I hope you are all having a very good Sunday. Today at church we had a visiting pastor from Sudan speak. He spoke about Nehemiah's discouragements while building the walls of Jerusalem and how Satan can discourage us in the same way. Like, Tobia saying that if a fox walked on the wall it would fall down, which is a huge exageration. Sometimes Satan can make small problems appear big so we think all is lost, instead of going to God with our problem. It was a really good message. Anyways, things here are going great. I haven't done much this week because the kids had the week off. I just scanned their schoolwork onto my computer and sent it back to the distance education school. My week has been kinda boring, so I'm excited about teaching again tomorrow. Oh yeah, just when I started to get used to the time difference, you guys had to go and end daylight savings. Uganda doesn't turn the clock back so now I'm 8 hours ahead of Eastern Time and 11 hours ahead of Pacific time. So if I appear a little confused on msn or whatnot, please don't hold it against me. Well, I wish you a very blessed Sunday and week. I miss you guys.

Hello everyone. Things are kind of getting back to normal after the vacation. Not that I've returned to teaching yet. The kids have the rest of this week off too. I, on the other hand, am not so fortunate. Apparently there was some fine print in my contract that involved scanning the kids' work onto my computer and emailing it to their teachers. It's really fine print too, because I am supposed to be on vacation for the entire two weeks. But since I can't go shopping, or watch football, or go to Jay's house and chill in the hot tub, I decided I might as well get to work on the scanning. I didn't realize how much was involved. Actually, not much is involved at all, except time. It only took 7.5 hours to scan the work. So happily, I can reassure all of you that the scanning is totally finished and I only had to go through one day of intense boredom. By the end of yesterday I was a complete wreck. You know the feeling when you're cooped up for a long time (say having to go to a 3 hour Canadian history class)? Well, that's what I fealt like. I was quite hyper and spaced out at the same time. Good thing someone called me up to play sqaush. It let me vent my energy constuctive instead of annoying my room mate by running around and hitting things. So today I kind of relaxed. I woke up at 8:30 (normally sleeping in only qualifies if it's past 9:30, but seeing as it's sunny at 6:30 here, I'm qualifying 8:30 as sleeping in). And then I didn't do much. I scanned some stuff for about an hour and I started reading a book. Well, I hope you all have a fantastic Thursday.

I'm back. After a lengthy (8 days) trip with the Paps, I am once again updating my blog. I found out the Thursday before they left that they were going on vacation the following Monday. They asked if I wanted to go with, and I decided...why not. So we left Monday morning at 6:30 AM and drove to the southwestern section of Uganda. We stayed at Bushara Island, which is located on Lake Bunyonyi, close to Rwanda. The island has no electricity and no running water, so they heated water in buckets and we used that for showers. For food, we ate at a restaurant on the island, which got quite menotanous after a while. The food was good enough, but after a week of the same things, it got old. We stayed in army tents, which had two double beds set up in each tent. I slept with two of the kids in my tent, which turned out to be quite the parental practice. One child wet the bed in the middle of the night and I had to find a solution to that problem while half asleep and disconbobuled. For those of you who have seen me when I just get up, you know what I'm talking about. I decided to put two towels over the wet spot (they weren't our towels anyways) and one child could still sleep in the bed. The other came into my bed and I found out that he is an active sleeper. I'm pretty sure that he kept me awake at least an hour while tossing and turning, all the while sleeping. The next part of our trip was totally awesome. We went to Queen Elizabeth Park in the far west part of Uganda. There I saw a lion, elephants, water buffalo, hippos, crocodiles, exotic birds, monkeys, ugangan kobs (kinda like gazelles), water bucs (kinda like elk), and a bunch more. Unfortunately, I didn't get many pictures on my digital camera, because it doesn't have zoom. However, Gerrit took a bunch of pictures with his camera that has 300x zoom, so I'll be able to get doubles from him. It was so awesome. Once we saw two baby elephants playing (by pushing each other) and then the mother elephant saw us. She wagged her ears and started trumpeting and coming towards us. She stopped about 5 metres away so we have some great pictures of that. It really made me stand in awe of God's creation. Anyways, on the way home, we saw some zebras grazing beside the road (they were in a different game park) so that also was really cool. The coolest part of the trip was seeing a hippo and her young eating grass in our cabin's backyard. We didn't get any pictures because hippos are extrememly dangerous when they are out of water, and the camera's flash didn't work properly. So to any of you with a lot of money, I do recommend that you travel to Africa and go on a safari (you can also visit me too, which would be really awesome).

Calling all Canadians. There is a crisis in Kampala, Uganda. An urgent call for help has gone out from one of your countrymen. The last of the can of Tim Hortons coffee grounds has been used. This is an urgent call for help. What will I do without my Timmies? Tomorrow will be the first day in over a year that I won't drink Timmies coffee. I'm pretty sure that I have an uphill battle ahead of me. The withdrawels are starting already. I'm counting down the days until I can have a large double-double again. And on the same note, I ate my last droppy last night. So no more Canadian coffee and no more Dutch licorice. So now the real fun starts. Oh yeah, and I found out today that next week there won't be school. We'll be in Queen Elizabeth Park, viewing the animals and such. Should be a lot of fun.

