A&S Visit Part Two

Andrew and I mid-chimp hunting.....

The big black thing is a chimp...hopefully you can make out his face.

Shannon crossing one of many precarious bridges...

After the fun of game drives and chimp trekking – we headed down the road to Fort Portal. Ft. Portal is in North Western Uganda…..and just a hop, skip and a jump from the Congo border. While there, we stayed with Jeff Cash and family. The Cash’s have been missionaries in Uganda for….a while and Jeff had lots of exciting, skin of his teeth type of stories to share from living so close to Congo.

One big thing about Jeff is that he is a pilot. The Ft. Portal mission team actually works with the local government to maintain the local airfield…(see picture below)…..Jeff has also worked to buy an airplane to facilitate in visiting churches in remote Congo, deliver needed supplies, and various projects. Believe it or not – flying is much, much safer than traveling by road. The plane isn’t quite put together yet – but he is getting close.

Ft. Portal Runway (above and below)

As you can imagine – Andrew and Jeff had fun trading flying stories and talking aviation. In addition to visiting Ft. Portal’s top-of-the-line airfield, Jeff took us out to visit Camp Saka, which is some land on a lake where the Ft. Portal mission team has developed a nice place to host camping groups….they also host an annual nation-wide Christian youth meeting there. Then Jeff gave us the official tour around Ft. Portal town including the meat market – which is always fun to take visitors through…you never know what kind of animal they might be slaughtering. This time it was a goat…I think.

Kinley Cash making moves on a local goat but not the same goat that we later saw in the market.....

Pictures from Camp Saka.

The church at Ft. Portal meets in a circus-like tent, with an oversized coffin serving as a baptistery. I so enjoy visiting churches and meeting other Christians throughout East Africa. I wish I could do this all the time.

After Ft. Portal, we headed to Jinja. In Jinja, Andrew, Shannon, and I joined up with 25 other travelers and rafted down the Nile River. My second time to raft the Nile – still amazing. During one rapid, (a class 5) Andrew mysteriously fell out of the boat and I lost a contact. But somehow – I found the contact still clinging to my life-vest and with Shannon’s help, I put that unsterilized - Nile River washed - contact back in my eye. (I know, I’m going to be blind..) Also with Shannon’s help, Andrew was able to get back in the boat.

That must have been all the fun these kids could stand – cause after rafting, A&S decided they missed their own boys too much and that they needed to leave early. Of course, I was heart-broken. I felt terrible for being jealous of my two precious nephews…but seriously, I hadn’t seen A&S for almost 10 months and they had been away from the kids for just 6 days….Andrew said that one day I would understand….but I understood right the what it is like to be one place and have your heart half way around the world….it really stinks. A&S wanted to be where their hearts were…back with their kids. Check – I get this. When I first got to Uganda…my body and heart were in different places…but after surviving 11 months of this…my heart began to grow here in Uganda. Now returning home will be a big transition and there is no doubt that a large portion of my heart will remain in Uganda. Again, I will have to fight through the separation of body and heart. Andrew - I may not have kids, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t understand.