Jinja and Kampala

Yesterday, we got back from our retreat in Jinja and a few days in Kampala. Jinja is amazing! We attended a retreat called “Transformation of the Heart” at Mto Moyoni (www.mto-moyoni.org). The campus is directly on the Nile. We even went swimming in it. I was surprised at how clean it was since it is disgusting in Egypt. We have to take bilharzias medication just in case, but it was so worth it. I will put pictures online as soon as possible, but you should know that pictures won’t express how beautiful and calm it was there. It was definitely the most beautiful place I have ever seen.

However, the day we got there, it was raining pretty hard. Our buddy Richard traveled with us to ensure that we made it safely. We took a bus to Kampala, where the woman behind us bought two live chickens at the beginning of our 5 hour trip! It was pretty funny. After we arrived to Kampala, we had pizza and took a microbus to Jinja. We got dropped off on the main street and had to get bodas to get to Mto Moyoni, but the road was too muddy for the bodas. We stopped and walked on the muddy road, as we were falling over in the mud and laughing because there was nothing we could do about it. When we arrived, we were stunned at the scenery and we relaxed on a hammock that overlooks the Nile.

The retreat itself was wonderful. It looked at issues such as inner vows, soul ties, generational sins, bitter roots of the heart and more. Two amazing women from Holland run Mto Moyoni and conduct the teaching. We got to hear a lot about their experiences since they’ve been in Uganda. It was a great learning experience. I would love to go back there.
On Saturday, we drove back to Kampala and stayed with our friends Coryn and Jamesdon. We went to church with them on Sunday morning and we went to the children’s home that Coryn volunteers for. They are actually adopting a baby, Daniel, and they might have him next week! We got to see Daniel for the second time and hang out with the other kids, who were really entertaining. I spent most of my time with Cherish, a really cute newborn baby.

After that, we went out for lunch. We went to this place called Java City, where I had an amazing mushroom cheeseburger and seasoned fries. We actually went back the next morning for sandwiches because it was so good. You know that restaurants are good in Uganda when they are packed with white people! Then we went back and played wii, which was really fun. It’s weird to play video games after being here for a while! It was fun to spend time with Coryn and Jamesdon, and to top it off, we were able to get a bunch of groceries.

We made it back to Gulu around 6pm yesterday, and we have water and electricity, thank God. It was a long long long drive, so we didn’t do very much today.