Prayer and praise

I was looking at a few blog posts I put up two years ago at this time and I'm so thankful for a few things:

• My work permit that allows me to stay here. Two years ago I was having panic attacks because I'd been denied a visa (again!) and was trying to figure out how to stay. Now I have a work permit and I don't have to think about it again for two more years! Thank you Lord!
• Better roads to Karamoja. Two years ago at this time I'd spent hours stuck in the mud coming or going. The roads are much better and I'm very happy for less adventure. 

  

  July 2012 Several trucks stuck in the road blocking the way. Waiting for 6 hours to get through.

I have some prayer request too:

• I'm headed to Karamoja tomorrow and am thinking I'll stay through Sunday. Please pray for God's will to be done and His kingdom to come in that place. 
• There is a big several day youth conference in our little church in Obulle and Ronnie and I are the key speakers for the 200 young people who have been invited. Please pray for fun (youth rarely get to have that here) and TRUTH!

  

  Obulle church where the youth conf will be held.  My friend Ronnie leading worship.

   

....treating autoimmune diseases by deliberately infesting patients with parasitic worms, such as whipworm and hookworm....

Here is a deep, stimulating topic tonight, though not quite like the last post I put up....
I was doing some reading this afternoon and did you know there are "drug" trials going on using parasites on people with diseases like Rheumatoid Arthritis, Colitis, Multiple Sclerosis, Hay Fever, etc...  (Autoimmune Disorders)?!?  I guess the thinking is that instead of having the body attack itself, give it a parasite to keep it busy. (That would be the extremely simplified, non medical version.) But these studies are pretty conclusively showing that it is working. It is called Helminthic therapy if you want slightly more precise and scientific explanations than the one I gave.
I guess I find that so fascinating because I live in a place where 75% of the population is infected with one type of parasite or another. And I never see any autoimmune diseases. Who would have thought it? Pin worms are good for you. (By the way, don't google pin worms, you will regret it. And you will notice this post with conspicuously without a picture. You are welcome.)
I wonder if I can get CEUs for this afternoons reading.....

Running out of time

I've been feeling this for weeks now and I know some are going to read this and scoff but I'm feeling especially convicted today. We are running out of time. Christ is coming back for His church and I believe it will be soon. Maybe I'm totally wrong and 200 years from now (in heaven) I'll chuckle over it, but the fact is I don't believe I'll ever stand before God and he'll say that I shouldn't have lived like Jesus was coming back in my lifetime. But, that terrible run-on sentence aside, I really do believe the time is soon.
In Matthew 24 Jesus is sitting with his disciples and they ask him about how they will know when he is coming again.  He tells them that many will be deceived by false teaching. He warns of wars, famine, earthquakes, terrible persecution. Each coming like birth pains, which in my mind means they will only keep getting stronger and worse until the end.  (I encourage you to read it for yourself if you are not familiar with it. Matt 24) It seems to me that unless you have not watched the news at all you would have to agree that possibly this is happening. Christian persecution around the world is getting worse. That and wars and disease and immense suffering around the globe seems to just be getting worse:

• In China China's Christians fear new persecution after latest wave of church demolitions. July 5, 2014
• In Ukraine Putin's Complicated Game in Ukraine June 25, 2014
• In Israel  You don't even need a headline here. Just read anything on BBC's Mid-East page. 
• In West Africa- Ebola- Liberia's Health System is falling apart Aug 10, 2014
• In Nigeria Boko Haram Overruns Town Killing Dozens Aug 7, 2014 (This is the same Islamic extremists that kidnapped those school girls) 
• In Iraq ISIS Beating Iraqis and Kurds Aug 9,2014

Now, I'm not trying to be an alarmist. I'm just trying to remind all of us, myself included, that we may be running out of time. If I knew I would see Jesus tomorrow what would I do differently today? Would I waste as much time on facebook?  Would I hesitate to share with people I don't usually talk to? Would I re-evaluate how I use every minute of my day?

