I will be back.

Sorry I didn’t post yesterday. We didn’t get home from our appreciation dinner until late. Yesterday we visited the villages Subbi and Burrah. Our first stop of the day was Subbi.  I really liked Subbi! There are currently around 1,800 kids living in the village. Here’s some math for you, there are 8 kids per household and around 1,800 kids which makes 225 homes.  To start off the Subbi village tour we took a tour of where they weld and build all of the furniture that Watoto needs. It was pretty neat because after high school some kids would go to vocational school and learn how to be a welder or carpenter and then automatically have a job working there. Like I said  they make the majority of the furniture needed at Watoto, like bed frames, cribs, school desk. Some of the team members met their sponsor child while is Subbi, but since I am not sponsoring anyone, not yet anyways, I got to play with the older toddlers at the baby home. I know last time I posted I mentioned that I had found a boyfriend but I found another one yesterday, Rockman.  He had the cutest smile! He made you work for them, but man were they worth it!  He had two little front teeth that would peek out whenever he smiled. I don’t know if you can tell but I feel in love with it.  One of the funniest moments of the day, more for spectators than myself, was when the toddlers tortured me. No words can really explain this event, I’ll try and post a video on Facebook for farther explanation. After Megan and Carla got done visiting with their sponsor child we said goodbye to the Subbi babies and loaded back up in the bus. We finished off visiting Subbi with a tour of the goat and corn plantation. By this point my Chacos had broke so I was stuck going barefoot, needless to say I passed on the tour of the goat plantation. After that we made the 30 minute drive to Burrah. From the moment we pulled up I loved Burrah! Some other members of the team met their sponsor children there but the rest of us were free to roam the village. There were children playing in the area where we parked so we were immediately greeted with several little voices shouting “mzungu, mzungu!!” I became friends with two boys who grabbed my hands and drug me to their home. I was greeted there by their three sisters Angel, Rachel and Sraah, as she later wrote for me. They were all younger children, the oldest being maybe 7. We played ring around the rosey and took pictures with my phone. After we had tired ourselves out we sat down in the grass and the kids used me as a jungle gym. Rachel and Angel immediately started playing with “mzungu hair.” They quickly learned that my hair wouldn’t do the same things as theirs, so after trying to twist it like their own they decided to tie it in knots. I could tell by the way Angel started karate chopping the hair Rachel was playing with that she wasn’t happy with the way it looked. So in the end I got two braids tied together in the back, I wore it proudly for the rest of the day. Half way through my hair make over the children’s mother, Ester came out. Earlier she had sent one of the boys out with a bottle of water and a mat for the mzungu to sit on.  We talked, well we attempted to talk. We had to get a piece of paper and a pen to write down what we were trying to say so the other could fully understand it. When Harry came to tell me it was time to leave I was so sad. I could have stayed there forever! I realized on the way back to the guest house that Uganda had started to feel like home to me and that I loved these red dirt roads and having children yell “mzungu” whenever they saw me. I feel at peace leaving here because I know that I’ll be back! Sorry I’m not able to write about what we did today, it was a slow day of packing and a trip to the mall. We leave for the airport in 13 minutes! Let the plane rides begin!! Please pray for safe and smooth traveling!

See you soon,
Allie

Mzungu!!

