One Year and Counting

Last Sunday we had the pleasure of celebrating our first anniversary! We thought through a lot of different ways to celebrate like going to Murchison Falls on safari, going to a nice restaurant in Kampala, or having a big party and celebrating with friends. Originally I was ready to go the American way and have a romantic dinner for two (after the realization that safaris can get expensive!). Later on however, we realized my birthday would be taking place 5 days after our anniversary, so we just decided to have one big party to celebrate both events.

It turned out to be a great day of eating good food, cake, playing cards, and having serious debates. Yep, that’s right. We “discussed” (at the top of our lungs, sometimes sitting , sometimes standing) things like politics, religion, where to buy your clothes, DSTV, and the meaning of a “simple” life. What else can you do at a party when the power’s out all day? We were afraid it would be too quiet without music and movies...little did we know we had great debators in our midst who all prefer to shout at the same time.

In the evening we decided that instead of sitting in a dark house we should enjoy the great outdoors, so we actually carried all our furniture outside and set up a new living space on the lawn. Probably the biggest hit of the day was our wedding album. It is a beautiful storybook album with the pictures printed directly onto the pages. The comment of the day was “This is not in Uganda”, meaning that technology is not yet used here for things like personal albums. Wedding albums here are simply full of regular pictures, and it’s common for friends and family to take a picture or two for themselves once they see the album. When people see our album, their first response is to complain in a joking way that they can’t take any pictures home with them. Personally I’m grateful it worked out that way...OUR wedding pictures! You can’t have them!

The last year has been so good but also extremely challenging. At least my challenge of missing American food has been taken care of for now as I will soon be receiving a package from Mom and Dad which contains Mac & Cheese! Also, some of my friends from Britain that I work with at the music school treated me to lunch yesterday at an American style coffee shop with really good sandwiches. And of course, I’m so grateful for my wonderful chef of a husband who is always willing to step in and make me french fries when I get tired of African food.

Seriously though, besides that “crisis” we have not had an easy time with jobs and finances. My work at the music school is part time and many of my students are unreliable. Michael’s travel company has not picked up a lot of business yet either, but of course it is common for new things to take time and even get off to a rough start. We are really seeing that with our music ministry at the blind school as we are still struggling to get consistent transport to the school every weekend.

However there are many opportunities coming up for us that we are praying will keep us busy in the near future. There’s a good chance I and a violinist friend of mine will begin playing in some of the big hotels around Kampala to provide dinner music for various functions. Also, a job has opened up in the Uganda Studies Program at UCU that I have half a chance of getting since I’m a former student. There is a good chance that Michael will be working one or two jobs in Gulu as a chef and hotel manager in the very near future. While he would be living a long distance away most of the week, we still see it as a good opportunity for a time until something else comes along. As for the project at the blind school, we have discovered that there is a missions organization in our area that sometimes rents out their vans, especially to other ministries.

These are just a few of the possibilities we are looking forward to in the near future. Despite some of the challenges we have faced, God has allowed us enjoy our first year of marriage and grow in love for each other. In fact, the challenges that we have come through have been good reminders that without God we can do nothing. We owe him everything. He has kept us going in ways that we never could have on our own and brought us through situations that could bring anyone down if not for God’s help.

So we are working on being thankful for and in the challenging times, because they make our lives testimonies of God’s goodness and in the end, bring Him glory. Who knows? If not for the challenges, we may have gone through the first year of marriage giving ourselves the credit for everything instead of giving God the glory. “Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name...” (Psalm 29:2).

Missing Home

I love Uganda, and I like most of the food here, but sometimes I just miss American food like crazy. Like the other day I got an intense craving for mac & cheese...didn't see that one coming! Of course, it's not like it's impossible to get mac & cheese and other American delights here. They are just expensive compared to Ugandan standards. The money we would use to buy a jar of Alfredo sauce for one meal here could get us about 6 or 7 meals of African food. It's just not worth it. We did manage to make tacos the other day at least!

Please don't worry...food is not the only thing I miss about home. I miss all of you! Our dream right now is to come home for Christmas this year, but it will take a miracle.

It has been so long since I last wrote, but it seems like nothing much has happened here. The music project for Salama School for the blind has not really taken off yet because we can't get there on a weekly basis. We had a successful "kick-off" day, playing violin, piano, and cello for the students. We also want to teach them guitar but the one they have at the school is in a very sad state so we have not been able to teach it to them yet.

After hearing a sample of each instrument, we gave them a chance to touch and try out each one. It helped them to grasp what it is really like to play these things. We managed to go back one more time after that and began group lessons. Most students have an idea of which instrument they want to learn but we haven't totally organized a time table yet for giving them private lessons. Most students have chosen keyboard of course because it's familiar to them and is somewhat easy to make good sounds on right away compared to cello or violin. Still, we have at least 2 or 3 students on each of the other instruments so things should be moving along well soon.

