Day 2: Monday, June 26, 2011
We made it to AFRICA!! We landed in Ethiopia and it felt SO good to get off of that airplane and to get some fresh air! :) Although the flight did seem to take a while—especially the last 6 hours, it did go by pretty fast. Shelby and I watched a few movies so that helped! After arriving in Ethiopia we had to catch our flight from Ethiopia to Uganda. One thing that I noticed right away about the Ethiopia airport was that they allow you to smoke inside the airport. I found this to be very disturbing and it seemed as if EVERYONE was smoking. I just really, really do not like smoke and I found it surprising that they allowed this to happen.
Here is a picture of me and Abdul right after we landed in Ethiopia! Yes, it was a little bright out—but felt SO good to get some fresh air! :)
Anyways, our flight from Ethiopia to Uganda seemed to go by SO fast!! It was only about 2 hours?!? So it felt like nothing compared to our 12 hour flight! Below is a picture of our team loading our luggage on the back of a truck. We had SO many bags—I think around 45-50 bags and almost all of them weighed 50 pounds! We definitely got a workout from having to carry and load and reload our luggage throughout the whole trip! After loading our luggage we got onto a bus and headed to the Namirembe Guest House.
Here are a few pictures I snapped as we made our way to the guest house. At this point I was just taking it ALL in and STILL couldn’t believe I was IN AFRICA…getting ready to LOVE all of God’s precious children. It was such a wonderful moment!!
Here are a few pictures of the guest house that we stayed at.
And here is the bus that we road for the Uganda portion. This thing was a beast! :)
Once we got inside and settle into our rooms, we all brought our donations into one room to sort through them. This was SO much fun for me. I just LOVED seeing everyones donations and bettet yet—I loved knowing we were going to be able to donate all of our items to children IN NEED!! I just got so excited knowing we would make their day just but leaving a few items with them!
This bed was covered in flip-flop and clothes donations! SO awesome! :) Especially since there are SO many children that don’t have shoes!
This bed was full of toys, bubbles, stuffed animals, blankets, formula and so many more items to bring to the children!!
This bed was full of a ton of school items!
As you can see, a lot of these items are cheap and are nothing too special or fancy…Just basic—everyday items that we maybe take for granted…Flip Flops at Old Navy were on sale for $1.00!! A lot of these stuffed animals were from the Dollar Tree that all cost $1.00..And although many of us here in America think we need more of this…more of that…more money to spend carelessly…more food that we don’t need…better—faster cars...fancy houses…etc. etc. Many of these people in Africa have NOTHING. They have what they are wearing and that is IT. But yet, the JOY that they have in their hearts is REMARKABLE!!! I can’t even begin to explain how TRULY THANKFUL they are when we give them something so small and so simple. For example, a balloon. Yes, balloons like you would blow up for a birthday party. We brought balloons to almost every place we went to because it was something so easy and simple to do and they LOVED it! And not just small children…older boys had nothing but SMILES on their faces once we brought them some colorful balloons to hit around. It makes me sick to think of how spoiled our culture has become…and how children now expect SO many expensive things, when really they don’t need it. They may WANT it…but they don’t NEED it. Spending this time in Africa and serving all of God’s amazing people truly opened my eyes and touched my heart like nothing in my life has ever done before. It’s so hard to even comprehend everything that I saw and everything that broke my heart, but I still look forward to sharing my pictures and experiences with you. And maybe, just maybe, you will be inspired as well! Just like so many of these children inspired me! Have a wonderful weekend everyone and remember to ALWAYS be JOYFUL! And more importantly—THANKFUL! :)
"Nehemiah said, 'Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is sacred to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.'" –Nehemiah 8:10
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