And in piling up all these articles I feel like I need to do something. If you feel the same I want to encourage you to hit your knees. We Christians need to feel burdened and we need to pray. Cry out to God for the salvation of Islamic Muslims. Pray on behalf of persecuted Christians in China, Nigeria and Iraq. Pray for those living in terror of death in West Africa, that they would trust God when no one else can save them. Pray for God's love to prevail in the Middle East and for justice for his chosen people. Pray most of all for God's salvation to come to the whole earth. Pray now because we are running out of time! 

Five Star Hotel

I've slept in four different places in the last few days and I'm sitting here tonight realizing that the features that for me make a "perfect" hotel have changed A LOT in the past few years. I've decided I don't really "need" anything anymore as I can now fairly contentedly sleep in the back of my truck wherever I am. However, I have a few things that I really like. My five stars are as follows:
1. No smell in the room. Musty or dusty are very common. Even occasionally smelling like animals.
2. Hot water in the shower. Seems like few places I stay are guaranteed to have hot water.
3. Tolerable pillows. Ugandan pillows are terrible. Tolerable means something between 1 inch and 6 inches thick and a least a little soft. Seems most places here like one inch or nine inches and so hard I'd rather use a towel.
4. Bathroom with a western toilet (instead of squat toilet). See photo. Even better if the toilet doesn't get wet when the shower is on. Seems with most bathrooms with a squat the drain for the toilet is the same as the drain for the shower.
5. Bed with springs. I've only had this three times in four years.
If a room has all five of these, five stars in my book! I can do without but if I'm treating myself these are now the things I look for.

Last night's toilet

Kampala

Tim, a team mate, wrote a bit about Kampala and posted some pictures. I'm on my way to Kampala right now, coming back from western Uganda. This is our second day of driving and we have one more before we arrive back in Soroti!!

Kampala

Batwa

I've been out of my usual sphere down in western Uganda. Teammates, Dr. Daniel and his wife Rachel, were headed down to Bwindi to do a rabbit training program. (Not on how to train rabbits sadly, mostly on how to keep rabbits as livestock.  Much less entertaining, as you would expect.) I tagged along as a quick break and because seeing other parts of Uganda rocks- especially the tropical rainforest. 

The Batwa are pygmies who, until 1992, lived only deep in the rainforest. They've been displaced from the only place they knew how to survive and have had to begin again. The have never kept livestock and because they are so small they don't like keeping bigger animals like cows or pigs. But rabbits are perfect for them and very similar to the wild ones they used to hunt and eat.  This is all a very simplified explanation of who they are and why we were down there. We were working with a group called the BDP (Batwa Development Project) so if you want more info check out their page. 

Also, they have some better pictures than the few I have. 

I'm headed back to Soroti via Kampala tomorrow! 

Pearl of Africa

Need to apologize for not blogging much right now but I'm traveling and that always makes updates trickier. I needed to go to Kampala for some maintenance on the truck and then I headed down to western Uganda for just a few days. I'm enjoying the time away. I'm sleeping under a blanket at night and I love it!! I know that seems silly but it is really nice feeling a bit cold. It is 55 degrees right now compared with the roughly 70 it is in Soroti at night. Refreshing change. Crossed the equator today, I guess that means that I'm in the northern hemisphere so it is winter here now.
Uganda is called the pearl of Africa and there is no denying that it is a beautiful country. I love seeing new places in Uganda but I really don't like the actual travel that it takes to get to these beautiful places. It took us nearly 8 hours to travel from Kampala to Bwindi even though I think it is only a few hundred km. I read a quote the other day that seemed to fit well. "The road was so cracked and pitted the vehicle seemed to have square wheels." (-Theodore Dalrymple)  Very applicable on this trip.

But I'm here now and it is beautiful and I had a wonderful day visiting people and hiking around so I'm not complaining any more than that. 

Sunday School

Nothing quite like 16,  2-4 year olds to keep your Sunday mornings interesting. I've only agreed to do this class occasionally so that the other sunday school class (5 years to 15) can better focus without being responsible for their little siblings.

