Tuesday, November 28, 2006

hello once again from kampala.
i have a prayer request. my visa runs out on thursday and i need to renew it. far reaching ministries, the NGO that runs the church, has gotten in trouble for requesting visas for people who aren't directly employed by them. since i am not directly employed by them but by calvary chapel kampala, they can't request a visa for me. calvary chapel is still in the process of becoming an NGO so technically they can't apply for one either, although their lawyer is looking into it. anyways, please pray that my visa (and one for my roommate nathan) gets sorted out.
thanks and God bless,
mike

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Hello once again.
I know, updating this once a week is a feeble excuse for a blog. But in my defense...Anyways, I was some extremely exciting news. Immaculate and I found a house. It's a two bedroom house with a kitchen, sitting room, bathroom, and two nice big bedrooms. We are quite excited about it. I move in on the first of December with one of the guys from the Bible College. Immaculate doesn't want me in there alone for a month. It's 300,000 Ugandan Shillings which equals about $175 Canadian.
Things are going great for the wedding. We have wedding meetings in December where people come and help organize the day plus also give money, which is a really cool tradition. We just have to wait another month and a bit and then the big day arrives. Also, things at the Bible College are going pretty swell as well. Tomorrow I teach another class, this one about witnessing to others. Anyways, I hope you all are having a good time and feel free to email me at mejneels@yahoo.ca

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Hi folks,
I thought I would just give you an update here in Uganda. Well, since we have power on a day that we aren't supposed to, I'm very thankful this morning. Also, I found out yesterday that a friend of Immaculate, who lives in London, has pledged 150 Pounds for our wedding. No, not pounds of food or pounds of soda (pop) or pounds of anything else. For those of you who aren't familiar with the British system of money, the Pound is their equivilent of our dollar, except it's worth about twice as much. It comes out to 516,644 Ugandan Shillings. We are very thankful for that. THis is one tradition that North America should adopt. People get offended if you don't include them in raising funds. Oh, and by the way, the groom's family is supposed to be responsible for the wedding although that's only the official responsibility. Everyone gets together and pitches in to help. It sure helps Immaculate and me out. We paid for about 3/4 of the wedding and now others want to pay the rest. Anyways, I'm getting ready for a busy day. At noon I have to lead a class for an hour, then I have remand centre until 5pm and then a church service until 8pm so I'll be quite busy today.

Saturday, November 11, 2006

Greetings once again,
I know. It comes as quite a shock that this blog has been updated twice in the same week. Amist shame and consternation, I am updating this once again. So anyways, I'll give you an update on the week that was starting with Monday. You already have the crazy story of Sunday.

Monday
Let's see. On Monday nothing much happened. It is my day off so I went to visit Immaculate.

Tuesday
On Tuesday I woke up and started working on my Koinonia class. I was supposed to teach on Friday but you shall find out later why that didn't happen. I then went to get passport photos taken because I have to get my visa extended here and they need the photos. They actually turned out pretty good and were finished in two minutes. Then I went to Immaculates for the afternoon.

Wednesday
Wednesday was a super busy day. I went to church at noon for Koinonia. I found out that since the class before us went thirty minutes late, we cancelled the class and pushed my Friday class to next Wednesday. I also went to the Remand Home and talked about the feeding of the 5000. Peter and I then went to church. It only took us an hour to go the distance it usually takes 15 minutes. Not bad. We got to church a half hour late, just in time for the preaching. I was home at 9PM and then power came back so I took advantage of that and updated my blog.

Since I am running out of time here, I shall give the second half of the week some other time. For mejneels.blogspot.com, I'm Mike Neels, telling you to have a great day.

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Hello again,
Sorry about the non-posting trend that seems to be going around this blog. I seriously posted on Sunday but apparently it didn't post. So anyways, here's my Sunday story.

So after church on Sunday, Immaculate tells me that her family is going to visit their sister in boarding school. Apparently these visitation days happen like once or twice a semester, so it's a pretty big deal. We cleared our afternoon schedule and pushed our marriage counselling to 6pm. Then we headed over to her place to join up with her sisters. At exactly 1:24 PM we left. I know, it's alittle strange that I remember the exact time but things like this happen. Anyways, we're nicely driving along and bracing ourselves for the hour and a half drive to Luwero, where the school is. Well, as we drive down the road there is this huge traffic jam. I mean, it went on for a long time and we were just sitting there with the engine off. So we decided to turn around and try a different ruite. Same thing. It took us 2 hours to travel 1KM. The road was flooded from all the rain and there was only one lane open for both sides of the road. Well, we got to the school at 5 PM, a mere three and a half hours after leaving. As we left (at 5:30 PM) Immaculate and I decided to cancel our marriage counselling. We just couldn't fathom driving back home in an hour. So Jackie, Immaculate's oldest sister, decided to take the back roads to Kampala since it would be faster. Well, as we were driving along on this tiny dirt path in the middle of nowhere. and i mean nowhere. There wasn't even any electricity running to the town we went to. We saw these men with sticks or guns (it was full moon) stopping the car ahead of us. We were miles away from the nearest village and what exactly were these thugs doing anyways? So this one started walking towards us and we thought the best move would be to start backing the car up. Visions of running through the bush with only our underwear or less while the thieves drove off with the car flashed through our minds. Nearer and nearer and nearer the man came. Then, as all seemed to be lost...he walked past us. So we decided to roll down the window and ask him what was up. Turns out, the road ahead was washed away from a flood and the men were just warning the other driver. We braved the road and drove on through the water. We arrived in Kampala at 8:30 PM, only 3 hours after starting off on our adventure. All in all, it was an exciting adventuresome day. Plus I learned that my imagination can run pretty wild when it wants to.