March 7 Update

We are so thankful for God's provision over the last few challenging weeks. We have pretty much gotten settled into our house. We have living room furniture, beds and mattresses, and a few tables. This week our dining room table and chairs should be finished along with the kids' school desks. It will be nice this week to finally start to get back to a normal routine; the last few weeks have been quite draining! We also did finally get our internet set up, and the company who installed just cut their monthly rate from over $100 per month (which is pretty much what everyone charges) to $40 per month. That monthly savings will really help us out going forward.

We also ended up with enough funding to purchase a 4-wheel drive vehicle. It is a Toyota Surf, which is the equivalent of the old 4-Runners in the U.S. It's a 1994 model, but the motor, interior, and exterior are all in great condition. A few days after I got the car, I was pulling into our gate, and my day guard told me that there was fluid coming out from under the vehicle. Sure enough, all of the power steering fluid was pouring out from the bottom. I called Buyundo, a Ugandan friend who has been an incredible help to us, and he referred me to a mechanic to come to look at the car. The mechanic showed up a little while later with a couple of other guys, and they quickly diagnosed the problem, which was simply a broken hose. But he also started showing me a number of other things that needed to be replaced, which was basically the entire structure underneath the car including the control arm, shocks, etc. (By the way I did have a mechanic check the car before I bought it, but he mainly focused on the motor and brakes.) I agreed that the stuff under there looked pretty bad, and I authorized him to do the work. So for the next two days, these three guys essentially took apart the car right in my driveway and then put it back together again, leaving only to sleep and to travel downtown to get the necessary parts. Perhaps the funniest part of this whole sequence of events was when the mechanic told me he needed money to get a second round of parts. I told him I was out of money, and that I would need to go to the ATM. My plan was to take a boda boda to the bank about a mile or so a way and then return with the cash. By the way, boda bodas are one of the most popular forms of transportation here. They are motorcycles or scooters and you pay the driver to take you places just like you would a taxi. They are everywhere and can make driving in a car quite difficult as they dart in and out of traffic. One of these days I'm going to post some photos of boda boda scenes. I've seen them carrying anything from a mom holding her infant to chicken coops to panes of glass (scary!) to a family of 5 (usually with the smallest child up front on the handlebars). But anyway, the mechanic tells me that I don't have to take a boda boda- he has one and can drop me off at the ATM. I agreed, grateful to save a few thousand shillings. So one of the guys gets on the bike and starts it up, then the mechanic gets on behind him and motions for me to sit on the very back. So we have 3 grown men on this little bike, but we weren't done yet. The mechanic also needed to take the old parts to the Toyota place to make sure he would return with the right ones. So his other helper hands him a large plastic bag containing the control arm, shocks, and some other things I don't know the name of, and then piles on two more greasy triangle things that hold the wheels on the car, each weighing 20 pounds or so. It was quite a ride, I'll tell you as that bike sputtered up the hill to the ATM. The biggest lesson I learned along the way was to not let my bare ankles touch the exhaust pipe on the sides of the bike. (Or maybe the bigger lesson I should learn is to not ride a boda boda wearing flip flops!)

So finally the mechanic finished the car, and the whole thing cost me about $600, mostly for parts. The labor charge for two days of work from 3 mechanics- $75! I'm going to have him come back next week to do a few other things to the car, and once he's done it should be good as new!

And I almost forgot to mention that we received our visas last week! Visas here aren't too difficult to obtain, but we have learned from past experience never to take the granting of a visa for granted. Praise the Lord that the whole process went smoothly and that our visas were issued for two years instead of one (although we have to pay twice as much as we thought, but we know God will provide for that as well).

A few other things of note- all Aid Sudan trips for March and April have been canceled. We haven't had many people sign up and given the rising tensions in Sudan in advance of the April elections, we felt led to cancel these trips. For those of you in Houston, please don't forget about the Hands On Sudan prayer event at Houston's First Baptist this Thursday. It would be great to have some of you attend; I know my parents are going so let them know if you want to ride along. If any of you who do not live in Houston would like to be praying for Sudan this Thursday (or any other time), please let me know and I will get you a list of topics to pray about. It would be neat if people in other locations could get groups together to intercede for Sudan during this very critical time in the nation's history.

We are so thankful to those of you who have donated money over the last couple of months to help out with our start-up expenses. It's been amazing to see how God has given us just enough to get the things we need, and we are so grateful to all of you who have contributed. Have a great week!