Hey guys, sorry I didn't post yesterday. There wasn't really much to post about. I'll give you the quick run down of yesterday's events, we took some of the babies out for coffee and went to a craft market. Today we went to Subbi and got a tour of their baby home. After the tour we took some of the kids to the zoo in Entebee. I got handed Jeff to be my buddy. He was a clinger and didn't leave my hip all day, I loved it. Needless to say, I now have the cutiest little boyfriend on the face of the planet! The zoo was interesting, to say the least. I'm not going to lie, it was a little sketchy! Now I may be quick to judge, but when I saw that some of the fences had holes in them I immediately thought "red light choice." Inside the zoo we had a picnic with the babies and then took a tour. Meagan and I took a ride on a camel, it was completely unsafe but totally awesome. The funniest part of the day though had to be all the children staring and yelling mzungu, white person, at us. We have gotten this a lot during out trip but until now it had been mostly been kids on the streets and sidewalks while we were driving in the bus. Today however, was a little different, I got asked on three different occasions to have my picture. I felt like a celebrity and thought it was cool, little do I know they were probably making fun of me or something. It was amazing the amount of school groups at the zoo, children in cute little school uniforms were everywhere! After the zoo we took the children back to their home and headed back to the guest house. Last night I started the book, Heaven is For Real, and if you are reading this blog right now and haven't read that book then stop right now and go read it! It is amazing! I read the whole book today, it was that good! Changing topics to prayer requests, the ladies on the team that were sick seam the be getting better, which is a praise! I have had a rough time the last couple days of feeling like I hadn't really done anything productive, the feeling coming from being an 18 year old ADHD child I think, but I just ask for you guys to pray that I see what He wants me to see and do and that I get the message He is sending me loud and clear. I have been getting a little restless, due to the downtime we've had recently and I ask that you guys pray for me to find some way to serve God during that time. I don't have to be busy working to hear God, sometimes it's the stillness and quite that God speaks the loudest and I wanna hear Him! Well it's late here and I need to get some sleep! Thanks again for all the prayer and support!

Love,
Allie

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

Hey guys! Sorry I haven't posted in a couple of days. The safari was amazing! As soon as we stepped out of the van at the lodge we were greeted with warm cloths and juice, how awesome is that?! We saw lion cubs, elephants, giraffes, the whole 9 yards! We saw a ton of monkeys. They were all over the roads, it was pretty cool! We took a boat ride on the Nile River and saw hippos and crocodiles, it was pretty neat! Between the bats and baboons, walking around at night was slightly sketchy. It was a lot of fun though, the team really bonded while we were there. Today we made the 7 1/2 hour trip back to Kampala. I slept pretty much the whole way back, so it was a quick trip for me. I had the best milkshake I had ever had today at lunch! It was amazing! Tonight Megan, the 18 year old girl on the team, and two other people at the guest home watched We Are Marshall on my computer, what a tear jerker. Sorry the post is short and uneventful. Tomorrow we are going to the baby home here in Kampala, that should give me something a little more exciting to write about. My heath pretty much seems to be the same as yesterday, sore stomach in the morning and cold symptoms at night. Nothing too awful but still not present. Good news though, I think I'm going to live. As mom mentioned, one of the ladies on the team has bronchitis, please pray for her speedy recovery. Thanks so much for all the posts and messages! Hopefully I can post more pictures tomorrow! Keep the prayers coming! Thanks again for all the support!

Good night,
Allie

Bye bye my Zoey

Today was our last day in Gulu. We went to the babies home for a couple hours and from there we went to one of the Watoto villages to have a traditional lunch with families. Some team members met their sponsor children, which was pretty cool! The food was amazing and there was a ton of it! We got the traditional chicken, rice, beans, potatos (two different kinds), ciabatta, bananas and some kind of cold slaw/salad thingy. I had two huge plates full of food. After lunch I played soccer with some of the kids, it was a lot of fun! Right before we left we handed out presents, the bracelets that we had left over from Romania were a big hit. As we were leaving the village today, I was listening to my iPod when the song Where I Belong by Building 429 came on. The part in the song that says, "All I know is I'm not home yet, this is not where I belong, take this world and give me Jesus," really stood out to me. I really enjoyed worshiping Him on a bus in the middle of Uganda. Something that I learned today that I thought was interesting is that Watoto bought the village we visited today because it used to be Kony's base camp. I thought it was pretty neat that they wanted to buy that land and build something positive and uplifting on it after being a part of something so terrible. My prayer request for the night is for my health, my stomach hurt some today and I've got a little bit of a swollen eye. Other than that though, things are going great! I shared my testimony tonight and got a lot of love and encouragement from the team. God is going to do great things with me and I can't wait! As I type this entry, a church right outside the compound is having some kind of overnight prayer event and are singing and cheering. Its a cool thought to think that they are praising the same God that I do and that God understands us all equally, no matter what language we speak. Tomorrow we have a 4 hour drive to the safari. The place we are going to be staying is supposed to be extremely nice. I'm pretty stinkin excited! Well I'm off to bed. Thanks for all the love and prayer!

