1 Month in...

Greetings and Blessings to all my American friends! As hard as it is for me to believe, I have already been in Uganda for an entire month! I apologize for not writing sooner - things have been pretty busy here. For the past few weeks, I have been serving alongside a team of four college-aged individuals from NJ and PA. Living, laughing, and learning together, we strove to live out the Kingdom of God here in Uganda, all while asking how to live out the Kingdom in our everyday lives.

For the first two weeks, we worked at St. Mary-Kevin's Primary School and Orphanage, leading discipleship groups, teaching classes, tutoring, and building relationships with students. Some highlights for me included:

• being taught Luganda (a Ugandan language) by twelve-year-olds
• telling a group of students the story of Les Miserables - my favorite book!!
• giving kids a crash-course lesson in world geography
• teaching Bible Class, Social Studies, and English
• in true Ugandan fashion, eating an enormous live locust
• not getting an eye infection (there was an epidemic at the orphanage)
• playing football (soccer) with the boys - and contemplating the World Cup

Of course, there were plenty of challenges as well. A few members of the college team came down with illnesses. Teaching also proved to be quite difficult, as well. Ugandan schoolchildren are taught solely through rote memorization, so they do not have very sophisticated critical thinking skills. Thus, we had a hard time communicating abstract concepts (like future-tense verbs, sin, and time). Perhaps the most frustrating moment for me was when, at the end of a lesson on Creation and the Fall, I asked the students why sin entered the world, and one kid answered, "Jesus!" Still, progress is being made, and I look forward to more teaching in the weeks to come.

The last week with the College team was spent in the Northern Ugandan district of Gulu - a region that is just starting to recover from over two decades of civil war. We worked and stayed in the remote village of Adak - a former IDP (refugee) camp - where we aided in the construction of Touch the World's health clinic - the only medical provider within an hour's drive. Working alongside former child soldiers and victims of unspeakable horror was an incredible experience. Some highlights for me in Adak were:

• Living in huts!
• Helping to chop down a big tree
• listening to Acholi fables around the campfire
• helping slaughter and consume a delicious goat
• helping collect and devour delicious flying termites
• eating cassava and beans every single day...
• watching the incredible African sunrise every morning
  
• getting lost on the road and accidentally driving to Sudan
• chasing off packs of wild dogs
• listening to the World Cup with other villagers
• and more!

In a few weeks, I will be returning to Adak, where I'll stay for nearly a month, assisting other visiting teams, and conducting a poverty assessment survey in the surrounding African bush.

Today, the college team left us (sadly), and the internship "proper" has begun! For the next month, alongside my fellow intern Nate Dorka, I will be teaching in the orphanage by day, and studying missional living by night! Hopefully, I will be able to post more frequent updates in the near future - about my activities and the insights I am gaining.