Back in Uganda.

We are now back on the red soil of Uganda. Not only are we adjusting to our miry clay and all the difficulties it brings to daily life but also we are adjusting to the many changes of life back in Uganda. Our journey from Vancouver to Entebbe was a long one but all in all I think the boys fared well -- maybe better than their parents. We left Vancouver Airport on Tuesday the 27th around 10 pm in the evening after checking in our 19 pieces of luggage. My faithful friend Bryant was there (helping haul our luggage around as usual!)along with my brother Oliver and his two children. My dad was also there, having flown in from Saskatoon earlier that day. He drove "our" van home (our old Lumina that he bought off of us when we left in 07 – it served us very well during our stay in Canada –thanks mom and dad) the next day. We were actually accompanied on our flight to London by good friends from our Life Group, Bert and Leona Ewert, who were going to visit son and his family in the UK. We flew through the night, stayed in a small hotel in London the next night and then arrived, finally in Entebbe at a guest house around midnight on Thursday the 29th – welcomed by the typical lack of power and the scent of paraffin lanterns and the ritual of tucking in mosquito nets around our bed. We finally arrived at our home in Jinja about 60 long hours after we had set off. It was good to see all of our friends and family who welcomed us back. All of our luggage made it except that one piece was mistakenly taken in Entebbe by some fellow missionaries from Canada. We will collect that bag tomorrow. We have been working on obtaining our work visas and getting our house and car in order. I (Chris) have painted one of our boys quarter rooms so that the boys will have a proper school room. The boys quarter is a small detached house that is called thus as such buildings were the quarters of servants who would work for the owners of the main house. Our nephew Steve lives with us and sleeps with Andrew in the other boy’s quarter room. Some of our adjustments to life here include: Getting used to long meetings – I just came back from a four hour school business meeting for one of our nieces who schools near us. The meeting was about an hour late so that meant about 5 hours of meeting time. Church also takes a while – we intentionally come late so that our kids can survive the service. Our church starts around 9am with Bible Study and Testimonies and can go up till two if the preaching goes two hours instead of the usual one hour. There are many challenges to our life here – including the spiritual depravity in our village. Many of the people in our village where we live are in desperate need of redemption; we have many bars and therefore drunkards, many people involved in witchcraft and other wicked practices. We sense once again we are in a spiritual war zone. Satan does not want true light to come into the darkness here. Please pray that both in our ministry and in our daily lives that God will watch over us and guide as we respond and relate to the many poor and needy people around us. May we let our light shine so that our neighbours may see Christ

Posted via email from The Sperling's blog