Monday, January 16, 2006
My sister comes for a visit. . .
On December 10th, my younger sister, Debbie, came for a short visit. Leading up to her visit, I had been VERY busy, with preparations for the holidays and all that comes with that. Logistics of getting out to Entebbe to pick her up were a little fuzzy because plans seemed to change continually. I had reservations for us to go rafting on the Nile River on Sunday, but they kept telling me that there wouldn’t be any trips on Sunday since they didn’t have enough people to make a run down the river.
Anyhow, in a nutshell (since I don’t have much time because power is out, yet again, and I’m not sure how long my battery will last), Lori finally decided to take me to Entebbe to pick up Debbie. On Friday around 2pm, she said, “Can you be ready to leave in 30 minutes?” Of course, I had not planned on leaving until the next day after team worship. I hadn’t eaten lunch or packed or even cleaned my room up in preparation for Debbie to arrive. But I managed to grab some things together and be ready to leave with Lori. We got to Kampala in the midst of lots of traffic and ate a late dinner at a nice little Italian place. Then we went and crashed at Ellen’s house, a Kampala missionary. Saturday, we spent the day shopping in Kampala and then drove the remaining hour to Entebbe to pick up my sister at 10pm. Of course, her flight came in late and it seemed like we were waiting FOREVER! Finally, she arrived and we headed back to our hotel in Entebbe, where I celebrated Christmas a little early (at least, it sure did feel like that, with all the goodies Debbie had brought me from America!). Debbie and I were up talking until early in the morning. I would guess we got about 3 hours of sleep total. Debbie will tell you that the reason we didn’t sleep much was because I was talking, but I will stick to my story that it was hot and the fan oscillating back and forth between us was not doing a good enough job of keeping us cool and mosquito-free.
Luckily, the rafting people said that a few others had signed on to go rafting so they would indeed be taking a trip on Sunday. So we had to get up and get on the road to Kampala so that we could make it to our rafting bus at 730 am. From there, we went to Jinja, where we spent a great day rafting the Nile River! (read more about this in another post, which I will hopefully do soon!)
After rafting, we spent the night in Jinja with the Bogels, another missionary family. We headed to Kampala early in the morning to catch ANOTHER ride “home” to Mbarara. We made a quick stop at the equator, where we took some pictures and even saw the demonstration of how water drains in opposite directions on each side of the equator. (My dad wanted video of this!) When we finally arrived in Mbarara, we stopped at home and threw on skirts so that we could run to a Christmas party held at Amy Naramore’s home for our Ladies Town Church Bible Study group. Eventually, we made our way to the Bakers for dinner. We stayed and visited with them until late in the evening and then got a great night’s sleep finally!
Tuesday, Debbie went to school with me and helped me with my “Pioneer Day.” (Read more about this later in a post…if I ever get around to it!) Her help was invaluable and I never would have been able to pull it all off without her help. I think we had dinner with the Naramores that night, but I can’t be totally sure.
Wednesday, Debbie went to the hospital to check up on one of Danny’s friends and to just get a glimpse of the health-care situation here in Uganda. That night, we headed to the Glissons for our school Christmas program. (Read more about this later!)
Thursday was our last day of school and we had our Christmas party (combined kindergarten, 2nd grade and 4th grade). Debbie ended up going to the village for a short visit with Lori though. Thursday afternoon, Debbie and I headed to Ladies’ Bible Study (late of course) only to leave and head out to Nyakinengo, the village where we were going to do our bonding. (Of course, read more about this later!)
Friday around 3 pm, we left Nyakinengo to go straight to the hospital so I could give blood for Isaac, Danny’s friend. Then we went home, SHOWERED and kind of just crashed! We headed to the Glissons that night to watch a movie, during which I fell asleep!
I think on Saturday, we had a low-key, mellow-kind-of day. We didn’t do much. I think we went swimming with the Baker kids and Debbie played soccer with the neighborhood kids for “Sword and Soccer.” We had dinner with the Bakers again, and even got to play Pinnochle! Can you believe that ?!? Debbie and I stayed there until 4 am enjoying our time with Jay and Andrea.