Happy Friday the 13th. Mine was good, I hope yours is also!
Allie

I'm not lying tonight when I say this entry will be short. Today we worked at the baby home, as usual, and then visited Living Hope. It was really cool to get a tour and to see the ministry they have there. When we got back to the babies home we were asked to do some team building games with the nannies. I suggest the game "honey if you love me.." and let me tell you, it was a HUGE hit! It was super funny and the nannies, even the guy grounds workers, loved it. Thank you Jessie and 3rd hour theater class! Wow! That's something I thought I'd never say! Today I met and talked with some of the girls that are volunteering long term at Baby Watoto. They invited me and Megan, the other 18 year old, to go hang out with them tonight. So after group meeting, we did. I enjoyed it, they had chocolate milk and cookies! I volunteered to share my testimony tomorrow night, so if you guys could please pray for that it would be much appreciated. Tomorrow we go to the babies home for a couple hours in the morning and then go for a traditional lunch in the village. I'm really sad to be leaving the babies, it seems like I was just getting here. I have been thinking a lot about doing a long term missions trip, maybe that's something I can look into for next summer. Well I'm beat and it's 11:45pm here so I'm going to hit the hay! Thanks for praying, please keep it up!

Love,
Allie

I want to fall in love, but not with earthly things!

Hey folks, I'm going to apologize ahead of time for how short tonight's entry is going to be, I'm pretty beat from today. Today we woke up and went to the babies home. We painted and took breaks from that to play with the babies, now I say that but I think it was more like we took breaks from playing with the babies to paint. Either way, we took some of the older toddlers on an outing today. We took them on the 3 minute bus ride back to the guest house to watch veggie tales sing along video. I was given Emma (Emanuel) as my baby for the outing. He is so stinking adorable! It was cute because he was sooo excited to go on the bus and whenever he was riding it he would just stare out the windows. I taught him how to blow kisses so we did that and waved to everyone as we drove by. I was amazed at how smart he was! He would be saying things like, "We go on bus!" and pointing at objects and identifying them, I know that it's probably not that big of a deal as I think but dang it was cute! After we got back from the outing we finished the rest of our painting. We ended up painting two smaller rooms and then the majority of the big room. It was pretty neat to see them moving some furniture into one of the rooms we painted and having it look all put together at the end of the day. I must say though, my favorite part of the day was taking my favorite group of toddlers on a little adventure inside the compound. I call it an adventure but really it was more of them running off and us ending up look at the cows and playing in the grass. Either way though, I loved it! It was entertaining to watch Emma running as fast as his little legs would go trying to catch the birds. After he figured out that catching the birds wasn't going to happen he started picking up rocks and throwing them at the cows through the fence, I thought it was funny but was forced to tell him not to do it. All in all, it was a very productive and good day! The main two prayer request I have tonight are to continuing praying about the one from last night and then also that the things from back home wouldn't distract me while I'm here. Like everyone, I have several struggles (and/or distractions, whatever you want to call them)  that I am trying to work though and one of them has been in my life for several months and I feel like it's been kind of holding me back, not physically really but more mentally, and I'm at the point where I'm sick and tired of it. I've started having the mindset that, "Oh, it must be here for a reason since it's been here so long. God must have a plan including it, or what not." And I just ask that y'all pray that if that's not the mindset I should have, which I'm thinking it's probably not, then God will just make it so blatantly obvious that I would be stupid for not changing my ways of thinking and that He would change my heart and mindset. And I just ask you guys to pray that while I'm here I can focus of God and falling head-over-heals in love with him! I know that didn't really have anything to do with my trip really but seeing the amount of people who read this and knowing the power of prayer I thought I would throw it out there. Well, so much for being a short entry. I am pretty beat from today and it's a whopping 10:30 at night here, so I'm going to hit the hay. Oh yeah here's a little funny for you, last night I was crawling into bed when my foot brushes against something at the end of my bed. I shined the light from my phone down through the covers expecting to see come crumbs or something and low and behold a gigantic bug. Now I don't know if I had killed it when I had touched it and I didn't take the time to find out! I jumped right outta there, the mosquito net did give a little bit of trouble, grabbed my pillow and got in the bed next to me. Luckily it was empty so I just slept there for the night. Hopefully that's my last encounter with any kind of African creepy crawler. On that note, I'm head to bed! Thanks for your prayers!