Greetings and salutations. How are things going out in the West? Things in Africa are doing good...except that I have been feeling under the weather lately. Ok, so I feel under the weather everday (everybody does, if they aren't in space) but I have been sick for the past few days. Sore throat, stuffy nose, head ache, stuff like that. I'm feeling much better now though. Those poor kids yesterday. I had about as much patience as Manny the Mammoth has with Sid the Sloth. I was literally running on Advil. I slept about 12 hours out of 24, and now I feel much better. Well happy belated Thanksgiving to all you Canadians out there and I hope your meal was terrific. Could you send me some? Thanks.

Hi everyone. I hope you have a good Sunday today. Church today was great. It's amazing that even though we worship God at different times and in different ways, He is the same God and delights to hear our worship. Today Pastor Brian spoke on Revelation 15 and 16. One of the main parts of the sermon was about the people singing the song of Moses in Revelation 15:3-4 " Great and marvelous are Your works, Lord God Almoghty! Just and true are Your ways, O King of the saints! Who shall not fear You, O Lord, and glorify Your name? For You alone are holy. For all nations shall come and worship before You, For Your judgements have been manifested." He spoke about how in this song, there is not one single me or mine. True worship is focusing on what God has done and who He is, not what I can get out of worship. We are not Christians to get things, even though God freely gives to us, we are Christians to glorify and praise God. Later on in the day, I played football with some people before our evening fellowship. That was pretty fun. The evening fellowship consisted on people giving their testimonies, which was really encouraging. It's good to hear how God has worked in the lives of other people, and it's amazing to think about how many people out there who aren't associeted with the Reformed view and yet who are serving God and His kingdom. Well I hope you all have a wonderful Sunday.

Hello everybody. As you probably can tell from the picture, I went flying today with Gerrit. He was doing a charter flight to Fort Portal (about 1 hour flight due west) and there was an extra seat available. There is some beautiful scenery out in that section of the country. The Rwenzori Mountains start close to the town. This picture, however, is of Kajjensi. This is where MAF has their airstrip. I thought this picture would be helpful for you to see a typical Ugandan town. There is one paved road through town and the rest of the roads are dirt. The buildings are kind of scattered around, so it looks like there is not much organization to the city. Anyway, on the way home, Gerrit decided to try some steep turns because there weren't any passengers (besides me and the co-pilot). He did a 60 degree bank, which puts 2 g's of force on your body. I tried to lift my arm and it was quite difficult. Then he put a pen on the dashboard and went into a steep climb and right away went into a steep descent. It was pretty cool because we got lifted off of our seats and the pen was "floating" in the air. Today I also made chicken noodle soup for tomorrow. It tastes great. So I hope you have a wonderful Saturday.

Good Friday to you all. Well, another teaching week is past. I can't believe that I've already been here for a month. It's crazy, the time is passing so fast. So the last few days I haven't done anything new. Unless you count scanning the finished school work and sending it to the teachers in BC. I guess the teachers there need to see the information so emailing the info works the best. Last night I waited for three hours as I downloaded the right driver for the scanner. You sure appreciate high-speed internet after experiencing dial-up again. So today I'm at the ARA (recreation place) looking after the Pap kids. Well, I'm on the internet, they are swimming. Hopefully nobody needs my assistance while I relax in the shade.

Driving...what an experience. Today I got to drive for the first time since I got here, and yes, it was a standard. It was a great experience. Klazina took me to a relatively flat part of the city (and by no means was the road paved). So I actually drove the thing and shifted and everything. I didn't even stall it. OK that was a lie. I only stalled it...(cough) a couple (cough) times. In the end, I did manage to get us to our final destination. I'm going to blame my stalls on the fact that everything was opposite of what I am used to, the cars are on the wrong side of the road, the stick shift is on the wrong side of my body, the signals are where the window wipers are usually, and the list goes on. Oh well, maybe with a bit of practice I will be able to drive by myself, and nobody will need a neckbrace when they drive with me. Once can always hope.

Hello everyone. I hope you all have a blessed Sunday. Today, Pastor Brian's message was on Revelatin 14. It was really encouraging. He was talking about the 144,000 who are sealed and he applied it to our lives, how we are sealed by the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 1:13,14). Then he talked about how merciful God is (Rev 14:6,7) because He warns the nations about coming judgement. He finished off the message talking about the judgement of God and how Jesus Christ endured the wine press of God's wrath (Rev. 14:17-20) for those who believe on Him and trust Him. It was a really good message. The singing was really good too, although something interesting happened. Two groups performed for us singing hip-hop...which is quite similar to rap. You probably thought that rap was only prevelant in North America, but now I know where it comes from, Africa. It's all over the radio stations here. Anyways, some people have asked me what boda bodas are. Well, they are mopeds used in the public transit system here. It's the fastest way to get somewhere because traffic jams don't really affect them, although riding on one could be endangering your life.