Since that first day of group lessons we have not been able to get back to the school because it is very far and we don't have an available car. So the project is basically on hold until we can get consistent transport to the school. The person we had planned to go with every week is not able to go anymore so now we are really stuck. There are those who are willing to take us on a weekend here and there, but if we can't give lessons on a weekly basis there will be no progress. We are planning to make a video very soon to showcase the project and point out some of the needs we have. Then we will send copies home to several churches and hopefully begin receiving support for the project.

We had a very nice Good Friday service last week, and I was privileged to be a part of it. I played cello with the worship team in 2, 1 hour sets and also did a special. It was a great service, though very different from those I've attended in the U.S. First of all, beginning at 9:30am and ending around 3pm is not something I'm used to! At least lunch was provided afterward for us to enjoy as a church.

The biggest difference though was not the length of the service, but rather the mood. Instead of being somber and serious, it was actually a service of celebration. I've never seen the people at church dance and shout with so much joy as they did that day. It made me wonder what would be left for us to do on Easter Sunday, but of course, it was another celebration. It just had a slightly different focus.

We are still enjoying "newlywed" life here but we're getting close to that 1 year anniversary! We are just so thankful to God who keeps us going and takes care of our needs every single day.

An Addition to the Family

Meet the newest member of our family! This is our new puppy O.B. We missed the boat the first time we had an opportunity to get one, but this time we didn’t hesitate. Now we’re the proud owners of a whimpering, flea-infested, ankle biter! Well, the fleas should be going soon with the help of meds, but I’m not sure when he’ll grow out of the other things.

O.B. stands for “Old Boy”, which is not so appropriate now but once he grows up a little it will be more fitting. Here in Uganda O.B. and O.G. are basically terms used to describe alumni of any school. For example, anyone who has graduated from IWU is my “Old Girl” or “Old Boy”. Anyways, we thought it would be a fun name for a dog and it sort of gives people a feeling of friendship even when they first meet him.

Having a dog here in Uganda is not terribly uncommon but it’s definitely a different experience than in the States. Most people here use them as guard dogs, so they are not so much indoor pets. They don’t really get special treatment and I’ve never seen anyone take their dog out for a walk or anything. So here, they’re not very hard to look after…at least, that’s what we’re hoping.

Other than the new puppy, everything else is going along normally. We are just looking forward to new things beginning in February, and we can’t wait to see where God takes us in these endeavors. We are planning to begin music lessons at Salama School for the Blind in about two weeks. We’re still in need of voice and keyboard teachers but I’m confident we will find some soon. In the meantime we will go ahead with cello, violin, and guitar lessons.

Also this month, Michael and I will be going once a week to an upcoming preschool to read Bible Stories and sing songs with the children there. We are excited about this opportunity because we (Michael especially) love children. This should be a really fun way to minister and get a little more connected in the community.

One group that we have absolutely loved being a part of so far is a small group fellowship for young married couples. It’s called True Vine Fellowship and is based at the Anglican cathedral nearby, but thankfully they accept couples from other churches as well. It’s a very close-knit group and though we’ve only met with them a few times, we have already become close to most of the people. Different couples host the fellowship at their homes once a month and we meet either for Bible study or to discuss marriage related topics. For the topics we usually have guest speakers who are a bit more qualified and experienced than any of us, so we really learn a lot.

We recently had a big cookout together and it was a blast! It was really a taste of home, complete with sausages, hamburgers and grilled pork. It was a great time to get to know each other, and for Michael to show off his grilling skills! Anyways, we’ve realized that this is a really worthy ministry and we hope continue to be involved for a long time.

The Holidays in Uganda

Happy New Year!

One holiday that Ugandans know how to celebrate is New Year’s Eve. My goodness. Christmas can go by without notice but New Year’s…It was as if the whole country was in Kampala celebrating all night long! Almost all the churches plan an overnight service of praise, prayer, and preaching from around 9 in the night to 5 in the morning. There’s nothing like stopping at midnight – people just expect to spend the whole night out.

Michael and I spent it with some friends at Watoto Church in Kampala (former Kampala Pentecostal Church), only staying until about 2:30 in the AM. It was an incredible way to bring in the New Year. This church was planted by an American missionary couple and it’s doing great things around Uganda. The church itself was packed with thousands of people inside so we ended up with the masses outside in the parking lot following the service on the big screen. The praise and worship there was almost purely western with a few African songs in the mix. It was a nice taste of home as I felt like I was back in chapel at IWU - the major difference being that these people know how to dance!

