Mandy's Journal

September 23

I just journaled about how our kids are all well again, I spoke too soon. Sunday Josh was sick and Lydia. Monday Luka started with another cold and cough. What is it with us? I am so thankful for each person who prays for us. Now, everyone is well again except for Luka and the never ending cold.

Saturday we had our bar-b-q with our Chinese friends. It was suppose to be with our Indian friends too but for some reason they were a no show. A storm came in about 5pm so we had a candlelit dinner. Thankfully we still were able to sit around a campfire afterwards. We had a lot of great food and our friends seemed to enjoy themselves. I hope we are a blessing to them.

About 10pm that night we went to see our Indian friends dance. (That is crazy for us – out that late with our kids we are usually in bed!) I love watching dance especially of another culture. The women all had their traditional dress on and the young men really got into the dancing after awhile. They have fast feet. Unfortunately, the dancing was a celebration for one of their gods. So we didn’t join in. It is always sad to see. Guess the good thing is that it causes me to pray more.

It was after this that four of us on the team fell sick. We wondered if it was spiritual. Thankfully our God is all powerful. He answered our prayers once more and healed everyone. I learned again not to take for grated the spiritual realm. I don’t know if that is why everyone got sick but I don’t want to dismiss it either. We need to be more careful and intentional about praying before we go to these things.

Monday Josh went to teach and no one showed up. Tuesday he went to teach at the Bible College and one of two students were there. Seems like a bit a discouraging time. But there is nothing more we can do but try and be faithful to what God asks us to do.

Grace says some funny things. The other night Josh was telling the girls a story and said something like they entered the house and what smelled something. Grace chimed in and said, “It’s me. I tooted.” Josh and I just looked at each other and laughed. When she talks about the rash she had a few weeks ago she calls it “ashes”. She also calls her suitcase a “zootcase”. Lydia right now wants to know what every word means. She is a sponge. You can pray for her. She is in that stage of a lot of fear. I can remember going through the same thing. She is scared of the dark for the first time. The other day someone died and she asked all kinds of questions. When she was sick she wanted to get better because if you get sicker you can die. So we had to talk about that fear. We saw a house on fire on Sunday so she asked a million questions. I could just tell her mind was worrying. We have been praying for God’s peace to be with her each night. And Luka, he is all over the place and into everything! All that moving has taken off a lot of baby fat. He is also almost trying to pull himself up on things. He’ll be standing soon.

Monday night Josh and I had a date (with Luka). Tabitha watched our girls while we went to Soroti Hotel for dinner and football. Yes, I know many ladies do not agree with me on this but I really do enjoy watching football with my husband. You have to understand football is almost a comfort here because it is something from home and normal. Anyways, they replay Sunday night football on Monday evenings here. There was a storm so the power went out and we missed the second quarter but thankfully it at least came back on. While the game was on the announcers talked about a player in the locker room getting x-rays. I looked at Josh and said, “You mean each football locker room has it’s own x-ray machines and some people in Africa don’t have access to any?!” Isn’t that just like our world? America thinks it needs every convenience possible while others don’t even have the basic needs met. There is so much we need to learn. So much work to be done.