What a great day

We had an awesome day today and made a ton of great forward progress in the garden and the community.

After a breakfast of fresh pineapple and bananas Luke and I headed out to the garden to get started with some preparation work. There was already two teams of oxen starting the second plowing of the land which is great news.

We spent a half an hour building raised beds for demonstration to the locals and made good progress. Soon after the local pastor came to see us with some deacons from the local churches. We met for an hour with them and discussed the needs of the area from an agriculture standpoint. They presented a document to us that outlined their needs and concerns and we discussed our plan with them afterward. It was very reassuring that the plan we had created covered so many of the issues and needs that they identified. After we all walked out to the field where I showed them the raised beds we had made and explained the importance of doing this in the field. They were amazed and kept saying "thank you for bringing this idea to Oditel".

We then discussed how the widows and members of the church will manage the garden and charged them with gathering 20-30 workers from their churches to work with us. They left extremely excited and we are looking forward to seeing the field full of workers on Monday morning.

After lunch we headed out on the Bodaboda to get a better feel for the area. We stopped by a red cross aid point which was packed because they are distributing mosquito nets at today in Oditel to try and help prevent malaria in the rainy season. We stopped by the local "store" and the owner who is a leader here would not let us pay for the cokes he gave us. He simply said "you are welcome here, we thank God so much for sending you". It is really starting to feel like a home here and the people are all loving us so much.

Abito (Luke's little adopted daughter) found us today. You should have seen the look on his face when he got to hug her again. I thought for a second that he might cry with happiness. She was very excited as well as soon as she was convinced by her mother that Luke was not the police. It was beyond a hallmark moment and I wish you all could have seen them.

In other news...I miss ICE and anything cold or chilled for that matter. Lol. The nearest refrigerator is 5 hours away and the only thing cold here is the showers. NOT complaining at all, just sayin. :)

The fruit bats here are the size of sea gulls and have no qualms about dive bombing you if you approach the mango tree at dark.

The chicken with the brood of chicks doesn't find it nearly as amusing as Luke and I when we pick up her babies and is quite violent about it now. The mother turkey doesn't mind though.

At 5 am while heading back from the bathroom in the dark, barely awake; being charged by the dog or the gazelle is quite frightening, at least the first time.

I am 2 games up on Luke in our Uganda cribbage tournament. :)

Love you guys,

Adam

P.S. Sorry about the lack of pictures. We are having a small power and connection issue on the computer and have a limited ability to upload photos at the moment. Working on it though.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry