Monday, May 31, 2010

A long awaited update

I received and email from Lisa! It was so good to hear from her!

This was her request: "Please edit this email and make it into a nice story and put it up on the blog".

I hope this blog makes some sense. Basically I took her email and my comments are in the blue font and links for more information are in the green.

OK mom, here is my email (yes, I will add here that I have been threatening her to send me some piece of information that lets me know she is alive). We have been incredibly busy. The ICC (International Criminal Court- this is like the heads of state and many other very important people) is in Uganda trying to decide how to bring justice to the whole LRA (Lords Resistance Army)/Kony situation (Joesph Kony is the leader of the LRA - still at large and responsible for horrible atrosities against the Ugandan people). We have been busy preparing for them to come to Obalanga for the past two days (when we were in Uganda last year with the group from Plymouth Heights CRC, we spent some time at the site of the mass graves. Tim and Angies newsletter did a beautiful job explaining why this was such important work. A link for this newsletter is listed below). That means we had to clean the mass graves (friday all day lots of work) and then go out on Saturday to spend time with the CAAF children (Children Affected by Armed Forces) and help Fida (a nongovernmental organization (NGO) that provides assistance in Uganda) and IT (International Teams is the organization that Lisa and Steph went through to go to Uganda) put on a presentation for the 12 delegates that came to the village. We were out from 7AM until 10PM both days. About 3 hours ago, Lawrence (a local Fida worker) and Beckie (another long term missionary) left for Kampala to work at a display for the whole ICC group (we got to spend a lot of time putting the display together). Just a couple of minutes ago, Tim got a call out of the blue that he got a spot to speak in front of the whole ICC group. He and Francis (Francis is a child soldier who we met while in Soroti. He spent a couple of hours one morning in a very hushed voice telling us his story and showing us the scars of his capture, service, and eventual escape from the LRA. His story was hard to listen to because our daughter Kari and Francis were the same age, yet their lives were so different) will be leaving for Kampala at 4AM -granted we can find Francis. It has basically been crazy.

Overall we just needed a day to relax - which is today. I am using someone elses internet because Tim and Angie's has been down since we got here. I had a nice blog all prepared, but it is on my computer and I cannot get internet on my computer. The blog will not open with the limited speed I am able to get from this Ugandan Satalite Internet.

She then went on and gave me some information about how we might be able to talk on the phone.

I hope this makes some sense - we ache for you to understand the struggles of the people in Uganda and our passion for their well-being.

For those of you who wondered what Lisa and Steph would be doing this summer in Uganda, this gives you a brief idea of how things can change. They went there with the attitude that they were going to serve God and the people of Uganda in whatever way God would lead. This week it was by assisting with the ICC visit.

Thanks for your continued prayers and support. Hopefully the internet will be up and running and you can hear it from Lisa and Steph themselves.

Jane Brouwer

For a link to the Sliedrechts newsletter click on the link provided below. Once you get to that site, click on the August 2009 newsletter listed on the left hand column, you will then need to double click on the icon for the newsletter. Tim and Angies newsletter.

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