Tuesday
I woke up around 6:45 with small hopes that the power might be back on, but alas they weren’t lying and it was still off. It had rained all night, and was cold and muddy.
This morning I started in the office, and we were still working on getting school fees for the boy who had come the day before. Denis was mostly dealing with that, though (so much for his leave) and I really didn’t have much to do.
Then it was devotions and tea as usual, then I set to work on a document that assesses the current situations and needs of our youth, as well as helps them come up with a plan for life after Dwelling Places. Where will they live, what are their plans for work or education, etc? On the assessment level, it asks questions like “What are your daily personal hygiene habits,” “Do you know how to cook meals for yourself,” “Do you feel you have a good support network of family and friends,” etc.
I won’t lie, it’s not every day that I feel like we’re really being productive and truly helping these kids prepare for sustainable life on their own. (Well come on, the whole feeling of productivity is a struggle for every missionary, I think. It’s a different pace of life, and Americans definitely have a different definition of productivity than Ugandans! Not necessarily bad, just different! :) ) We’re new as a program anyway, so of course we’re learning as we’re going and not everyday runs 100% smoothly. Well anyway, when working on documents like this, I really feel like we’re contributing to their preparation for a successful exit off the program. If we can assess each of them and determine things like “they don’t know how to cook for themselves, hmm we should teach them that,” and help them develop a business plan and goals to get there, I feel like they really do have a chance at surviving on their own.
While I was working on this, 2 of our youth came in the office just to hang out. I chatted with them for a minute, then continued with my work, but they continued to hang around. One of them wanted to play a game on the computer and didn’t seem to care that I had actual work to do. So to occupy her, I gave her my Bible and told her to read.
I decided to make this a little more constructive, asking her if she knew how to find specific scriptures and things like that. Turns out she didn’t-- note to self, something we need to be intentional about teaching them! So I showed her the layout of the books, and how the big numbers are chapters and the little numbers are verses, and told her to find specific ones like John 3:16, then we’d talk about what the verse meant. The other girl eventually came back, so I found another Bible for her to use and made it a game, who could find the verse first.
With both of them, I started with the table of contents, and they even knew a song of the books of the Bible. But when I asked them to find Genesis, they didn’t seem to get the concept that it was the first book, therefore it was in the front. But after going through a few “find Genesis,” “now find Exodus” “now find Deuteronomy,” they seemed to get the concept. Seriously, the best moments here are the ones that are interruptions to my day!
For lunch, we had potatoes, rice (can’t have less than 2 heavy, starchy carbs-- that would be wrong!) and sausage. I don’t think sausage is too typical of a Ugandan meal, but we get our food from a catering company, and the way they cook this dish is delicious! A really nice break from matooke and posho everyday!
After lunch, one of our youth invited me to a game of pool. They have a pool table at our youth center, which is actually a small business that one of our youth runs. For a small fee, anyone from the community can play, so this teen who runs the business learns business skills, and everyone enjoys the entertainment of the pool table. Win win!
The afternoon was spent in the office, finishing up the document I was working on in the morning, and also working some on documenting the policies and procedures of the Youth Rebuilders Program. Turns out we don’t have the policies written out, and since I’ve been working on it, it has revealed some places where there are holes, things that aren’t clearly defined or where there is just general confusion. It’s been beneficial for the organization to look for these holes and clear things up, and also to have a document to fall back on for any situation to say “Well our policies say this, so this is how to handle this situation.”
When I got home, the whole street was lined with trucks working on the power lines (and children playing with the loose wire scraps, good ideas all around). I finally understand what they were doing. They’re replacing the transformer, so it looks like power will be out for the rest of the week! Someone told us that if they’re replacing it, they might be putting in a bigger one, which would mean fewer power outages... if they thought that far in advance. So no getting hopes up, but it could mean better power in the future.
So I made a run to the gas station down the road to stock up on kerosene for our lamps, then started going through the fridge. The power had been out for about 48 hours at this point, so it was time to salvage the last few surviving items and toss the rest.
We received a knock on the door from one of our neighbors in the evening, giving us word of a situation with another AIM missionary. AIM has a few missionaries that work on the Ssese Islands in Lake Victoria, and the one who drives the boat out there each week had apparently had some trouble with the engine and was stranded out there a good 17 kilometers from land! They had sent a rescue boat, but it was too small or something, so they were trying to get another rescue boat out there. It’s rainy season and the weather has been really bad for the last few days. So we took a few minutes to pray together over him.
The rest of the evening involved a quick cold shower by flashlight, working on the puppets by lamplight, Skype with Talley for as long as my battery would last, and once again a little reading and falling asleep early. It’s a thrilling life I lead here sometimes!