Good night and don't let the bed bugs bite,
Allie

I fell in love with a girl named Zoey.

Today we woke up, had breakfast and then headed to the baby home. When we first got there we had another orientation type thing. A point the lady mentioned that I hadn't really thought of was that Watoto didn't want to make the homes too big, or spacious, because they didn't want the natives thinking that they had a bunch of room so they didn't dropping them off their children. There is another 18 year old girl here with her grandma that I have gotten to know pretty well and today the grandma asked me, "Do you want me to be your Grammy while we're here?" I, of course, said "I would love that!" I just thought it was funny because my mom told me before I left to find me a mommy while I'm here. Today was our first day working working at Gulu. As soon as we got started playing around with these adorable babies, a nanny brought a chubby baby girl, Zoey, over for me to hold. I immediately fell in love with her. We played with the babies until lunch. Zoey and I were attached until I put her down for her nap. After we ate lunch we cleaned the walls that we will the painting tomorrow. I didn't realized when I came that we would be painting, needless to say, I did not bring any paint clothes. I'm really trying not to be materialistic when I cringe a little at the thought of getting paint on a pair of my Nike running shorts. After we got done washing the walls and movie some things around we got to play with the babies a little bit before we left. I could go on for days about how cute they are! Each night we have team meetings, and Harry told us that in these meetings he wants one of us to give a devotional and one of us to share their testimony each night. I have never really been one to jump right up and do either of those. I know it is something that I should probably do, but something has always held me back. I've always thought, well if God wants me to do it then He'll make it clear and give me something to speak on. And even though I don’t have anything to talk about I feel like I should speak. That thought is extremely intimidating to me considering I am the one of the youngest people here and, beside the other 18 year old, the rest of the women are at least 15 years older than I am. So that is my prayer request for today. Thanks again for all the support! Sorry the post is so late, they shut the internet off before I finished it last night.

Good night (or Good morning for me),
Allie

Because it can in Uganda!

Why did the chicken, goat and monkey cross the road?
Let's see, where do I even start?! Today I woke up to the sound of bird chirping, it was awesome! It was one of the ladies on the teams birthday today, we sang and bought her a little cake from the supermarket. We started off the day with orientation. Then right after it finished we started the 5 hour drive to Gulu. As we were driving through the country to Gulu I had the overwhelming feeling that the world has more to offer than I had originally thought. Along with that feeling I was reminded that I could do anything I wanted, wherever I wanted. I also realized that Lecrea sounds good in any country! Today as we were buying food from the supermarket I noticed that the group was extremely nice and polite to everyone we came in contact with. Now, I can't speak for the rest of the team but I know that back home I am not always that nice to the people at the store. So that got me thinking, why am I nicer to these people that I'll never see again than I am to people can I come in contact with frequently? Just a thought for you to ponder if you will. We toured one of the baby homes today, I'll tell you a story about that tomorrow hopefully. Tomorrow we start working with the children and I could not be more excited! Thank you all for your support and prayers! Please keep it up! Sorry it's kind of short tonight, traveling kicked my booty today!

Peace out,
Allie

We have arrived!

