DesanaGiving

Dear Friends,

Thank you to everyone for your moral, physical and spiritual support. From The Heart House is emerging in the community despite the many, often frustrating, challenges.

We are blessed to have a van in our possession! It enables us to reach the areas to take our ministry, to transport food and other tangible items and to visit other ngo's which are doing similar work in the community.

The House is slowly, but surely, taking shape. The main source of frustration is electricity, or should I say lack of it? Grid power may only be available a few hours a day and sometimes not at all for several days. We bought an inverter for back up power, then a new battery for it......but it (as most things in Uganda) continues to give us problems. Water has to be trucked in and is pumped into a large concrete tank. When we are without power, we cannot pump that water to the elevated gravity tank and then the problem of no water in the house becomes an issue. I never thought I would say this, but we are blessed to have 2 outdoor toilets on the property!!! There isn't hot water available in the house, there is a constant stream of ants marching across the counters and tiny "mos-quee- tos" are ever present, along with many small pinkish green lizards. We purchased a stove and a refrigerator, but I am constantly discarding food that was only half cooked on the stove or spoiled in the refrigerator.

The heat is oppressive. Air conditioning is rare, only in a few stores, the better hotels and thankfully, IN OUR VAN! Sometimes after working in the field, we climb in the van and blast ourselves with the coldest air possible, soaking in the coolness. The locals say it has never been this hot before. A thick layer of red dust settles on everything.....the laundry on the line, the fruit on the counter and, it seems, especially on your skin and hair. It is ever present and reappears almost instantly after you clean something. Welcome to Uganda!!!!

I am blessed! Each day I make new friends and have been learning patience and appreciation. I sometimes find myself feeling like a zoo animal in a rare exotic exhibit, the featured attraction, a white woman, a muzungu. We often travel to villages where persons without color are not common. Sometimes people ask me to touch their children and I wonder if they think I bring good luck! Always the children run to greet me and take my hands to walk. It is the times when they reach up to be held that my heart soars and I know that God is present in this, oh so magical, moment.