We Arrived And So Did Our Luggage

Where we arrived on Thursday night.

We arrived safely in Kampala, the capital city of Uganda, at 10:30 p.m. Three of our four 50 lb. bins, however, decided to stay in Amsterdam. The one bin that did arrive was very beat up, with a broken handle and cracked and broken sides. Other families we were traveling with also had luggage that stayed in Europe. We had to spend some time in the airport filling out lost baggage claims and were told the luggage would arrive Friday night so we then drove to Jinja and arrived at the hotel we stayed at the first night about 3:30 a.m.

One of re-wrapped bins. 

We woke up Friday morning three and a half hours later at 7:00 a.m. Sandra could not sleep. We spent the day with the other families who are new to Amazima, getting acquainted with Jinja and our new homes.  On Friday night we learned that our lost luggage did arrive, but it was only one of the missing three bins. This second bin was even more destroyed than the first and was wrapped in heavy plastic to keep it together. Fortunately, there did not appear to be much that was missing from either bin and they included our bedding so we slept with clean sheets and pillows. Even though we were going on only a little sleep, we stayed up all day to try to adjust to the time change and crashed around 9:00 p.m.

Saturday morning Denny woke up at 1:00 a.m., ready to start the new day. He read a book, unpacked a few things, switched some of the extension cords and power strips around and generally got off to a great start. At 3:00 a.m. he tried to go back to sleep, failed, and started looking for some breakfast. Sandra got up at 4:30 a.m., also wide awake. After the sun rose, a few hours later, and others began to wake up and start their day, we went for a walk around the campus.

Our new phone provider

At 10:00 a.m. we went into town with our neighbors, Joe and Robin, to take care of all the logistics that we need to get settled here, like getting new phone numbers and internet and food and cash, all of which require lots of effort and time and running around. Joe and Robin are amazing and so Christ-centered. They gave us their day, pulling us through everything. It is very humbling to have people so willingly give up their time and patiently walk us through all of the delays and lines and parking issues and rain and banking and shopping complications. God shines in their lives and we, of all people, get to receive the blessing. We serve a loving God.

The three destroyed bins. 

The other two bins finally arrived on Sunday, again wrapped heavily in plastic and completely destroyed.  A few things were missing, but overall we have our important stuff and everything is good. During all of this, Sandra made three short videos showing what our house looks like. You can view the videos here at our youtube channel.