Sunday, we went to town church, lunch at Lakeview Hotel, and then headed out to Lake Mburo to see the animals. It was really cool! We got to ride on top of Terri’s truck. (Of course, we didn’t bring pillows or blankets or anything, so our rear-ends were SORE by the end…especially since Terri seemed to really enjoy speeding over bumps and looking at us with a big grin on her face!) We saw TONS of zebras and lots of other animals. (See my pictures, which I’ll get around to posting SOON, hopefully at http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/bethellent/my_photos ) Terri’s highlight was seeing a warthog (man are they UGLY!) try to charge me…guess I got a little too close to him. I was only trying to pet him. Oh well, lesson learned. The scenery and sunset were BEAUTIFUL! Debbie and I kept saying to each other, “Man it is SO green and pretty!” Unfortunately, I don’t think you can fully experience the beauty without actually being here. Sure, pictures are worth a thousand words, but they really don’t capture the true beauty I am able to see and experience here. Man, I feel so blessed!
Okay, Monday Debbie and I hung out and spent lots of time at the Bakers’ compound most of the day. Not much to share about that day. Oh, we took Hannah and Curt into town to shop for our white elephant gifts. We visited with Isaac at the hospital again. He seemed to be getting worse, but there really wasn’t anything we could do, but pray. His family asked for a pastor to pray over him and I looked to Debbie. (She IS a nurse, you know, who has experience dealing with sick and dying people.) But she just looked back at me and told me I was a missionary teacher. She reasoned that since I had the word “missionary” in my title, I should be the on praying for him. It was sad, and there wasn’t anything else to do, so I laid my hands on him and prayed for him as best I could. Hopefully the Holy Spirit interceded here on my incompetent behalf. We ended Monday having dinner with the Glissons.
Tuesday, we left early for Queen Elizabeth Game Park and returned from there Wednesday night. (Read all about this after I write about it an post it! Also, you‘ll have to go to my picture website to see all the amazing pictures we took--LOTS of great elephant pictures!)
Wednesday night, Amy and her family got in and we had dinner with them.
Thursday, Terri, Amy and her family got up and left early to go the Game Park. Debbie and I spent most of the day baking cookies for the cookie exchange at the Bakers’ house. Thursday night was a POWER OUT night, but we finally made it to the Bakers for the Christmas white elephant gift exchange and cookie swap. It was a fun night, which included a surprise visit by Santa Claus and a special version of “Twelve Days of Christmas” sung to us by Nick and Renee.
Friday morning, Debbie and I headed to Kampala for some souvenir shopping. Around 6, she was on her way to Entebbe to catch her flight home and I was on my to Ellen’s to sleep for the night.
This concludes the “QUICK OVERVIEW” of my sister’s visit. (Surely, you know that I’m not so good at telling stories…they always turn into novels!) Hopefully, I’ll get around to writing more specifically about some of the events that took place while she was here SOON. I’m also hoping to post lots of pictures soon!
Anyhow, in a nutshell (since I don’t have much time because power is out, yet again, and I’m not sure how long my battery will last), Lori finally decided to take me to Entebbe to pick up Debbie. On Friday around 2pm, she said, “Can you be ready to leave in 30 minutes?” Of course, I had not planned on leaving until the next day after team worship. I hadn’t eaten lunch or packed or even cleaned my room up in preparation for Debbie to arrive. But I managed to grab some things together and be ready to leave with Lori. We got to Kampala in the midst of lots of traffic and ate a late dinner at a nice little Italian place. Then we went and crashed at Ellen’s house, a Kampala missionary. Saturday, we spent the day shopping in Kampala and then drove the remaining hour to Entebbe to pick up my sister at 10pm. Of course, her flight came in late and it seemed like we were waiting FOREVER! Finally, she arrived and we headed back to our hotel in Entebbe, where I celebrated Christmas a little early (at least, it sure did feel like that, with all the goodies Debbie had brought me from America!). Debbie and I were up talking until early in the morning. I would guess we got about 3 hours of sleep total. Debbie will tell you that the reason we didn’t sleep much was because I was talking, but I will stick to my story that it was hot and the fan oscillating back and forth between us was not doing a good enough job of keeping us cool and mosquito-free.
Luckily, the rafting people said that a few others had signed on to go rafting so they would indeed be taking a trip on Sunday. So we had to get up and get on the road to Kampala so that we could make it to our rafting bus at 730 am. From there, we went to Jinja, where we spent a great day rafting the Nile River! (read more about this in another post, which I will hopefully do soon!)
After rafting, we spent the night in Jinja with the Bogels, another missionary family. We headed to Kampala early in the morning to catch ANOTHER ride “home” to Mbarara. We made a quick stop at the equator, where we took some pictures and even saw the demonstration of how water drains in opposite directions on each side of the equator. (My dad wanted video of this!) When we finally arrived in Mbarara, we stopped at home and threw on skirts so that we could run to a Christmas party held at Amy Naramore’s home for our Ladies Town Church Bible Study group. Eventually, we made our way to the Bakers for dinner. We stayed and visited with them until late in the evening and then got a great night’s sleep finally!
