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| Two superheroes happy to be home! |
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| It feels like it’s been a long time since we’ve said that and it’s good to be back. |
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I just wanted to email briefly to say thank you for your prayers for our journey back and to share a couple of thoughts.
We ended up being delayed a further five days on arrival in Uganda as none of our bags made our connecting flight in Cairo. Fortunately, the place we were staying could accommodate us and we have now learnt a lesson in making sure to pack a spare change of clothes for everyone and toothbrushes and a pack of cards! (We’d recently decided to go lighter on hand luggage to make running through airports with five children a bit easier).
After a worryingly-bumpy journey - thanks to a suspension issue in our ageing car - we made it back up to Arua and have been here for the last ten days.
We had a good first week back into our normal routine- Tom at work and the boys and I trying to get through the last few bits of last year’s school work. Then we got COVID - no idea how, but it’s gone through all of us, possibly excluding Amara.
Tom and I got it last and were feeling a bit sorry for ourselves this evening, struggling to look after everyone with limited energy. We had a bit of a wakeup call though when our night watchman, Emmanuel arrived for his shift. He hadn’t turned up yesterday and we couldn’t get hold of him on his mobile. He explained that he’d gone to the bush after leaving work, as he’d heard that two of his cows had died. On arriving there, he collapsed and the next thing he remembers is waking up in a clinic in town, apparently 8 hours later.
He seems fine now and we've instructed him to rest tonight. Thankfully he brought the discharge note with him to show Tom before buying anything from the list of illegible medicines he’d been told he needed. (We’ve been encouraging friends and staff to bring medical notes for Tom to check over first, as clinics here often seem to list so many unnecessary medicines for them to buy).
Tom did a quick (COVID-safe!) examination and took his observations and thankfully he seems ok now but please pray for him as he wasn’t conscious for a worrying amount of time. The discharge note was almost illegible with a list of impressive-sounding but mostly nonsensical conditions with no test results. The treatment cost him the equivalent of one month’s wages and the medicines would have cost 2 months’ worth.
This kind of interaction here isn’t uncommon and it really challenges our perspectives. I first felt so sad for Emmanuel having experienced this and then somewhat angry at the disparity between the medical treatment people can access here, and what we often take for granted in the UK. |
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| Some overzealous pruning by our landlord's mother left our hedge depleted but gave us a new sunset view |
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Life here is generally much more unpredictable and it can be easy to get down about things and make complaints. On arriving home, we opened the gate to find a group of the neighbours playing football in our compound and a good chunk of the trees and hedge between us and the welders and the road hacked down. Having stayed in other people’s houses for 10 weeks, I was really looking forward to being back in our space and this was a very quick reminder that this home doesn’t actually belong to us but to God.
We’ve had intermittent power and limited water since we came back and we can easily become frustrated with the extra work this creates. I’ve felt challenged though to practice an attitude of thanksgiving as the devil can so easily distort our thoughts. Among other things to be thankful for, it turns out that one of the big new gaps in the hedge lines up perfectly with where the sun sets, something we previously couldn’t see and the lack of power means that we can support a local business selling solar-charged power banks. It’s hard to turn every frustration into thanks though and getting COVID has meant that Tom was unable to attend a national conference for Diocesan Health Coordinators in Kampala this week, his first opportunity to do so.
It's getting late and my COVID brain is not making much sense anymore! I wanted to say thank you for your prayers and just felt I should share the challenge to practice thanksgiving, as always, through prayer, in God’s strength and not our own.
‘Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.’
1Thessalonians 5:16-18
Blessings,
Verity, Tom, Ezra, Eli, Simeon, Joel and Amara |
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