It was only slightly less stressful than preaching. But less preparation time. 

On a side note it felt strange knowing most of these kids since birth. Or even having attended several of their births. 

"Due date", are you kidding me?!

Another few days of teaching this week. The topic was supposed to be family planning but within the first hour it was obvious that that ship had sailed. All the ladies in the class were already pregnant. So I abbreviated my normal lessons and asked them if they wanted to talk about antenatal care (prenatal for the non British speakers) for the last two days.  They all agreed. The next day I tried to bring in some pictures to supplement our discussions.  This might have been a bad idea on my part.  They kept wanting to talk about how I had taken these pictures. It was made increasingly complicated when I showed pictures that were magnified.

This 8 week old baby is actually the size of a bean. The women couldn't really get the idea of the photo enlarging it. 

But they seemed to enjoy it. We talked a lot about nutrition and caring for themselves.  And they were astonished a few things, like that pregnancies are always 34 to 40 weeks long. Two women got up to testify that they had been pregnant for more than a year. They also all thought I was ridiculous for trying to figure out their due dates. Babies come when ever they want.  But overall I think it was helpful and I'm thinking I'll be formalizing my "curriculum" and teaching it again in the future. 

Closed head injury

I got a call in the night last night from some team mates. They were with a 16 year old boy who had been in some sort of traumatic accident and was neurologically compromised and would I please some down to the clinic.....
Oh dear. I never like receiving calls in the night. If it isn't imminently life threatening people wait until morning to call me. If it is life threatening there is usually nothing at all I can do. I've made it a rule to not do CPR here because why? It isn't like I'm buying time until an Intensivist or even an ambulance arrives. The same goes for pretty much any acute life support interventions. Those are all stop gap measures to get someone into surgery or ICU, neither of which are going to happen here.
All of this is going through my mind as I'm headed to the clinic in the dark with my gloves and flashlight in my pocket. The kid was pretty much unresponsive except to pain which elicited some incoherent mumbling and tossing and turning on the table. (GCS of 11= moderate brain injury). The story was he was hit by a bicycle while walking home in the dark. I've come to be suspicious of almost every story I get here and this one was no exception.  Nothing seemed to line up. The boy had a swollen eye with a tiny cut and a small abrasion on the opposite temple. That's it. No dirt, bruises or abrasions on knees, elbows or palms that would make it look like he took a tumble. Besides the swollen eye, his head and neck were normal. The nurse at the clinic had already given 500cc LR and was in the process of giving 1g rocephin though I'm not sure her rational because neither of his "wounds" were even deep enough to need stitches.  I know that I'm going to die of drug resistant bacteria here because of misuse of antibiotics but that is for another post.
Where I'm going with all of this is that there was nothing we could do for this kid. The nearest CT machine is hours away and there is nothing that can be done for a closed head injury. I hate that feeling and it makes me want very badly to go back to work in the States where there is something I can do. Where my ACLS training is actually useful and my answer to practically every issue doesn't have to be "give it time and see what happens".

Night away

I had a really nice night away with my friends last weekend. We just went over to Mbale but it was refreshing. Honestly, we spent most of our time eating and with options like these who wouldn't?!

The Chef's creativity? Yes please! And I'm sure I need some babbly crepes with flakes and other stuff that has been gratinated.

Ronnie ordered the beef teriyaki and it actually was VERY aromatic (I think. If that means smelled very strongly then yes). 

The skewed chicken was actually skewered but good none the less. 

Unfortunately the chocolate fudge in a pool of chocolate sauce left a lot to be desired. Like enough chocolate actually. Who would have though?!

Manifold meal

I've mentioned before that I attempt periodically to cook meals on the manifold of my truck. Most of the time it is because I want a hot meal when I arrive in a place where hot meals are hard to come by without building a fire and slaving over it for a few hours.  Occasionally it is conserve cooking fuel. This last attempt was really because I had no other choice. The reason is irrelevant, this dinner rocked.

