I have to confess I’ve been kind of lazy lately with the blog. I put up a few pictures, talk about my day and call it good. But the intention of this blog is to be honest with what I’m dealing with and what God is talking to me about. I’ve been quiet on this front because honestly I’ve been struggling a little again. 

I'm worried about the future.  I don’t live one day at a time well. I really like to have a long range plan. Even if the plan changes, it’s fine, I just still need to be looking ahead and figuring things out. I knew, while in the process of beginning life here in Uganda, that I would have to be patient, to go slowly and wait on God. But I’ve been here nearly 9 months now! My days are full of it good stuff, and don’t misunderstand me. I like where I am and what I'm doing. But none of it is long term. It isn't stuff that wakes me up in the morning excited about the day or that drives me with purpose.

 I think the reason that all of this is pressing on me right now is that I have a big decision to make. I had a lot of trouble renewing my visa to stay in Uganda last time and I think that a wise move would be before that expires again, in the next two months that I need to leave east Africa. This means a whole range of options. Beckie is heading back to the states for several weeks. While I would love to go “home” for a while this choice is the most expensive and time consuming.  An option on the complete other end of the spectrum is to take a quick flight to Tanzania to visit the International Teams missionaries there for a bit. Or I could just go visit in the Middle East for a little while. I could go to Europe- the reason that I even consider this option is that I’ve always wanted to study more indepth tropical medicine and Europe offers courses specifically for nurses. Maybe this is a good time to work on that. Or, I could take a chance, try to get the renewal, and just stay in Uganda.

I want to begin to work on getting a Ugandan Nurses license. The trouble with that is I have to have a work permit. But the team has to get it's NGO status before I can even apply for a work visa (the whole reason that I'm still trying to use a tourist visa). This NGO thing is proving to be very difficult and time consuming and optimistically- months away. (Probably more like years away.)On top of all of that I have to be outside of Uganda to apply for this work permit. It gives me a headache to even think about.  
All of this means that I have a very few weeks to make a decision and begin to work on something.  I had hoped that while working through all of this to explain it that the best option would make it’s self clear…