Ugandan Wedding Celebration- Traditional Ceremony

There are three styles of marriage in Uganda: Traditional, Court and Church. We were blessed this trip to witness a Traditional ceremony and Church ceremony. I will blog about the church ceremony another evening... 

During the Traditional ceremony there is a tent for the groom’s family, the bride’s family, and friends. There is an order and tradition for everything from the time of arrival, to drinking soda, to the music, and dance. Some of the rituals include: a dowry for the bride’s parents, a war of words, and a parade of eligible women.

We waited for 2 hours in the rain for the ceremony to start.
I was so thankful  for Michael to keep me warm.  

The dowry for the bride’s family includes: cows, goats, chickens, rice, beans, fruits, soda, small gifts, vegetables, and money.

The line of gifts went on and on.
Family members and friends provide the gifts. We gave a bag of rice and three chickens. This helps the family have a reception after the church wedding.  

The war of words is between members of each family to make sure that everything has been thought-out and will work well.

The men did the talking and sat on couches in the front of the tents.
They spoke in the local language and some of the guests translated poignant or humors remarks for us.   

The parade of eligible women starts with younger girls, and then the next two groups get a little bit older. When they come out the groom says no “the one” is not there. Then finally when the bride is in the last group he “chooses” her and gives her a necklace. Then the celebration continues.

This is the youngest group. Most of these girls are from Rock Foundation School. 

The second group also included many students, as well as many of the bridesmaids for the church ceremony. 

Woohoo! The "one" is in this group!!

The groom’s face was full of joy. It was a blessing to be a part of such a special occasion. 

His face was priceless! Pure joy!!

We always feel like family when we are in Masindi. That day was no exception. 


Look for a blog next week about the church ceremony.

The Freedom You Find When You Leave Things Behind

 

We are home safe and sound and BLESSED!

During our July mission trip, we tried to have a few morning devotionals as a group. One morning our group leader played the song “Things We Leave Behind” by Michael Card. I will share some of the lyrics with you, but encourage you to listen to the song by clicking on this link.

The chorus goes as follows:

Every heart needs to be set free,
from possessions
that hold it so tight
'Cause freedom's not found in the things that we own,
It's the power
to do what is right

[…]

We can't imagine the freedom we find
from the things we leave behind

Well, I don’t think the “things” we found in Africa can be contained in one blog post… however; Nick and I have decided that we don’t want these “findings” to wane as we return to our “American” life. So, August 1^st we started our personal “experimental mutiny against excess”, inspired by my cousins Dawn and Derek Zitko who lent us the book “7” by Jen Hatmaker.

“7 is the true story of how Jen took seven months, identified seven areas of excess, and made seven simple choices to fight back against the modern-day diseases of greed, materialism, and overindulgence.” (http://jenhatmaker.com/)

We are going to take the next seven months and seven areas of excess… but make ten simple choices to continue to be set free from possessions that hold us so tight..

“'Cause when we say 'no'
to the things of the world
we open our hearts
to the love of the Lord and
it's hard to imagine
the freedom we find
from the things we leave behind”

This month we are “leaving behind” all items of clothing aside from the 10 simple choices we made. Here are the ten clothing items I will be wearing for the next 30 days.

For those of you who “traveled” with us on our July Mission Trip to Masindi, Uganda – the trip doesn’t stop here. Now we have the challenge of bringing two different lifestyles and cultures together- keeping God in the center!  

Working in Uganda

While on our mission trip, we have completed many projects! 

Building a veranda around the new baby and top class (preschool and kindergarten) buildings-

Check out one of the local mason workers that was leading the project. He doesn't have any shoes on! Talk about tough!

Planting bushes in the courtyard-

Oopsies! Forgot my gloves!
(At least it was night and I couldn't see how messy we were.)

Adding fascia boards on the buildings, so that gutters may be added-

Nick got the brilliant idea of painting the boards, one evening, before they were hung. Too bad they  had never done it that way and went for the extra (unpainted) boards first.... But, in the end, all the boards were used and all of them were painted one way or another.  

Putting in two 5,000 liter tanks in to catch the rain water from the gutters-

Just after the "boys" tank was set up on the pad.

Passing out shoes and dresses to over 40 students-

Eleven girls, who were needing clothes the most, modeled the dresses very well.
I wish you could have seen their smiles as we dressed them! 

Distributing over 200 pairs of reading glasses to people in the community-

( I may have to learn how to add pictures later... unfortunately I was at another school handing out dresses when this was happening. Just imagine many parents and community members putting on reading glasses and looking at a beautiful book as if it were the first time.) 

We have supported all of the projects, but the credit should go to the hard working people of Uganda; without them, none of this would be made possible. Although they may not move quickly or do things on time (like in the US) – they definitely work very hard! 

I feel like I am forgetting something, but I will be sure to fill that in once I am able to pour over our thousands of pictures and really reflect on what God has been doing while we have been His hands and feet in Uganda. 

WOW! God has really blessed the work that has been done. I hope that He is blessing your work as well. 

Go Where There is No Path

One of my second grade students, from the 2011-2012 school year, shared a leadership quote from her dad that says, “Go where there is no path”. I couldn’t help but think of that as we traveled over 12 miles through “the bush” this week enjoying the countryside and wildlife.

Enjoy some of our pictures…

These women put our walks through the hills to shame.
They are carrying bags of charcoal on their heads!

Our shoes were already pretty wet becuase it had rained the night before, but none of us really wanted to walk through the streams. Be careful Liz!
 (David is viedo taping- just incase you fall in.) 

One of the many baboons we got to see and "play" with. He would jump and shake the branches and hit the tree limbs trying to scare us. Then we would jump around and encourage the behavior.

This is David... he is one of the local guys we met that kindly volunteered to lead us on this adventure!

Check out these houses! I just can't get over the way they build their homes!
 (and I love that so many people plant crops on the rest of the land they have - no growing or cutting the grass here)

We were still in the middle of nowhere when we saw a group of men making bricks. They were very welcoming and showed us all the hard work they put in to make bricks. We decided that we might look like this guy too, if we did the kind of work he does everyday!

Well, that is an abbreviated version of our adventure.
Hope you enjoyed it!

A Trip to the Clinic

Thanks to the Chardon Rotary group, there is a fund for the health of the students. While spending time with the children we started to notice that many of them had a common head fungus, so we decided to collect children from the four youngest classes and take a trip to the clinic.

We went classroom to classroom to collect the students that looked like they may need some treatment. Then we made one big line of 31 and headed into town.

The new clinic in Masindi has been built and sponsored by a group from South Carolina. They will stay for three years and then hand everything over to the people of Masindi. Currently, there are three Americans helping.

When we arrived, we had the children sit in three benches in the waiting area.  The nurses weighed each student and took their temperature. Then they would move to the benches outside the doctor’s office. I would take them one by one into a room to be checked by the doctor. He was very kind and worked well with the children. I have found that many of the men are very nurturing here- maybe even more than the women.

Once the students were checked we took their paper to the cashier and they moved to one more set of benches where they would wait for their medicine- topical or oral or both, depending on the severity of their infection.

The last little boy I took to the Dr. had boils on his legs. His treatment was done by nurses in another room. He was about 5 years old and cried and cried – I felt terrible. Finally, when they finished I had him get on my back so I could carry him home.

Here the women carry their young children on their backs with a wrap around their waist. When I invited the little boy on my back he didn’t wrap his arms around my neck like children would in the states. He settled in and we took the mile walk back to school together. It’s an experience I won’t forget- and now I can be thankful ,when I take our future children to the doctor, that there aren’t thirty-one children along.