Hello from Uganda... again

Hello from Uganda, once again.

For those of you who might not know, I am here without my wonderful wife Alisa. So that means you will have to put up with my writing.

Did you know, I love being here. It is warm yet cool, not too hot; the people are friendly, they love seeing you and meeting you. Everyone I have met has been warm and welcoming. As I said, I love being here.
We are here to work with a design team from the US and the UK. The team members include architects, engineers both civil, structural, water, and a survey team. They are all wonderful people who are willing to take their 2 week vacation and spend it here working long 14 hr day. God has blessed Show Mercy with a gracious gift of these people.
The first day was to see the land we call the “Field of Dreams”, to hear the vision of our Dreams, what God has asked us to do.

The next day was to see the largest children’s facility called Watoto. Wow is it big. Currently there are over 10,000 kids have been rescued and are off the streets and are living there.
The Third day was to meet with the Architects and designers to begin hone in on actual design of each building. Mike and Doug were at that meeting. The other part of the team was the survey guys. I went with them. We stopped at Hope Children’s home to drop off the Marietta, the team leader’s wife.
NOW the FUN started. As we drove up, the kids had just started their break in school, they were in the yard playing, as we got out of the van, they realized it was us… and we were mobbed by the most wonderful welcome I have ever received. 200 children (and the adults) all wanted to hug us and say Welcome, thank you for coming to see us. I truly had not seen such a welcoming and such love for us. They were disappointed that Alisa was not there with me, but I told them we were planning a return with her. We were only there to drop off Marietta, but I know that it was going to be impossible not to stay for less than an hour. Well, we left to go the Field of Dreams to start the survey. We took two of the older boys Bosco and Vincent, and one of the girls Ruth with us to help. Their job was to gather ripened sugarcane to bring back to all the other kids. We got the majority of the building site survey done. Hiking up and down that hill all day, we were all beat, dirty, and tired. On the way home we stopped for a soda, and the location we stopped at was near a high school that one of our older kid attends. This is Peter Painter’s school and he was outside and saw us. We were blessed to have a minute to visit him! It was a simply gift from God. The day ended with a simple dinner at our hotel. As I think back on the day, I know that God as called us to this beautiful and simple land. I love being here.