I made pot pies and froze them a few weeks back for faster meals. After driving for 6 hours on my last trip out to drop meds off to the health workers it was awesome to have a hot dinner under my hood.

You know you are jealous. Come on out to visit and I'll make you one! I promise it doesn't taste like dust or diesel at all! 

Oh Monday....

It has really been one of those days.....
I've been out of Soroti for a bit so I had a bunch of easy run-of-the-mill stuff to do, but I know better. Nothing here is easy like that. Started off early, I've been out of cooking fuel since before I left for Karamoja so I headed into town only to discover that there still is none to be purchased. More cold meals until the some gets here I guess. Then headed over to the bank to get some cash. Found the ATM wasn't refilled yet. (Often isn't if you go too early on Monday mornings. But it was 9 am and I though it was late enough.) Did a little grocery shopping and to the market with the limited money I had left. Then tried the ATM again. This time it told me that the issuing bank had declined my transaction. Yikes! This has happened before though and it usually has to do with a problem communicating with the banks in Uganda. Sometimes it is fine if you try again but sometimes the machine refuses to give the card back and I'm stuck for weeks without any means of getting funds. So decided to go home to check online. I had a lot of stuff yet to do but without cash couldn't do any of it. All the way back to the house, found my account was fine on the US side. Back to town. Back to the ATM and finally it worked like it is supposed to. Went into the bank to pay my rent, water bill and a traffic ticket. Traffic tickets here are issued, you take them to a bank to pay them then you bring them back to the police station in the city it was issued.  Though the teller reminded me that I was missing a step. I had to go to the Revenue Authority first so they could make the form that that bank can fill out to say I've paid. Don't worry, it doesn't make any sense to me either. Was told that they system was down though so couldn't pay anything anyway. So I decided to go to the insurance office to renew, which was one of the reasons for the ticket. After waiting for insurance for nearly two hours while the woman, on her typewriter! plunked out one finger at a time my new forms, I finally had something checked off my to-do list. I tried not to think about the fact that I had spent all morning in town and had not successfully paid my rent or gotten cooking fuel or paid the water bill or dealt with the ticket .... I headed off to the URA office to try to get the form that I need in order to pay the traffic violation. Another long wait but finally managed. However, as I was gathering my forms and getting ready to leave I was told that I needed to go to Crane Bank. "But I have other business at Barclays, can't I go there?" Was told no, she didn't fill the form for me to go to Barclays and she didn't want to redo it. Are you kidding me?? So headed over to the new bank where I stood in line again. Finally got up to the window and passed my papers and money through to pay the ticket. She seemed to spend an inordinately long time calculating my change. When she finished up with that and passed my papers and balance back I asked if I could pay my water bill there too. She said sure and handed me a form and I was elbowed off to the side by the next person in line. (This is very normal as three or more people can be trying to conduct transactions at a teller window at any given time). As I got back to the window to pay the water bill I realized that the change she gave me was all wrong. I had given her 100,000 and owed 80,000. Even for me, who is terrible at math, I know that the 37,200 she gave me isn't right. So I kept 20,000 and passed the rest back explaining that she gave me too much. She snapped at me that there are bank charges that I also have to pay. I paused then asked what the bank charges are. She didn't reply and I said "Anyway, especially if there are more charges you've given me too much." I passed the papers back and showed that I owed 80,000, had given 100,000 etc.... She snapped that I had to give the 20,000 back. I asked how much the bank charges are. She immediately accused me of trying to cheat her. What?! I was trying to return some money because she had given too much! I was really wishing at this point that I had just kept my mouth shut.She started to work on the water bill that I'd also given her and it wasn't until she passed me those finished forms back that I realized that now she'd given me no change. Trying to be as non-confrontational as possible I asked how much the bank fees were and that she still owed me something. If looks could kill..... anyway she gave me back 17,200 so I'm assuming the fees were 2,800 but they could be anything for all I know. Deep breath and headed back over to the other bank, hoping their network was back up to pay my rent. Only a few more minutes standing in line and finally I though I was finished. I was almost all the way home, trying to figure out what I could make for lunch without any cooking fuel, when it dawned on me that I had not gotten the URA forms back to prove that I had paid the ticket after all that. I almost swore out loud as I turned the truck around. And to make matters worse when I went back in I learned the the teller I was interacting with was now on her lunch break. I explained to the person under the "customer service" sign what I needed and she said I just had to sit and wait until the teller came back. I decided the smartest thing was for me to go get some lunch of my own and come back in a bit. I was feeling slightly better after a chipate and coke. Not better enough though to keep my comment to myself when the teller had the nerve to say "I can't believe you left your form here."  "Well, it was on your side of 2 inches of plexy glass because I had to give it back to you because you screwed up my balance so maybe you caused me to leave my form here!" Very christian, I know.

