True Passion

“Guide my steps by your word” Psalm 119:133

We are here! I write at 5:30 am, as my body’s internal clock is a little out of whack after over 40 hours of travelling, and stops in 3 different time zones.
Our travels have already been filled with blessings! At Calgary airport, we were all paged to the ticket counter – once there we found up we were upgraded to first class! That got us pumped and excited, but we were a little disappointed for Pastor Bob, who, it appeared, was left out of the upgrade. I talked to the attendant about possibly upgrading him too, his reply was “we’ll see what we can do”. We showed him Bob’s flight information, and he pulled the upgrade ticket from his desk – apparently Bob was paged along with us, but he hadn’t heard his page. And so, for the first time for all of us, we got to experience life on the other side of those blue curtains!

We’ve communicated with a number of different people on our journey, one of who was an 80 year Polish priest who now ministers in Uganda – Bob invited him to preach at Northgate one Sunday. We’ll see how many other pastors he recruits along the way for speaking engagements at Northgate. Who know, one day Northgate may be the new central hub, replacing the busy Heathrow airport. At Heathrow we were amazed at the “city” feel the airport gave. Such a hustle of activity everywhere, and 15 minute drives from some of the terminals to others.

We are all well, and accounted for. Yesterday was an exciting day – we arrived in Entebbe, Uganda at 7:45 am and were greeted by Miriam – FH Staff from Mbale district. Moses had returned only the day before from a CDP week long conference and was feeling the wear of that, so instead Miriam met us.
Miriam brought us to visit the FH office in Kampala where we met some of the key people responsible for organizing our trip: James and Christine. There we found out Christine was able to find 2 treadle sewing machines for us to bring to Marare!

The rest of our day involved a lot of driving and witnessing reality in Uganda – a lot of poverty. As Allan put it, “It isn’t fair, and it isn’t right”. He was comparing, of course, normal life here to our regular lives. These images reinforced our place in Marare, and the blessing it is to be part of that journey.
We enjoyed a beautiful lunch in Jinja – known to most as home to the ‘source of the Nile’. Apparently our itinerary didn’t leave room for a visit to the Nile, so we had to convince our driving team that this was really important to us. We were granted exactly 16 minutes there, and it was a worthwhile 16 minutes. We all got to dip our foot in, without any of us slipping and falling in -- a neat and meaningful experience for the team.


Along the way Miriam received a phone call from Moses saying ‘the Marare people want to see the team TODAY. They do not want to wait until tomorrow morning’. We planned to go directly to the Marare village, to be there before sundown at 6 pm. However, a little while later we were told the rains were hitting Marare and it wouldn’t be possible. Even so, this was impactful for us, as we realized how excited Marare is to see us!

FH staff greeted us in Mbale at 5:15 pm – there we met a number of the team that works so hard and passionately to carry out God’s will in giving hope and new life to the villagers of many communities, including Marare. The welcome from them was warm, and for me it was an emotional reunion with people that really do walk their lives for God.

Once settled in our hotel rooms and after a bite to eat (that was delayed because of one of Mbale’s typical power outages), we all ‘hit the sack’ at 8:30 pm – just a little worn out from travelling, and wanting to be ready for what the morning brought in Marare!