New Years in Uganda

Happy New Year from Uganda! :o)

We arrived in Uganda on Dec 29 at 10:00 pm. We are staying with our family here (The McFarlands) for a few days until we are able to move into our own little house. We have thoroughly enjoyed spending time with them. They have shown us around New Hope and the surrounding villages as well as city of Kampala.

The first few days have been rough on us because of jet lag. We are 8 hours ahead of the United States which has made it a little difficult to adjust. Keith and Laura made us stay awake on our first day so that we were able to get a full night of sleep...which was difficult at the time but having a full night's rest was wonderful!

We were able to get a Ugandan cell phone so that we are able to communicate with people here and our family and friends back home.

The weather is very nice. It rained a little bit this afternoon which cooled everything off. It is very warm here, but we are enjoying it right now! It is a very nice and welcomed change from the snow that we left in West Virginia!

We thank you for your prayers for us! God has given so much peace and rest in Himself. Rachel has especially experienced a peace from God about being so far away from home. We know that He has called us to this and we are resting in Him. He is already changing our hearts in just the short time that we have been here.

We visited the village near New Hope this morning which was so eye opening. There were so many children! Mike mentioned that most of the population here is very young and we have found that to be true! The houses that the families live in are constructed of brick and cement with a metal roof. These types of houses are very new to the area (they just began being built about 10 years ago). Before these types the homes were basically mud homes. Some people still have those, but most of them have brick houses. It was very interesting to see things that we had only seen on TV in person. There are many times that we have seen homes like these and children running around with no shoes and dirty clothing on television, but actually seeing them in person and recognizing that it is REAL was incredible. We wish you all could see what we have seen in just the few short days that we have been here!

Some of you have been asking for pictures and we will post some soon! :o) You can check our blog here or our group on facebook in the next few days to see if we have posted any! We are trying to adjust to being here before we dive right into picture taking and blog posting everyday! Once again, thank you for your prayers! We love you all!!

Love,
Mike & Rachel