Uganda 2010: Pre-mission trip journal

MySpace-Countdown-Clocks

First pre-mission trip entry:

I'm in Charlottesville tonight. I attended the introductory meeting for the mission team with which I'm traveling to Uganda in February of 2010. It will be my 3rd trip to Uganda, and I'm totally psyched for it. This time I'm going with Mission Link International, headed up by Rick Sadler. He's been to Uganda approximately 40 times if I understood correctly. And he and his wife Cathy are preparing to move there in the not too distant future.

I was excited about meeting the team, which ranged in age from 17 to retirement age. Close to 30 people in all. The majority were veteran short-term missionaries, with many having been to Uganda 5+ times. Everyone was very friendly and outgoing. I felt at home with the group immediately. There was a group here from Smith Mountain Lake, and one of the ladies suggested that I meet them part way next time and ride up with them.

I'd heard a lot about Pastor Rick from Rocky, who's traveled with Mission Link before. The things that I was mainly impressed by were his passion for evangelism and discipleship and his willingness to sacrifice his own comfort to take the gospel to the nations. You can tell by listening to him speak that his heart is so full for the call God's placed on his and Cathy's lives.

One of our assignments was to start journaling right now, before we ever set foot on the plane. So I'm doing just that with this post.

As I was listening to Pastor Rick review the trip information, one of the first things that struck me was, “Wow! I'm not responsible for any of the logistics of the trip. I don't have to try to make sure everyone's on track with finances....I don't have to schedule planes, vans, housing or anything. Boy, that feels weird!

We're going to be based in Jinja, but the various teams will be going to different villages every day. We'll all have an opportunity to work on medical, construction, puppet ministry, evangelism, and prison ministry. I'm so excited that I don't know if I'll be able to sleep tonight. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the medical missions aspect, but the prospect of being able to go into the prisons and the streets to minister is absolutely fantastic! God is awesome!

On the road to Connecticut by way of Yonkers

I'm sitting at a McDonald's in Woodstock, VA listening to the sounds of two of my grandchildren playing with their mom in the play area. It's around 8pm and we're really far behind on the schedule that we had set for the day. My daughter, Zipporah, and I are on our way up to see my mom in CT. I only get to see her once a year, and I try to plan the trip to spend her birthday with her. Normally I do the 12 hour (one way) drive by myself, but this time I'm blessed to have one of my children and two grandchildren with me.

We're hauling a heavy load, including a bunch of stuff strapped to the roof of my overburdened Kia Sephia. We left Roanoke at 4pm and had to stop three times because of the roof load. Finally gave in and bought a couple big ratchet straps and now the load is fine. Kia Sephias are not meant to have stuff strapped on top...hence no built in luggage racks. I snagged the one bar from on top of Troy's truck and stuck it on top of my car. Everything's lashed to it.

Our destination tonight is Aleena and Ali's in Yonkers...an 8 hour, 400-ish mile drive. We've done only 140 or so miles of that. Still a looong drive yet. The kids have been good, and since the roof issue has been fixed it's been an enjoyable ride.

We'll be posting more soon. We've got lots of stuff on the itinerary including a sunset stroll across the Brooklyn Bridge.