstone.  They do the same thing we do, only much better and with more resources.  They take kids out of horrible situations, pay for all of their schools, provide a strong community and mentorship based on the principles and teachings of Christ and the men and woman we have met who have gone through their homes are testaments to the work they are doing.  After they are done with secondary school, their college is payed for too and during this time, the older ones take over the leadership of homes for other children, and always still have the community of those who have come before and are living and working in higher positions through out Uganda, Kenya, Sudan, Rwanda and even further.  In this way, they always have mentors above them, peers they share mentorship with, and those who they mentor below.  We are excited to see where it goes.  I will be meeting with one of the directors this week again to discuss it further.  

We will keep you posted.  We're both still safe and healthy and loving the life we have found here.  Unfortunately, to all the children's dismay as well as Sam's, Kami and I have still not fallen in love.  Actually, our friendship has grown so much and we both come from such similar families, something resembling a brother/sister relationship has developed and I would venture to say we are much further from seeing in the other something more than when we first began.  Which suits us both great, but disappoints the Ugandans who keep trying to get us together.  

We had to fire the headmaster of our school today.  He kept starting fights with the teachers and one time stole the cooks food because she did something he didn't like.  It was so intense.  I sat as a 24 year old firing a 35 yr old and actually said the words, "clean out your desk and hand over the keys."  (Its not as fun as it sounds.)  So if anyone wants to be the headmaster/mistress of a primary school in Uganda, the position is now available...we're taking applications.  haha.  We love you all.  Thank-you for the support!  

Chris, Kami, and Courtney in an awfully crowed matatu(taxi) heading back to Kampala.
The best and only way to travel if you ask me-by boda boda.
We have had many bonfires as of late! Full of glowsticks courtesty of the group from Colorado!
Bonfires are the greatest for singing and praying and learning that Chris and I cannot make a fire.
One of God's many wonders.
Another of His many wonders.
Not so much a wonder...but I wonder why he has to wear things like this.
This little guy is Choto. He just came to the home. His brother Balya stays with us and he came after his mother's house burned down. He is four, speaks no English and will sit on the floor next to me for hours talking to me about who knows what.
Meeme, Molly, and Kami having girl time off course.
During one of the many gorgeous rains!

The past month has been full of visitors and excitement. The boys have received many necessary items! Yeah! Shoes and badly needed clothes to be specific. We are about to hit the midterm mark of the second term this year. Pray as they are studying hard!

It's a wonderful life! And it's not even Xmas time..

We can’t believe its June! The weather must be getting so beautiful back in the states. It continues to be an even 75 every day, and the fact that it is now June seems to only be amazing to us. We’re back in the full swing of school and both enjoying teaching more than last term. There was so much to figure out the first months we were trying to learn as much the kids we were teaching, but this time around, both of us have a far clearer understanding on Ugandan culture, learning patterns and work habits so the teaching is easier. And added to this, is the reward to see definite improvement in work, reading and writing in the students. Some of our younger boys we began teaching to read last term are getting more confident in their abilities and we help them less in stories. Math is still a little slow for some of Kami’s students. The first term she spent the entire time trying to correct some of the learning habits her kids had picked up. (Counting on toes for example when they ran out of fingers for adding and subtracting…gets very confusing and only works when their not wearing their school shoes.) She still finds herself having to go back and teach things some of the kids already know, but on the day they do get the concepts, she comes home beaming. She also has started teaching a music class, which she was born to do. Sometimes I look into her classroom and I have no idea who is having more fun, her, or the kids watching with open mouths.

At the secondary school, we have moved from the necessary, but monotonous rules of English writing to applying them in story telling. This is enjoyable for several reasons. First, the unfortunate, but undeniable truth about Ugandan curriculum is that there is very little room for imagination. No matter what subject is being taught, the formula is the same: The teacher gives the kids information, they write it down, memorize it and expel it back on the exam or when called upon in class. The kids don’t grow up here like first and second world children. They have almost no exposure to the world and with such limited resources, have barely even seen pictures of things like creatures in the ocean or thought of other worlds. They know all about Uganda, about digging, the animal life here, the fruits and trees and bore-holes and football. When given an assignment in writing, these are the things they call upon. But, I’m asking them to go past this now and some of them are really responding. I tell them that in every class, their asked to give the correct answers, but in mine, although we learn about proper story formula, characters, plot development etc. the story can be completely made up; a new world created by them. To learn to be more descriptive they learn 6 new adjectives each day to take the place of ordinary words and then write them in sentences. So instead of just saying the “big” tree they use words like “massive,” “enormous,” or “expansive.” They couple this with similes and metaphors and although it started out very slow, some of them have been turning in some excellent stories with beautiful descriptions. One boy who was writing about visiting a big city said he “heard the cars rushing past, sounding like babies crying,” and another one wrote about walking under a tree describing the branches as “bare arms against a blue sky.” (I almost wept, and am personally going to try and support this kid through college…he wrote that as a freshman in high school and came from a village in the furthest corner of Uganda. He has yet to get less than a perfect score on one of my exams.)

We miss showers, refrigerators, sleeping without a mosquito net, varieties in food and friends and family, but wouldn’t trade this for anything. It’s a wonderful life.

Finally an update

Sam Senfuka carrying water for cooking.
Hussein, the sweet neighbor boy, pretending to be spiderman of course.
Very artistic picture taken by one of the boys. We only teach the basics here.
The group of 8 people from Colorado brought stuffed animals that the kids held onto as if they were their own children. Oh so cute!
We were blessed with a puzzle within a huge package mailed to Chris. The kids loved it.
We bought 10 meters of rope on Market street for making double dutch ropes. I think we may have tried for 5 minutes before one side was turned into a sweet swing from the Jacfruit tree.
Yes we did make ninja masks/headbands for the ninja in every boy.

Some of the college group from Colorado helping paint our Primary School.
More paint...
on very durable ladders too. Here are Chris and me with our typical discussion faces on. Do we seemed stressed?

Here are some of the boys taking lunch on the side veranda of their house.
Musisi mid-bite. Thank you, thank you to all the sponsors for sending money to help us out. What the boys are eating here is posho and beans. This is what they eat every meal at lunch and dinner. It is the staple for young and school aged kids and the cheapest way to feed lots of people. Yet, we still struggle at times to be able to afford it all. So, thank you so much for feeding the mouths of the kids we have grown to love so much. I hope and pray you feel you are a part of their lives as well, because you are. More than you know.