Today has been an amazing, but tiring day! We arrived in Uganda around 7:30am (Uganda time.) We had an hour drive to the guest house in Kampala. On our drive I saw several advertisements for GLEE, which I thought my dad would appreciate. When we got to the guest house we dropped off our bags and threw on our church clothes and headed straight to the Watoto church. When we got there we saw how much these Ugandans crave the Lord. They have 5 church services on Sunday and lines and lines of people waiting to get in. Their worship was just amazing, so honest and moving. The pastor preached about money and debt and how it is Africa's time to rise. You can tell he really had a heart for what he was preaching. At times he would get so worked up that he would start jumping up and down. After church we went to lunch at a restaurant. I got a Fanta in a glass bottle and a Grilled Beef Fillet Steak with french fries, they were very good! It was fun talking to the rest of the team and getting to know them. We had two guys who accompanied us today, Patrick and Harry, who were both a hoot! It's nice that everyone mostly speaks English here but it is still sometimes a little difficult to completely understand each other sometimes. Even with the slight misunderstandings its was awesome to be able to joke around and talk to them. After lunch we went to a craft market, which was very cool.  We were told to never buy something at full price, so we quickly learned how to negotiate prices. It was fun, but difficult, to have to negotiate a lower price when to us it was already so cheap. One US dollar equals 1965.10 Ugandan shillings, just in case anyone was wondering. At the market there was a group of children who would dance and sing while a couple adults played the drums. It was very neat and I got a video, hopefully I can upload it sometime. At one specific shop there was a boy working it, and he asked if I was in high school. I told him I had just graduated and he told me that he had one more year left. I asked him how old he was and he told me 22, he returned the question and I answered. He then told me that I "grew up well." I laughed and said thank you. Now if he was just saying that because I had bought several things from him, or if he actually meant it we'll never know. After he got done wrapping the things I had bought he shook my hand and taught me how to play some kind of instrument. I wasn't very good at it so I didn't buy it. But it was neat to be able to go somewhere and have a conversation like that with a native around my age. We spent about an hour at the craft market. I loved shopping but it was hard because usually it was just you and the person working the shop in the little store, so they would watch your every move and if you just touched something they would say "I give you good price" and if you started to walk away they would starting making it cheaper and cheaper. I'm not going to lie, I got sucked in a time or two to buying a couple things that I really didn't need. After we left the craft market we came back to the guest house. I took a quick nap before dinner. We had pizza full of meat toppings, just like my daddy likes it, and fresh pineapple and more Fanta! The pineapple was amazing! After dinner we went back to our room and repacked some of our bags because tomorrow we leave for Gulu for 5 days and then go straight to the safari and they asked that we only try to bring one bag. I surprised myself when I packed all my stuff into my carry on with ease. One of the girls on the team, who I think is my age, invited us to play Spades after dinner. I couldn't turn down an opportunity to play a card game. It ended up being me and two women from the team and then William, and older man from here, and another Watoto worker. It was a lot of fun! It felt amazing to get a warm shower after that and change into some comfy clothes. I just realized its 11:21pm here and that I should be going to bed. Please continue to pray! Please pray that forming relationships with the other teammates will go well and that jet lag wont kick my butt to badly. Thank you guys for all your prayers so far! I am having a blast and can't wait to get to the baby home! I'm looking into stay a couple extra days since we arrived late, hopefully I'll find out if I can soon! Whew, it's been quite the day. 

I am happy to be able to say, good night from Uganda.
Allie

Africa already has my heart and I haven't even gotten there yet.

I am currently sitting in a hotel room in Brussels, Belgium.  It is 4:38am back in Missouri, which means all of you at home are probably fast asleep. However, it is 11:38am here, which means my day has only begun. After a nice unscheduled overnight stay here in Brussels, I ready to get to Kampala! We are scheduled to leave Belgium around 4:40pm (Belgium time) and fly to London and then leave London at 9:40pm and arrive in Kampala at 7:30am Sunday the 8th. My travel mate (Amanda) and I are both really hoping we can make it to the church service on Sunday. But as we have figured out, we'll get there when we get there. I am so extremely excited! I am hoping to stay a couple extra days in Uganda since I missed a couple day with this extra stop. Hopefully we will have WiFi at Watoto so I can update you guys again! Please continue to pray! Africa already has my heart and I haven't even gotten there yet. I have a feeling that this is going to be a little bit more of an emotional journey for me that I had expected. I know God is working in me and I can think of nothing better to do than put my trust in Him. 


Tot de volgende keer ("Until next time" in Dutch),
Allie