Back in Uganda and doing well

1 John 3:18 “Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.”

At our wedding in Canada on December 19^th, we chose this verse to describe the marriage we desire to aspire towards. To not just say words of love to God, to each other, and to friends and family, but to act out that love and willingly choose to love every single day. We are so thankful for the 3 weeks we had in Canada and California leading up to and following our wonderful wedding, and all the time we got to spend with friends and family. Time and time again we felt the desire to be more involved in and invested with the lives of our communities in North America, and yours with ours. We pray this blog opens the door for you to be involved in our life in Uganda, and that it remains a way that we can love you well.

We’ve been married now for a little over 2 months, and back home in Uganda for a month a half. The day after we returned, we had the wonderful opportunity to celebrate our marriage with our Uganda community. eMi, DOORS Ministries, Heritage International School staffs and many other friends spent the Saturday afternoon with us enjoying an Ethiopian meal and Uganda style reception planned and coordinated by a handful of dear friends of ours here. We resaid our vows in front of our community, and had several friends give vows back to us in how they would support our marriage. We were tired, but oh so thankful for the wonderful day to reconnect and reinvest in our community here, and see everyone in one swoop. It was a wonderful afternoon and we went home with gifts of rice, sugar, washing powder, mugs, and candles.

At our Uganda reception

We are getting more and more settled at our home which is in the Kampala suburb of Buziga and has a beautiful view of Lake Victoria. We live on a DOORS property called Yahaya’s Plot. Yahaya’s Plot is a work in progress with the ultimate vision of being a nutrition farm to supplement the diets of DOORS schools and homes directly meeting nutritional needs of the children, to be a place of income generation for DOORS, and to be a place of education and empowerment for marginalized children and adults. As of right now, the garden is flourishing and the other programs are in the planning and dreaming stages. The plot overall is just over an acre in size, and we have a small house on one quarter of the land. We share the plot with our sister, the Farm Manager, and her 5 daughters (some biological, some fostering). We’ve started to make the home our own by painting, redecorating and dreaming up plans for the very empty rooms.

Front of our house

Matt started two new projects at EMI this year. The first project is for a ministry called Hope Alive! They provide school sponsorship and mentoring to children who wouldn’t otherwise go to school. They have recently purchase 340 acres in northern Uganda where they have a vision as big as the site. They want to have a nursery school, primary school, secondary school, vocational school, church, community center, and agriculture training. We are helping them to plan how to best utilize the site. It was great to be part of the team and to hear how God has worked in Hope Alive! and in the lives of the volunteers. Matt went for the first few days of the trip but left early to attend meetings for his other new project, the Amazima School. 

Amazima Ministries also provides school sponsorship and mentoring to kids who wouldn’t attend school otherwise. They are building a secondary school in Jinja. EMI has been involved in this project for a few years now from master planning to phase 1 drawings and currently helping to oversee phase 1 construction. EMI is now designing and producing drawings for phase 2. 

Matt role at EMI is shifting away from calculations and producing drawings towards more management of projects and interns. It is taking time to adjust to this new role, sometimes he gets to the end of the day and it doesn’t feel like he has done any work because he has been helping other people all day. The adjustments will take some time to grow into but it is going well thus far.

Project team at meeting with community near Gulu

Ashley is back in the swing of things at DOORS overseeing progress at Yahaya’s Plot, and connecting with potential DOORS volunteers among other things. She is also back at Heritage International School teaching a high school public health class focusing on hot topic issues this term including genetic screening, clinical trials, and alternative medicines. One of my highlights so far in being back is the restored vision and joy God has given me over Yahaya’s Plot. The gardens are flourishing like never before, and we are weekly distributing large harvests of eggplant, tomatoes and onions to various ministry arms. Also, take a look at the recently launches DOORS website at http://doorsministries.org.

Tomatoes

Greens

Pumpkin

Life continues in Uganda as if we have never left. We spent our weekdays either in Kajjansi at the office (Matt) or bouncing between DOORS Ggaba properties and meetings and Heritage School. Evenings are spent together at Yahaya’s Plot reflecting on the days as we cook over our charcoal fire. Weekends have brought fun activities, along with our consistent Saturday nights at DOORS Worship Night and Sunday mornings at Ggaba Community Church (our home church) with street vendor rolexes for breakfast (2 eggs fried with veggies wrapped in a chapatti…almost like a breakfast burrito).

Our church has chosen Joshua 3:5 as the theme for the year, “taking steps of faith.” We are excited to see what steps of faith God will ask us to take this year, as we reflect on the many steps of faith we’ve taken to reach the point we are at. Would you pray with us as we seek Him for guidance of when to step, and where?