National Holiday, again...!

So, guess what?! Yesterday morning, as we were at the office preparing to leave for Abia Camp, some of the staff were reading the newspaper, and on the front page it stated that today, Friday, would be a National Holiday. And for what reason is this?! Because President Museveni is being sworn in, after a joke of an election and twenty years of dictatorship. Oh, did I say that aloud? Because, the world is not supposed to know. Anyway, we could not go to Obim Camp today to serve the people of Northern Uganda, because the President and his followers wanted to celebrate a ficticious victory in a rigged election.

Our work in the camps came to an abrupt end yesterday, as we will leave for Kampala on Sunday to catch our flights home on Monday. The time here has flown by with an added element of a busy social life in the evenings and on weekends with missionary friends we have made. It has been a full trip filled with many wonderful memories, but I know that it will be a difficult reentry into my life at home. I am dreading that part. Every trip I make it seems to get a bit harder. We have it so easy in the States, yet it is a country rife with whining and complaining. Very few are content and feel blessed for what they have, every one is obsessed with the want for MORE.

Today I spent the day walking through the market with Sally looking for material. All of the people working there in the little shops and stalls live on less than $100 a month, and reside in tiny little houses with no electricity, no running water, and cook over charcoal fires.

In the afternoon I went with my friend, Marcel, and a couple of Ugandan ladies to deliver food to two families that House of Grace Orphanage is helping to feed. One family was a family of 4 children, the oldest a boy 16 years old, living in a tiny hut with a mud floor. The other was a family of 7 living in a tiny two room house with no plumbing whatsoever. This is here in Lira Town, not out in the camps. It was a good experience to see what this ministry is doing to impact the lives of people here.

Feeling blessed and ashamed at my consumeristic lifestyle, and praying that I will not forget what I have seen and experienced.