New Year, New House, New Role

Well we have had quite a busy week – lots of changes!

Dan left us on Wednesday and we were sad to see him go. We thoroughly enjoyed the time that we were ale to spend together on this side of the world. It was such a treat to have Dan here for the holidays and share with him our Ugandan life. The Ugandans loved meeting him. We will miss him!!!

Our lives are changing a little bit over here in Uganda. As of yesterday we moved out to Suubi village. This is the village that Matt has been making his two hour commute to every day for work. We now live about 5 min from where he works. I too will now be working at Suubi. Watoto is opening a new babies home at Suubi. It is huge and will be able to accommodate more babies then the one in town. The building is ¾ of the way complete and we are partially opening this next week with 20 babies in two units. There will be 8 units in total when the building is complete. I believe that in the end the building will hold 150 babies and toddlers from ages of 4 months to 2 years. We are still waiting on funding and the completion of the construction in order to open the rest of the units.

Amidst the construction workers, painters and electricians we will have 20 babies running around and I will be ‘in charge’. For the next four months (or until they can hire permanent people) I will be the on site administrator for this babies home, this is both a blessing and a LARGE challenge. Please be in pray over the home, the babies, the staff and of course Matt and myself. Matt will remain at the production unit, but since he is married to me and is such a wonderful husband he will often be at the home as well.

As for our new home, we are the 4th and 5th Mzungus to live on the mountain. This contrasts greatly to the guesthouse that we lived in for the past 4 months as it was full of Mzungus. We moved all our stuff out yesterday and will spend today cleaning and settling in. We will be cooking for ourselves again, which I am very excited about! So we need to remember how to cook and learn how to shop for groceries in a different country and in a different currency. Another challenge and blessing is that we are about 45 min out of Kampala. This is a blessing as we are far away from the city, the noise and the pollution. This also posses a problem as now we cannot just pop in and out of the city.

We are excited about the upcoming year. May God be glorified in us! Thank you for you’re your continued prayers - we appreciate them VERY much!