I somehow slept almost the entire two plane rides to Uganda, and I read Bruchko and the Motilone Miracle, the book that we each received a copy of to read on the trip, when I wasn't sleeping, so I didn't journal until after we arrived in Gulu. Our first plane left Houston on Sunday evening, June 10, and our second plane landed in Entebbe, Uganda, the next night. We spent the night there and headed to Gulu the next day, Tuesday. Here's my journal entry from that evening:
Today we arrived in Gulu, Uganda! It's hard to believe that we're actually here! The plane rides were long, but I somehow slept a lot, which made them shorter, though I slept through a breakfast (I know, great grammar. The whole team would also bring up the missed breakfast and my funny reaction to it for the rest of the trip.). Hang on, I'm going back into town to get a jersey... Ok, Blake and I just got football (soccer) jerseys from town. More on that later. anyway, the flight here was alright. We arrived in Entebbe last night. Apparently Uganda turns off all its electricity at night (something we found to not be true for Gulu. Either it's only for certain places, or the hotel ran its generator every night). The hotel we stayed in was pitch black. I literally couldn't see my hand in front of my face. Oliver and I shared a room.
This morning at breakfast, Mitchell gave us some terrible news. His and Beth's baby boy hasn't been getting the nutrients he needs. Beth and the baby are ok, but they may need to have him be born early, possibly within the next few days. Mitchell is taking the next flight back to Houston; he's actually probably boarding now, or will be soon (This was around 10:30 PM Tuesday. Mitchell and Beth's baby has since been born, 2 1/2 months early, and is doing exceptionally well now.). It's been hard to see him go. I know God is in control and has a perfect plan, though. All we can do now is pray for them, and continue on with our mission. We should hear more from Beth soon. (Something rather important I forgot to mention is that Matthew Stewart was appointed as leader after it was decided that Mitchell needed to head back home. Matt is an incredibly goofy and funny guy, but he was an incredible leader for the trip. Though he became much more serious after that point, he didn't lose any of his personality, and was still really funny when appropriate.)
After breakfast and our meeting, we got on a big bus and rode for 6 hours to Gulu. Except for the lump in my seat, and me having to pee, causing the bus to stop (everyone ended up going, though), it was pretty cool.
After arriving at the hotel in Gulu, we had a meeting with Kevin, an intern here for the summer, who sent us in teams on a scavenger hunt around town. I went with Oliver and Hailey. We rode bodas around; it was pretty scary at first. A boda is basically like a motorcycle taxi. You hop on the back and ride around town. The driver are friendly, and it's really cheap; a ride across town is 1,000 shillings, or just less than $.50. I already scheduled a meeting with a driver tomorrow afternoon to talk about Jesus. I'm so excited! (For the scavenger hunt, we had to take a boda into town and meet Richard, the owner of a print shop where we got all of our Bible lessons for the Ugandans we met with, take our team pre-paid phones to a store to put airtime on them, and then each group had a different place to go to. Ours went to the Main Market, a huge public market area on the edge of town with lots of various shops, and some basketball and volleyball courts. Oliver and I spent a lot of time there on the trip meeting with shop owners.)
After getting back, Blake and I rode back into town to get some jerseys. This really cool guy named Isaac owns the shop, and he leads a Bible study in it every morning. He sold us the jerseys for $10 each (I mentioned that because he accepted our American money, and because you would probably pay at least $30 for a similar quality jersey in America). They're really nice Adidas jerseys. I got one now, and I'm getting another one later. I'm giving one to Brian (Sowell, my best friend back home).
We had dinner after that, a buffet (The hotel served us a buffet every day for breakfast and dinner). It was great. We also showered, which was amazing, and now we're about to pray over the room and go to sleep. I'm rooming with Blake and Oliver. They're both great guys. Well, now they're waiting on me, so I'll go. I'll try to write again tomorrow.
-Brandon
And that was day three of our trip.
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