Today was the day of the trip I was most excited for. We were scheduled to see my sponsored child - Erias. I met him in 2017 on my first trip to Uganda and had not seen him since.
This morning we loaded up on the bus to make our trip to Banda to host vision and sanitation clinics for people living in an inner city slum community. It was a much shorter drive than any of the other days when we traveled to rural villages.That alone would have made it a great day but God had much more in store for us. We dropped off most of the team who would be staying to serve in Banda and four of us (Me, my dad, Halley and Kim) continued on to go see Erias. We drove about an hour before we reached his school.
When we arrived at the school, they were nice enough to give us a tour of the whole school and we even got to see them setting up for a party. The head mistress sent someone to get Erias from his class and we got to finally see each other again! It was so much fun talking with him, hearing how his school was going, and I even got to meet his dad. We had to say our goodbyes - but not until after a lot of pictures.
On our way back to Banda our mini-bus died...in the middle of the road... Edgar, our bus driver and the best one in all of Uganda, checked the batteries and said all the cords were good so we were going to have to get out and push. All four of us got out while Edgar tried to start the bus. We pushed and eventually a Ugandan man helped us and it didn’t take too long to get it running again. I really wish I had a picture of the four of us pushing that big bus, especially since, Halley, Kim and I were all wearing our long skirts!
Later in the day, our training group (Kelsie, Sherry, Emily, Carol and myself) taught a sanitation, hygiene and spiritual development class and showed a s&h video for 25 women in the slum. My favorite part of the classes is getting to watch their faces as we are handing out the sanitation and hygiene kits for them at the end. They appreciate the training and receiving their own sanitation and hygiene materials. (During our mission trip, we provided the sanitation and hygiene training for 200 women. The training sessions also included spiritual training and testimony that was amazing. The training was such a success that the district director in one of the communities asked us to come back next year to train 500 women in his district!! Please pray that God will provide us with the supplies and trainers to do so.)
At night we got to go to a cultural show in Kampala. There was a lot of dancing and singing and some pretty good food too!
Today was by far one of my favorite days on this trip!