Our first full week

We have officially completed our first full week here in Jinja.  With a week of work under our belts, it is exciting to have a better idea of what daily life here will look like!  Most days have begun with a morning jog before going "into work," which really means heading over to the office ten feet away.  We will have a little further commute when we move into our own place in another week and a half but it will still only be about a five minute walk.  Every time we've gone running, several bota bota drivers (the Ugandan word for their motorcycles/scooters) signal to us asking if we want a ride.  The concept of running or walking for exercise is definitely a little foreign here.  Our time in the office this week has been spent getting acclimated to the ministry of Children of Grace and starting to wrap our heads around our roles here.  Mike has spent time sifting through different policies and procedures in an effort to streamline them and familiarize himself with the various programs that CoG is currently running.  He has also been on a few visits to "the field" with some of the child mentors to see the work they do and help with various errands.  Jess has been working with Schola, the Ugandan clinical health worker on staff with CoG on numerous different medical projects.  This has involved helping with reports from the past few months, updating information about our children in the CoG database, seeing kids for various medical complaints on a "walk-in" basis at the office, helping with teaching for some of our sponsored children with chronic conditions, and planning for upcoming teaching in a nearby village about clean water and sanitation.  We have definitely been staying busy at work and feel good about the things we've been able to grasp after our first week.  We are especially enjoying the staff and feel so privileged to be a part of this team!  Below is a picture of Mike and Kareem, one of the child mentors before heading out on a rainy afternoon to help some of the kids with their community service projects.

Our evenings were low-key during the week as we are still trying to adjust and have been exhausted after long work days.  This weekend has been a lot of fun though!  On Saturday, we went on a lovely walk and then went into town to run some errands with Paul, purchased some furniture for our apartment, ate lunch out, and came back to the house for some reading and relaxing before dinner.  Later, we ate dinner with Paul at a restaurant right on the Nile, which was beautiful and then headed over to The Keep, another restaurant in town with entertainment on the weekends.  Saturday nights is karaoke night, which was hilarious!  We grabbed dessert and enjoyed visiting with some new friends and even sang a song ourselves... a classic Journey ballad, what else?!  Here's us by the river where we ate dinner on Saturday night.

Paul headed to Kenya with some of our staff for a couple of days, so we have been holding down the fort here today.  We walked to church with a couple of the boys that come by most Sundays to go to church with the Gibsons.  It was a beautiful morning and this church is held at the pastor's house.  When the weather is nice, which it usually is, they have the service outside under the trees.  There was a light breeze this morning, the sun was shining, and it was gorgeous!  It's a joy to worship alongside Ugandans as well as some other Mzungus!  After church, we ventured out for our first time driving ourselves here in Jinja.  They drive on the left side of the road here and have very few traffic laws, if any, so it's certainly an experience!  We grabbed lunch and then went for a boat ride at the "Source of the Nile," a popular tourist attraction that we figured we would go ahead and see.  It was absolutely wonderful!  Today was the perfect day for it and we rode in a boat by ourselves just with our guide, Moses.  The Nile has an amazing array of wildlife within it and on its banks and Lake Victoria is amazing.  Here are some pictures from our adventures on the river.

We also took our first trip to the market and grocery store to get a few things for the week and snapped a few photos driving through town.

It's been a lovely weekend but we are excited to get back to work tomorrow!  The Lord is definitely at work all around us and there's lots of big things coming up this week.  Our prayer is that He would use us in mighty ways even in these early days here.  Look forward to updating you again soon!