Christmas on the other hand didn’t seem to come with all the bells and whistles that I’m used to. Decorations are sparse and don’t appear until the day has almost arrived. In fact, we put up decorations at my mother-in-law’s house ON Christmas day. Most people don’t do Christmas trees, probably because they’re all fake and could only be chosen by Charlie Brown himself as a sufficient decoration. Anyways, I’m not trying to bash Uganda for lacking Christmas Spirit, but I just couldn’t help but notice how toned down it was compared to how we do it in the US.

Here, Christmas is about spending time with family and going to church. I think people exchange small gifts here and there, but no massive gift exchanges for the most part. Michael and I along with many of his brothers and sisters, travelled to Iganga to spend Christmas with Mom and Step-Dad. We basically went to spend time together as a family and eat a lot of food! It was a great weekend to relax and take village tours, visiting other friends and relatives. We spent almost every evening gathered around the laptop enjoying episodes of “Tom & Jerry” – a show which is apparently a hit in any culture! We also ate all the mangos we could possibly stuff ourselves with…well, at least those who were used to eating them. Most people had around 10 each. I managed to get 4 down – quite an achievement for me!

On Christmas Day, everyone goes to church. In the village where we were, Michael was the preacher of the day! I was so proud of him. He simply felt like it was something he needed and wanted to do, and asked the reverend of the church if it was okay. The reverend was actually relieved because he wasn’t feeling well and was looking for someone to preach in his place. The church also responded very positively. They were very attentive, and some said it was the first Sunday all year that they hadn’t fallen asleep in church!

I definitely missed being with family back home – spending Christmas Eve at Uncle Tom & Aunt Kay’s, eating the best Chicken Noodle Soup on the planet! Missing these traditions is inevitable, but it was also refreshing to celebrate in a different way and spend time with my new family.

Now we are just looking forward to what God has in store for the coming year! Be blessed in 2010!

Finally Back Online!

A "quick" recap of recent events:

We participated in the Kampala quarter marathon (10K) with over 20,000 other people! This was quite exciting for me because I’ve never been interested in running and I’ve never done a serious race like this. It turned out to be a lot of fun and not as hard as I thought it would be.

We had Thanksgiving dinner with the students and staff of the Uganda Studies Program at UCU and almost had a taste of home. The mashed potatoes and gravy really hit the spot and we ate way too many desserts, but the turkey turned out to be really disappointing. It was cut like a chicken, marinated, and thrown on the grill for a few minutes. The flavor was okay to be sure, but I couldn’t get a real bite out of it because the meat was so tough! The rule with meat here – you have to boil for some good time before doing anything else to it…it’s so tough. So, not exactly the turkey dinner I was hoping for, but at least we watched “Charlie Brown’s Christmas” (once the power came back)!

We celebrated Michael’s birthday on Saturday the 12th and ended up having a great party! I really laughed at how things worked out because it would never work in the U.S. We sent text messages to about 2 families on Friday night and called a few people Saturday morning. A few friends arrived in the morning and by 2 we had over 10 people in our house ready to eat some good pork for lunch. Haha! And we were concerned that no one would show up…

Michael is gaining business little by little with his travel company and cake making, and I’m getting new cello students here and there as well. I’m really enjoying teaching at the music school and now the International School of Uganda as well. It’s interesting teaching children and adults because you really have to adapt the teaching style for maximum effectiveness. I’m trying to market myself to other international schools and also take up a few private students, teaching in their homes. By January, when schools are back in session, I will likely have 15 students all together.

Something that we could really use prayer for is a project we are trying to start up at Salama School for the Blind. It’s a wonderful school with passionate children in whom I have seen great musical potential. A few months back, God gave me a vision for these students – that they can be great musicians if someone will take the time to teach them. Upon meeting with some of the directors of the school, I found that we were an answer to prayer. They had the same vision for some time, but no one to teach the students.

Because of my connections with Kampala music school, I’ve been able to round up the teachers and instruments we need in order to give lessons to these kids. We are thinking of calling it the “Joyful Noise Music Project” and offering guitar, piano, voice, violin, and cello lessons for now, but of course we hope to add more opportunities in the future. The project will basically focus on equipping them to play worship music – familiar choruses and hymns. They are already very passionate in their times of worshiping through music, so we hope that one day they will be able to have their own worship bands and even string trios or quartets. In the future they could even minister in churches and raise money for their school through this.

We’re planning to begin in February when all of them have returned from the holiday break. We’re very excited and we believe that God can do many great things with this project, so please join us in praying for this. I will keep you posted with more specific challenges and things to pray for as they come up.

Hope you’re all enjoying the snow during this festive season! As for me, I’m really having a hard time realizing that it’s Christmas. The decorations are sparse and the average temps are in the 80s…not a flake of snow in sight! I don’t miss the snow so much but, I miss that warm, cozy Christmas season feeling. Does that make sense? It just doesn’t feel like Christmas at all.

