After 36 hours of travel, we are HOME! Thanks for your support and prayers on our trip, we couldn't have done it without you!!

Day 12

On the last day, we were blessed to stay at Chobe Safari Lodge.  It was a wonderful and relaxing time of reflection and fellowship!

Cheers to a great two weeks, a wonderful team, awesome fellowship, hard work and JESUS!

Our hotel right on the Nile River!

 We got to swim which was super relaxing for all of us and perfect in the African heat!

 There were hippos in the water (the little black lumps sticking out).

 Sunset on the Nile!

 

The next morning we got up early to see the sunrise over the Nile!

 Baboons!

 We got to see Giraffes!!

We saw elephants on the other side of the Nile playing together in the water.

One last picture with the team in Uganda! Goodbye Africa....

Day 11

Today we went to the orphanage again to vistit Fiona (the girl with HIV).  Tammy gaver her a backpack, t-shirt and water bottle and Cora and Chelsea sang Oceans to her by Hillsong United.  We could tell she loved it because she was smiling.

After the orphanage, we visited an rock quarry.  This is where people can make money (about $2/day) if they don't farm.  The conditions are very dangerous because they blow up the side of the mountain with dynamite.  People work at the top to get rocks loose, but there is no warning when the rock is falling.  They said people have died from rocks falling on them.  After, they break down the rocks all the way until it turns into fine dust for concrete.  The people hit the rocks with metal hammers and have no eye protection or even shoes to wear!

These are some widows that Dave works with.  When they saw him they began rejoice and laugh.  The group had mentioned that we've never seen anyone so happy in our lives! They began to sing praises and sing songs about Dave, whom they called "Daudi".  It was such a cool experience to see how much TCON impacts these widows and how they have come together as a community of widows with new faith!

They have to arrive very early in the morning so no one steals the pile that they have been working on.

A woman separating the smaller pieces from the larger ones.

This woman had worked all day on her pile of rocks and the rainstorm last night had ruined her pile.  The girls helped her find her pile of rocks from the puddle.

Our group with 5 widows.

We had to say goodbye to Cocus.  He was so wonderful! He washed our clothes, made our beds and kept the house clean while we were there.  

Jeremiah was really impacted by Olives after he heard her story.  She is a hard worker on a farm and goes to school with no support.  He decided to help her financially through school and helped her set up an email and bank account so they could communicate and she could keep her money safely!

We will miss these wonderful people!

Day 10

We did our final field day at a school near Soroti.  They were super enthusiastic about us being there!  

After the field day, Tammy and Carrie were able to run a practice session for one of the girls' teams, Roma.  During one drill, they were not focusing enough to do well, but after an inspiring speech by Tammy, the improvement was extremely significant.  Sometimes the girls would give up after their mistakes, but she told them it's okay to make mistakes, you just have to work hard to get the ball back and improve for next time.  She said, "Do Ugandans quit??" and they were like "No!" and got inspired to play even better.  

After, we played a guys team, which was really fun. 

Dani, Cora, Chelsea and Carrie got to experience their first African rainstorm that night.  They danced in the rain and got soaking wet.  After the energy went down, they worshipped and sang songs in the rain.  What an experience for them!

TCON soccer camp video!!!!

Watch this awesome video that Jeremiah put together about the girls' soccer camp we did last week! Good job Jeremiah!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgWEYOJcaQk


Yay God!

Day 9

Today we went to a village about 30 minutes away to do another field day with the school kids.  On the bus ride there, our neighbors stopped us and gave us this note....

There were about 900 kids at the field day so we are learning to constantly be flexible!  At first, these children were much more timid than the children in Soroti because they don't see white people ("Mazungus") as often.

 After playing a bunch of games, teaching them "Ta-te-ta-ta" and Mingle, they finally warmed up to us and were so excited that we came to hang out with them.

After hanging out with the children, we played a soccer match against the 15 year old boys.  We beat them 1-0 on Matt's first goal of his soccer career!  The crowd of children loved him and would always get loud when he had the ball.  At the end, the children were screaming "Olay, olay, olay, olay!"  They were so excited that we came.


Our team has become very close on this trip.  We are all very flexible and willing to do whatever needs to be done.  We hung out and played the card game spoons.  We saw a baby lizard on the wall and Carrie caught it!