Tuesday, Debbie went to school with me and helped me with my “Pioneer Day.” (Read more about this later in a post…if I ever get around to it!) Her help was invaluable and I never would have been able to pull it all off without her help. I think we had dinner with the Naramores that night, but I can’t be totally sure.
Wednesday, Debbie went to the hospital to check up on one of Danny’s friends and to just get a glimpse of the health-care situation here in Uganda. That night, we headed to the Glissons for our school Christmas program. (Read more about this later!)
Thursday was our last day of school and we had our Christmas party (combined kindergarten, 2nd grade and 4th grade). Debbie ended up going to the village for a short visit with Lori though. Thursday afternoon, Debbie and I headed to Ladies’ Bible Study (late of course) only to leave and head out to Nyakinengo, the village where we were going to do our bonding. (Of course, read more about this later!)
Friday around 3 pm, we left Nyakinengo to go straight to the hospital so I could give blood for Isaac, Danny’s friend. Then we went home, SHOWERED and kind of just crashed! We headed to the Glissons that night to watch a movie, during which I fell asleep!
I think on Saturday, we had a low-key, mellow-kind-of day. We didn’t do much. I think we went swimming with the Baker kids and Debbie played soccer with the neighborhood kids for “Sword and Soccer.” We had dinner with the Bakers again, and even got to play Pinnochle! Can you believe that ?!? Debbie and I stayed there until 4 am enjoying our time with Jay and Andrea.
Sunday, we went to town church, lunch at Lakeview Hotel, and then headed out to Lake Mburo to see the animals. It was really cool! We got to ride on top of Terri’s truck. (Of course, we didn’t bring pillows or blankets or anything, so our rear-ends were SORE by the end…especially since Terri seemed to really enjoy speeding over bumps and looking at us with a big grin on her face!) We saw TONS of zebras and lots of other animals. (See my pictures, which I’ll get around to posting SOON, hopefully at http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/bethellent/my_photos ) Terri’s highlight was seeing a warthog (man are they UGLY!) try to charge me…guess I got a little too close to him. I was only trying to pet him. Oh well, lesson learned. The scenery and sunset were BEAUTIFUL! Debbie and I kept saying to each other, “Man it is SO green and pretty!” Unfortunately, I don’t think you can fully experience the beauty without actually being here. Sure, pictures are worth a thousand words, but they really don’t capture the true beauty I am able to see and experience here. Man, I feel so blessed!
Okay, Monday Debbie and I hung out and spent lots of time at the Bakers’ compound most of the day. Not much to share about that day. Oh, we took Hannah and Curt into town to shop for our white elephant gifts. We visited with Isaac at the hospital again. He seemed to be getting worse, but there really wasn’t anything we could do, but pray. His family asked for a pastor to pray over him and I looked to Debbie. (She IS a nurse, you know, who has experience dealing with sick and dying people.) But she just looked back at me and told me I was a missionary teacher. She reasoned that since I had the word “missionary” in my title, I should be the on praying for him. It was sad, and there wasn’t anything else to do, so I laid my hands on him and prayed for him as best I could. Hopefully the Holy Spirit interceded here on my incompetent behalf. We ended Monday having dinner with the Glissons.
Tuesday, we left early for Queen Elizabeth Game Park and returned from there Wednesday night. (Read all about this after I write about it an post it! Also, you‘ll have to go to my picture website to see all the amazing pictures we took--LOTS of great elephant pictures!)
Wednesday night, Amy and her family got in and we had dinner with them.
Thursday, Terri, Amy and her family got up and left early to go the Game Park. Debbie and I spent most of the day baking cookies for the cookie exchange at the Bakers’ house. Thursday night was a POWER OUT night, but we finally made it to the Bakers for the Christmas white elephant gift exchange and cookie swap. It was a fun night, which included a surprise visit by Santa Claus and a special version of “Twelve Days of Christmas” sung to us by Nick and Renee.
Friday morning, Debbie and I headed to Kampala for some souvenir shopping. Around 6, she was on her way to Entebbe to catch her flight home and I was on my to Ellen’s to sleep for the night.
This concludes the “QUICK OVERVIEW” of my sister’s visit. (Surely, you know that I’m not so good at telling stories…they always turn into novels!) Hopefully, I’ll get around to writing more specifically about some of the events that took place while she was here SOON. I’m also hoping to post lots of pictures soon!
# posted by beth @ 2:57 PM 
