Pictures as promised:

Night Commuters performing a traditional Acholi dance for us


Kids getting ready for bed at the night commuter shelter

Sunrise this morning on the bus from Gulu

Crossing back over the Nile

Trying to get a taxi in Kampala

Since the last post we have spent our last day and night in Gulu and are now back in the capital city.  Thursday we were able to help the Invisible Children team with a few different things.  Eric taught Katie how to make a spreadsheet she needed in Excel, Jeff designed some shelving units for their guest house, and I planned out a database project with Katie and Jolly that I'm going to build for them when I get home. 

Thursday evening we got to meet another really cool guy, affectionately referred to as Dr. Dave by those in Gulu.  Dave is a college professor in Chicago for most of the year, but comes to Gulu to teach chemistry for one term during his summer break.  Dave had a lot of insight on the reigon and what it's biggest need is.  In his words, "Northern Uganda just needs good churches".  He encouraged us to consider coming to Gulu to teach and plant a church, and told us all about how many people he tries to recruit from the US, but so far he is the only American to teach at Gulu University (GU).  We exchanged contact information and are definitely going to keep in touch with Dave. 

Later that night we went back to visit the kids at the night commuter shelter, and again we had a blast.  We brought a guitar with us, and played encore after encore of "Lord I Lift Your Name on High" and "Every Move I Make".  It was so amazing to be singing with these kids we've been praying for during the past months.

Early Friday morning we boarded the crowded bus back to Kampala, then rested up for our next journey to a city called Masaka, where our host Jacques is leading a conference for alumni of Compassion International.  These are kids who grew up in the sponsorship program and are now working professionals.  Depending on when I get to actually post this (internet is down tonight) I'll let you all know how it goes.

Sorry for the slow update, and lack of pictures again. Power here in Gulu is pretty sporatic, and we couldn’t use the computer last night. Today we’re in an internet cafe so there’s no way to post the pictures up to the site. Hopefully when we get back to Kampala tomorrow I can show you all some of the things we experienced yesterday. Words can hardly describe, but I’ll try.

Yesterday started with a trip with Katie to visit a shelter for child mothers. It’s a place where girls can go to get help when they have had children in “the bush” then manage to escape the LRA somehow. In typical African fashion, the group had relocated to a different building so we went ahead onto our next destination.

We boarded Boda Boda’s (small motorcycle taxis that you ride on the back of) and headed off to Koro IDP camp. Koro is one of the smaller camps in Northern Uganda, housing around 10,000 people, and it’s one of the locations where Invisible Children has their bracelet making program. The conditions at the camp were the worst I have ever seen. The cow dung huts are packed so tightly together that you can’t walk in between some of them. The people all around are on the brink of starvation, and their only concern is survival – how they will get their next meal and avoid disease. I know we’ve all seen these pictures on TV, but to be there first hand was an experience I can’t really describe yet. The bracelet campaign consisted of two huts full of people making the same ones we buy on visiblechildren.com. They’re currently working on the green ones which will be released in about two weeks in the states. This job allows the workers to earn enough money to buy food to feed their families, nothing more to save for anything else. The only source of real food for the camps is the UN world food programme, or WFP, and what they provide isn’t enough to sustain the people. The WFP truck come maybe once a month, and the food is only enough for a few weeks at most.

To me the saddest part of the whole situation is that there are miles of land all around that these people would be farming if it wasn’t for fear of the LRA. The struggle for survival wouldn’t be nearly as difficult if the government wouldn’t have forced them into these camps.

After Koro, we went and visited the Invisible Chilren office in town. Jolly, the mom in the movie, now runs the operation in Uganda. We got to meet her and have lunch with the staff. They run two main progams in Gulu now, the braclet campaign, and the education program. All the money that is made on the bracelets is funneled back to the education program which provides scholarships to kids in the camps. Here in Uganda, all the children who want to go above an elementary level have to pay school fees of around 5,000 schillings (about 3 dollars) per term. To most in the camps this is completely out of reach, so IC finds student who have good grades and who want to go to secondary school and provide them with the tuition money. Then they have mentors who go to visit the kids to check on their studies and on their home lives. All in all a very cool progam they have running, currently their goal is to have 1,000 students sponsored for the next term.

Then, last night was the highlight of our trip so far. We got to go visit one of the night commuter shelters here in town. Rebel activity is at an all time low right now (PTL!) so there were only about 100 kids at the shelter we went to. The facility was huge, and aparently there have been times within the last 6 months where thousands of kids stayed there. As soon as we walked in the gate we were warmly greeted by the guards and the camp director. After a few minutes of meeting some of the kids we were told to sit down so they could sing us some songs and do a traditional dance for us. All I can say is WOW! What an amazing time we had. Again I struggle to describe it, just so amazing. Then we got to see there sleeping quarters and wish them a good night.

Today is another day in Gulu doing whatever we can to help out the Invisible Children folks with varoius computer stuff then it’s back down to Kampala. Hopefully we’ll get to go back to the shelter tonight to hang out with the kids.

We made it to Gulu! And they have internet!  Today was filled with the 6 hour car ride from the capital of Kampala, up here to the north Uganda. We left Jacques house at 8:30 this morning after a good nights sleep, and met up with Dick and Hal, two Baptist missionaries from Sacramento. Dick has been a missionary here in Uganda for the last 30 years, so we got quite the education on the drive.

For lunch we had chicken and rice and for snacks we got to have the best mango on God's green earth. Now, even now, I'm chewing on the most amazing pinneapple ever to cross my lips. It's a good thing I'm off the diet. On the drive, we crossed the Nile, and Jeff got to drool at the class 5 rapids below, then passed a family of baboons (pictures to come soon). The closer we Got to Gulu, the more people we saw living in IDP camps. There are hundreds of huts all packed really tightly together, then miles of nothing in between the camps. Our friend James is going to take us into one of the camps tomorrow where IC makes the braclets.

When we got to Gulu we were immediately met by our new friend Katie, of Invisible Children, and were shown our new home for the next couple of days. We got a little tour of the city and the market and are looking forward to a full day tomorrow. Thanks for all your prayers for safety, we are all safe and sound, and in good health. Please pray for us tomorrow as we see first hand what life is like in the displacement camps.