For the first (or maybe second) time in my life, I won’t be going to Uncle Tom and Aunt Kay’s house on Christmas Eve…I’ll be going to my mother-in-law’s house in the village to eat good African food and just visit with everyone around. Things will be quite different indeed, but still good. Merry Christmas everyone!

Oh and by the way, we’re most likely getting ourselves a puppy for Christmas!

Sorry!

Wow, sorry I've not lived up to my own expectations of writing another blog soon. Our laptop has been down for some good time. First we had to get it cleaned for viruses and in the process lost almost all photos. Now it has stopped booting up all together so we'll probably lose all documents now. It's not really practical for me to write blog updates at the internet cafes because it adds up to a lot of money.

So we're here, alive and well in the dry heat of December. Yes, I'm totally confused about the holiday season! It's so different. I'll try to be posting short updates for the time being until we can get the computer fixed again.

We miss everyone back home very much and hope you have a great holiday season!

History

This blog was actually written about a month ago and many things have kept me from posting until now. For example, as I was posting it there were riots breaking out in the street so we had to leave before it was posted. Life has just been generally inconvenient lately so this is the first I've been back to the blog since early September. Just enjoy thinking of it as an historical account! I will try very hard to post another update very very soon so that you will know the current situation. Thanks for reading!

Once upon a time...


...We had a big reception as a way of celebrating our marriage with friends and family here, and introducing me to the family members I’ve not met. It is indeed a very big family! As Uncle Manzi was introducing the family to me he would say something like, “All the girls who are a part of the Rabichwamba family, stand up.” Then about 25 of my cousins stood up! It was great to finally meet most of the aunts and uncles and see everyone all in one place. It was also good for Michael’s family to meet Rev. Henry and some of the USP staff. We really had a great time dancing, giving speeches, and eating great food and of course, cake.

The day was basically a success, except for the fact that we, the guests of honor were about 3 hours late to our own party! We were going to get ready from the family home in Kampala but we decided to go to a nearby salon for my hair instead of doing it ourselves. We told the guy we only had about 30 minutes and we thought he would do something simple and fast. 2 ½ hours later, my hair was done! He did a great job and was going as fast as he could, but he really put us in a tough position. Our party was starting on the other side of town and of course, I couldn’t leave with my hair halfway done, so we had no choice but to come very late. Once we got to the party everything was fine, but the morning was so stressful.

I’ve finally started teaching at the music school, but only one day a week for now. Originally they told me I would have ten students and more would come in September, but many of the students weren’t so committed or serious about lessons, so for now I’m only teaching 5 of them. So far it’s been a good experience because they are all at different levels. One of them is almost as good as me so sometimes I feel like I’m not very helpful, but it’s fun to teach him because he can play more interesting pieces. My youngest student is 12 and she is a talker! I can see that it’s going to be a challenge to get enough playing/teaching time in with her.

I’m glad that I will be around for a while because the students all have great potential. I would love to help them go far in improving their playing skills. I think now that they will have more consistency in their lessons they will improve quickly. The school usually just brings in visiting teachers whenever they are available, and these foreign teachers are usually only around for about a month at a time. If no one is visiting, they simply can’t offer cello lessons. One of my students wanted to know how long I was staying because she’s been playing for seven months, but she’s already had 6 different teachers. No wonder she’s struggling with basic techniques! I’ve also had about 6 different teachers, but in the last 12 years! So I hope with some stability, she will be able to improve quite a bit.

Michael is still looking for a job, but we’re hoping that one of the hotels he applied to will call him soon. One restaurant manager almost gave him a job, but apparently he was “overqualified” so they didn’t hire him after all. Ridiculous, I know. So for now we’re just trusting God that things will stabilize soon with jobs and finances.

Otherwise, we are still enjoying newlywed life, we enjoyed the beach again on Sunday afternoon, we love our church, and we hope to get more involved and connected there soon. We’ve been attending Deliverance Church in Mukono for about 2 months now and we’ve really been blessed by it so far. One of the things we’ve loved about it is that the people there are so genuine in love and faith. The church has many ministries including outreach programs, ministry to the less fortunate, etc. The music is lively and Spirit led, as well as the preaching. They really emphasize acting upon the word and doing the things we learn about in the sermon.

Application is seriously emphasized, for example, a few Sundays back, the pastor was talking about giving and being free with our money and possessions. It wasn’t a planned thing, but he just got so fired up about it that as he was encouraging us to go out and be givers to those around us, he just had everyone stand up and give something to someone else in the church! It was incredible! The pastor gave someone his tie and his watch, Michael gave someone his sweater because it was a very cold morning, and I hadn’t carried anything with me that day so I just gave someone a hug! It’s just really refreshing to go to a church with people who are genuine and want to act on their faith.

We will be joining a home cell soon, (a small group) and this coming Sunday I’ll be playing for offertory for the first time. Michael might be joining the choir in the near future too, so we’re excited to be joining the people there in ministry.