Farewell Logos Hope & Arrival in Uganda!

Farewell Logos Hope – Arrival in Uganda

Dear Friends,

It was time to say farewell to the Logos Hope Ship and the amazing people that I met there. So many people had touched my heart, challenged me in a good way and pointed me more towards God, some of them widened my horizon about God and some of them I will see again as friends, which is awesome.

Gods encouragement from the time on the ship is:

“You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul,                                                                            all your mind and all your strength.” Mark 12:29

I have now arrived in Uganda and I know that I am just at the first steps on the new path in my life and it feels great! I had a very God guided journey to Uganda. After a very wonderful but sad farewell to some of my STEP friends at the airport, I arrived in Mumbai without my next boarding pass and was held by security officers for a couple of hours. However, God did send a nice Indian man who helped me and after me giving him EVERYTHING – like passport, ticket, return ticket – he did come back at the time he said – 1 hour later and did lead me through all security, getting all stamps that were necessary, brought me to the gate and was very concerned about my wellbeing. How amazing is God? And the wonderful thing that I experienced as well is, that I was not nervous for one minute! I just felt such a peace in it all; after all, God did want me to go to Uganda, so HE is greater than any obstacle.

Have you ever seen an airport with big fat old lounge chairs randomly sitting in a corner as a waiting or “hang out” area? Yep, that was Ethiopia International Airport. So cool.

Uganda is amazing. It is actually very green, lots of trees, green grass and banana palms. My first impression was so positively, that I don’t think there is much that will shock me. Of course it is different to western countries, but beautiful. Some of the very cool stuff I saw on my trip to my accommodation:

If you want to sell anything, you drag it in front of your stall and put it along the road side, anything!                                                  Anything from dresses, bed frames, couches,…

How much can you transport on a bicycle? Anything! Such as 3 palettes of drinks, 4 meter long wooden planks, a humongous metal box (maybe 3 meters by 3 meters), three people,…..

How do you ride on a motorbike? Well, the girls always sit on it sideways. It reminded me of the very glamorous horse riding style the ladies used to do… and if you have to transport anything, you will get the woman to hold anything, no matter how big it might be and she will hold it in sideways. Well, I guess I would call that trust in the rider.

My accommodation is great. I met up with my friend Hannah and even stay in the same flat as her with her friend Julianne and another girl Krystal. We do our own cooking in the evening and breakfast, while lunch will be provided at the baby home.

   Oh, you want to know about the babies? SOOOOO CUTE! I was busy feeding, bathing, changing nappies of I don’t know how many babies. It is awesome. I even held a very malnourished baby boy today and gave him a tiny little bottle. He was so small that he had so much excess skin… I can’t wait to see him gaining some weight while I am here. There have been already 2500 babies coming through Watoto babies homes and a huge amount of them have already graduated into the children care of Watoto and some of them are going already to school. It is certainly God’s miracle when you see some of those tiny tiny tiny little ones and then you know, they are in very good care now and they will make it! My friend Hannah told me that she went to see some of her first critical babies from the time she arrived in Uganda and she saw them now playing with all the other toddlers and you couldn’t even tell that they were in risk a few months ago.  God is so loving!  It does make such a big difference to volunteer here, no matter if it is giving a hand while feeding, changing or bathing, encouraging one another, or just giving some comfort while they are crying or giving them attention during play time. It is certainly influencing their little precious lives.

It is quite a full on job, but very rewarding and I felt very comfortable already today. It is amazing to work alongside the local women who work at the babies home all the time. I am so looking forward to learning heaps from them.

I hope you are all having a great time where ever you are in the world right now. There is certainly no reason to worry about me. It would be wonderful and very well appreciated, if you would like to support me during this month here in Uganda.

Next week, I will have the opportunity to see all the other projects of Watoto, the church, the development departments for the more grown-ups to get skilled in a job such as fabrications, carpentry, restaurant manager/owner, guest house provider… and the children villages, the school and the village houses. That will be amazing I am sure. This way I will get a greater understanding of Watoto and can put the puzzles together to the whole picture of what Watoto is all about.

Loving regards from Kampala

Barbara