our journey to Uganda-Ibanda

Only 6 weeks after we got back...The blog you've all been waiting for! 

PCM has 4 schools at this time. I'm going to highlight the few that we visited while we were in Uganda. The main school is in Mbarara (the M is silent, so it's pronounced Barara). The hotel that we stayed at is about 10 minutes from the Mbarara school. 

The school I'm talking about today is in Ibanda, which is about a 45 minute drive from Mbarara.

This school has about 6 teachers, 50 students and about 23 of them board there. The rest are day-schoolers. 

Here is Ellen with her sponsored child, Patricia

The younger classroom

the younger children singing

This is Patience, my parents' sponsored child

The ones that do board at the school, this is where they live. There are 2 separate 12'x10' rooms, one for girls and one for boys. They sleep 2 to a mattress. There is a sunday school class in Tyler that is currently trying to raise the funds to buy bunk beds for these children.

This is Hope, the Headmaster. She is Patience's older sister.

Becky and Scott (sister-in-law and brother-in-law) asked me to pick out a child for them to sponsor and this is precious Judith, their newly sponsored child!

Love this sweet smile!

Our newly sponsored children, Justus and Juliet

Chris didn't get to go with us to Ibanda because he was helping with construction in Mbarara, so I made him this video of Justus and Juliet. Just want you to be able to see their sweet faces in video!

Patience, Justus, Juliet

Patience opening her gift from my parents

the kids got bookmarks and snacks!

Patience showed me where she sleeps. This is her trunk, all of her possessions are either in this trunk or she is wearing them.

Here are their bathroom facilities. 

I love these precious children. I love looking at this picture and being able to have names to go with most of their faces.

You can read PCM's blog post from this day. (Chris also pipes in on this day about his part in helping with construction.) This was the 3rd school we went to but it was cool because each school was unique in its own way. When we arrived at the school, EACH child hugged every one of us. So that's 50+ hugs. It was incredible. We got to teach our bible stories and then just hang out and play with the children. They have very little, but hearing them sing about Jesus and smiling and laughing, we were reminded that these are God's children. He loves them. He provides for them. He protects them. They have a much different trust in God because they depend on him. They NEED him. Which I do too, but it's much easier for me to think that I can fix my problems with my resources, rather than trusting the Lord.

Someone before said it perfectly. "The more time I spend in Africa, the more I understand why these people are so joyful and they don’t get upset at things out of their control.  Everyday they  face a reality that they are not in control and Jesus is.  They know and we don’t.  They look up.  We look in the mirror."