On the up side I got all these lemons for less than $0.20 (500 shillings) so I'm going to be having some lemonade today.

Finally really raining!

The dust is turning to mud!! I can't believe I'm this excited about the rainy season but this seems to have been a very long dry season and an exceptionally hot one. I'm tired of chapped lips, cracking feet and dust every where every time I'm in Karamoja. Dust in my hair, dust on every surface of the house, dust in my sheets, dust in my drinking water.
But I'm even more excited about this for my friends in the peace villages. I've seen how badly their gardens did in the first rainy season, in which they could count the number of times it rained on one hand. We are praying for some long steady rain to water their crops so that they can have a good harvest to carry them though the next dry season!

From "A Life Overseas"

This post Is Jesus a Liar? was written by a missionary who also lives and works in East Africa.  It was a great reminder to me. Check it out.

Other bloggers

I'm up in Karamoja for the next few days, so until I come back and update here are a few of other people's blog post that I really resonated with.

I don't even want to share this one because it is so true! But I'm all about honesty here in my blog so please check out this post someone wrote about 10 things we don't want to tell you.

10 Things Missionaries Won't Tell You

Preaching

So one of the downfalls perks of being a missionary is that you will be called upon to preach. Regardless of if you have any training or appropriate skills or even have anything legit to share. People just assume that if you are a missionary you should be able to do this thing. And I go both ways on it. I guess, from their perspective, if I have the audacity to call myself a missionary I should be able to preach what I believe. But I grew up knowing that preaching is not something to be taken lightly. Those who do it have significant training, hours to prepare and a special call from God to shepherd.  And I'm not even sure what I think about women preaching.

But all of this aside, on Saturday afternoon I was asked to preach.  I was sorely tempted to say No, but I've told my feelings about this to the person who called so I kind of figured if he was asking, he didn't have a lot of other options. It was for the small village church I attend outside of Soroti so there is a level of spiritual maturity that prevents me from using the ultra basic lessons I have prepared for Sundays in Karamoja.  What made it harder was that I was out in the village following up on some patients and didn't get home until rather late on Saturday night. And didn't really know even what to teach about. 

So, early Sunday morning I finally flipped my journal open and decided to just share what God had been teaching me about- Priorities. 

 If you chase two chickens you will lose them both. 

 Luke 17:20-35 Once, on being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst." Then he said to his disciples, “The time is coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, but you will not see it. People will tell you, ‘There he is!’ or ‘Here he is!’ Do not go running off after them. For the Son of Man in his day will be like the lightning, which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other. But first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation.

 “Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all. “It was the same in the days of Lot. People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. But the day Lot left Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all.

“It will be just like this on the day the Son of Man is revealed. On that day no one who is on the housetop, with possessions inside, should go down to get them. Likewise, no one in the field should go back for anything. Remember Lot’s wife! Whoever tries to keep their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life will preserve it.

I don’t want it to ever be said of me that I was busy eating, drinking, buying and building and then my end came. My priority needs to be the kingdom of God! I know that I get busy and distracted with the little stuff, but I’ve begun praying every day that I would seek first the Kingdom of God. That I would allow God to make my priorities His priorities. 

In true Ugandan fashion, and after translation and some visual aids, the sermon was much longer than this. But you get the gist of it.