Raleigh-Durham Visit #1 Wrap-Up

We had a sweet time of visiting in North Carolina last week, although I must admit it felt a little weird to be "at home" but not have our own home to go home to...does that make any sense? Here are some pics from our visit:

We had lots of fun time with friends. (Gotta love friends that share your fashion sense :-))

It was important to Josiah to make a visit to say goodbye to our old cat, Woodstock, and to make sure he was happily settled in his new home.

We also enjoyed a spectacular going away party, which was put on by Mark's Duke Hospital co-workers.

These folks have been such fabulous co-workers and friends to Mark over the last 5 years. We will really miss them.

CIT Wrap-up

On Friday, we completed our time of training at the Center for Intercultural Training (CIT) in Union Mills, NC. We are so thankful to the Orthodox Presbyterian Church for sending us to this training. It was invaluable! Here are a few lessons learned, in random order, (I am, after all, an abstract random thinker :-)).

1. Enter your host country and your team as a humble learner.

2. Listen more than you speak.

3. Withhold judgement. Make sure you aren't confusing a Biblical value with a Western one.

4. Leave your house! Be intentional about engaging your community.

5. You are responsible for your language learning. Invest the time necessary to communicate on a heart level.

6. LAUGH AT YOURSELF!

7. You WILL make mistakes, but don't give up. The Lord works through cracked pots.

One huge blessing of CIT is that our children were receiving the same training that Mark and I were, only at their level. Here are some pics of the boys with their facilitators:

We cannot thank the CIT facilitators and staff enough. Thank you for pouring into us for the last 6 weeks! We are now back in Raleigh enjoying some sweet time with friends before heading to the Philadelphia area on Thursday.

Our first week of Language Acquisition

Today concluded the first of 2 weeks of language acquisition. We have learned to make more sounds with our mouth and tongue than we had ever imagined. We have also learned some skills on how to work with a language helper. We are excited to get started with trying to learn Luganda. Some trivia: the word in Luganda for sunscreen is "ebizigo byolususu eby'omusana" :-).

We were also very excited to get mail from Uncle Todd and Aunt Jensy (and Kiran of course)!

Week in Review

This past week in class we discussed topics such as contextualization, team dynamics, raising children on the field and conflict resolution. 

It was nice to have the weekend off. We went with another family to sliding rock. The park is filled with waterfalls (as seen below). The main attraction is an area where the water runs over a slick rock making a natural water slide. 

Below is a video of Levi going down sliding rock. The water is ice cold. It was great seeing peoples faces go from sheer joy to extreme shock once they came  up out of the water. 

Last Sunday we decided to visit a church closer to where we are. We found a nice PCA church and following the service a family provided lunch for us. They even knew another missionary deacon in Kampala that is doing some interesting work in vocational training of men in Kampala. The connections are always nice!