Novida or Stoney?

Yesterday was our free day- I always love Saturdays. It is like a backwards sunday because it is church day for us. In the morning we headed over to Mulago hospital where one of our kiddos are. Tony is a 16 year old boy that was diagnosed  with stage 4 cancer in his lymph nodes earlier this summer. Just a regular kid living a normal Ugandan life that was totally blindsided by what was happening with his body. He recently got moved to a smaller facility where he is getting fair care. I wanted to meet him and Julie is getting ready to leave Uganda so she wanted to see him again! When we got there- it is everything you see in films. Dirty, filled with sick people in the hallways, and flies...everywhere! Not the most conducive place to have your body heal especially when your immune system is low like that. We took public means: a taxi to a shopping center and then took a boda up the road to get to the facility. We walked down a dark hallway and was led into a room that was simply labeled "room 5" when we opened the door there were two hospital beds in a small space and no curtain to separate the two just a small divider that could be drawn when taking tests. There were four of us that went. When he saw us his face lit up and he had a huge smile from ear-to-ear. He is such a sweetheart. I only saw one personal possession of his- a small bible. Even when things are rough he still has radiant faith! When we asked him if we could get him something and he asked for juice- he hasn't been able to keep anything down. We got him some juice. His grandmother is staying with him right now as well and she saw my bracelets. Sometime this week I am going to go back and show her how to make them and bring Tony some books and activity pages!

After the hospital visit we went for some ice cream. Caramel flavor. yum.

In the evening we had church. Watoto Central. The choir came onto the stage and I was just beaming. Every week we are given the opportunity to get into groups of three with the people around us and just get to know each others name and spend a few moments in prayer. It is beautiful. We talked about being absolutely empowered by the Holy Spirit.

This morning we headed out to Zirobwe for church! Three of our volunteers are leaving this week so it was kind of a sad morning. It take about an hour and a half to get there. every two miles or so there is a series of five little bumps a big bump and then five more small bumps. Sometimes you can forget it is there and other times when you DO realize that its there it is super annoying. When we get there we are greeted by everyone in the village so as you are driving by you are constantly hearing kids yell out your name and wave as big as they can! Our classrooms are divided into three classes 0-8, 9-12, and 13+. I got to lead the 9-12 class today we talked about David and Goliath and touched on the importance of trust and what that should look like in their daily lives! After we prayed for the three girls leaving and had a time of saying goodbye to them. Our 13+ class doesn't start until after sunday school is over because that is when the worship in the main service gets finished. So all of the youth take their chairs out to the cattle shed and we share a message with them. Today Porsche shared with them and they were very responsive to the message. On our way home whenever we get to the nearest point of interest we all get sodas and the local snack! Novida and Stoney are the Ugandan sodas that are super yummy...just thought I would explain the title :)

After church we came home and had a goodbye circle and prayed for Julie and then we took her to the airport. I am going to miss her so much! She was a great encouragement to me and she started the prostitution ministry here and just opened my eyes to that sort of ministry. thankful that I got to be apart of that and here her testimony.