EMI Uganda Training and Arriving in Luweero

Things are going well- we had training from the east Africa office on design considerations, materials, how things are typically constructed here and lots of good stuff (Structural, Civil, Architectural, etc).  Continued on our way and made it out to the town of Luweero- team meetings and site visit tomorrow!

EMI designed office. 

Training.

They share an office with MAF (Missions in Aviation Fellowship), this is the runway. 

The team that crocs together, rocks. That croc fade rainbow though....

St. Jude's Farm

Today we drove out to St. Jude'sfarmed, named for the patron saint of hopeless causes because that is how Josephine felt when her and her husband her forced out of their Kampalan home onto a plot of land during the war.  They have become an integrated and organic farm and training center that thousands come to in order to learn better farming practices.  Below are some pictures from the drive and the farm.

Mizungo

We are winding down Day 1.  We attended church today at Calvary and "mizungo" is a word we heard from the adorable little kids heading in (and some even coming over to say hi and give a hug).  It means "white person" in Swahili :) .  The worship was a lot of fun- very spirited singing in English, Swahili, and Ogandan.

There was a guest preacher who was really good- and managed to cover like every touchy topic imaginable- marriage, finances, serving, giving.  But it all tied into how you are spreading your seed- when you hold onto it, it cannot grow.  This goes along perfectly with our project trip for designing an agricultural training center with the heart and mission of not only planting seed for food, but also planting spiritual seed starting in Luweero and with a mission to change the generations to come. He reminded us it is better to have seed than bread- for you can make bread from the seed and it shows you are planning for the future- whereas bread you can eat but it will be gone.

He also challenged specifically the Ugandans to reach out and give/serve their neighbors, which is cool because we have a few Ugandans doing just that on our own team!

Below are a picture of myself and Kristen (one of our architects), and one of Kristen and  Simon (a local Ugandan on our team who has a university degree in agriculture and raising animals) in front of the church.

We drove back to the guest house for lunch- on the opposite side of the road which is still kind of scary when you aren't paying attention.  The drainage ditches here are crazy- look at the size of that one below, definitely doesn't meet state regulations back home. 

Below is the view from our meeting and eating area, you can see Lake Victoria in the background.

We walked to the mall area nearby where you had to go through a metal detector with guards and everything just to get in the gate. I got a delicious passion fruit popsicle and coming back we saw these monkeys!  Monkeys freak me out so I tried to keep a safe distance.

The two Fathers from BLI joined us and we did a large introduction circle and review of team and ministry goals.  They seem like fun guys and it is going to be exciting to work with them to see their dreams start to become a reality!