This weekend, me and the other Kampala interns took a visit to Jinja (about an hour and a half away) to visit the interns there. Their work consists more of managing construction of projects that eMi has designed in the past, mainly with a group called Arise Africa. Some of them work out in the bush during the week on a site, which always leads to some great stories. But anyway, we went to visit this weekend. Friday we got to have a Uganda-wide intern hangout time, and then Saturday morning we got some coffee at an excellent place in downtown Jinja. If you're ever in Jinja, go to The Source cafe for coffee, and then grab a cinnamon roll from Ozzie's across the street. Amazing. But after than Saturday, we got to go visit the orphanage across the street from where the Jinja guys live. The Jinja interns have established a relationship with the owner of the orphanage, so they've been helping out over there. They spend time hanging out with the kids, playing soccer, and helping build a tree house there. The tree house is really more like a fort. The plan for it was already pretty big, and when you get 4 construction management guys involved, you can imagine what happens. But it's a great ministry there, and some of the kids who started out their lives being abandoned in the bottom of pit latrines are now followers of Jesus. At least one I know of is going around preaching at other orphanages now. Amazing.
So Saturday afternoon we just spend some time playing soccer and building the tree house with some of the orphans. One of the interns likes likes baking cookies and giving them to people (his cooking baking ministry, as he calls it), so he did that for the kids. We had a great time, and it was great to just spend some time around the kids and just love them. For kids that had such a rough past, they seemed really joyful, and it was cool to see how they interacted with some of the Jinja guys. The whole thing kind of made me think of the concept of adoption, and what that looks like both spiritually and physically. I've considered adopting (possibly internationally) later in life, but that was only part of what I saw. At one point before I left, the pastor at my home church in Mobile preached on spiritual and physical adoption and how God has adopted us as his children. He used his own experience of adopting two kids from Russia to show how God brings us in as His own. Really cool, and it led me a lesson I've been learning a lot lately: that salvation belongs to God alone. We don't do anything we obtain forgiveness of sins, it's all God working to draw us to Him. In the same way that a adopting parent comes to a child and chooses them as their own, God chooses us as His own. I'm not going to get into the election/free will deal, I'm just saying that it shows God's glory even more in the fact that He is the one that does everything in salvation, and that we are too sinful and fallen to really come to Him, so He comes to us.
So enough theology for now. Overall we had a great time at the orphanage, and I wished we could have stayed longer. Hopefully I'll get to go back, and maybe I can find something similar to help out with here in Kampala. We'll see.
On a side note, this past Friday was Uganda independence day! Uganda is 47 years old as an independent country. Pray that God continues to work here in the coming years. There's a lot going on here, and a lot of things will be happening in the near future with elections and such. Pray that God will just work in the hearts of the leaders here so that innocent people won't have to die and that more people will come to know Christ in this country.
As far as eMi work goes, things are coming along. I should have the grading plan for the school finished by Monday afternoon, and I'll begin work on the water and wastewater systems. A lot of that has been thought out by the civil volunteers, but there's some fine-tuning and rethinking to be done, plus I have to make it all fancy by drawing it out on the computer.
Well, I hope you're all doing well! I'm sure fall is on its way now, so enjoy it. That's my favorite season, but I'll suffer for the mission by being here and missing it ; ) Honestly, I'm okay, it's not like I haven't experiences 22 falls already or anything. Ok, well until next time!
PS: If you notice, I've started a list to the right of my updates that I'm calling my "Post-Africa Resolutions." These are just things that I want to put into practice in life based off of what I've learned here. Maybe you all can hold me accountable to these things once I get back.
PSS: Also, if you have any kinds of questions about Uganda or anything I'm doing here, feel free to shoot me an e-mail. If you don't have it, it's kylestevenbryant@gmail.com
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