Back to Kampala, Sorry for Delay

Okay so here is what happened... Uganda is having their elections for President next year and right now they have just finalized their final 8 candidates for election.  That finalization of their primaries sparked an impromptu meeting of all high courts to discuss potential fall-out and changes.  That made all court hearings on Tuesday (our scheduled day) get delayed until Wednesday.  To make the plot thicken our assigned judge is in her late sixties and has had a stroke in recent years that has left her with debilitating right side paralysis.  The way their system works is every four to six years a judge is rotated from each division in which they served within their court system.  Our judge has been serving in the "Family Court" division for almost twenty years because of her stroke and proximity to care!  If you ca believe this, after twenty years they have decided to re-assign her to another division of court starting November 1st.  What that means is that she was unwilling to see new cases within her court that would require her to conduct work beyond that Nov. 1st deadline.  Now to the God part... She initially refused to see our case and wanted us to be re-assigned to another judge which meant to us another two to three weeks, just for a court date (another 3 weeks of paperwork after that!).  Our lawyer, a christian man in his early forties with a son about Joshua's age, pleaded with the judge to hear and rule on our case without re-assignment.  His pleading work and not only did she hear and rule on our case on Wednesday, she gave her short ruling before 5 pm that day (usually takes 3-7 days) and will give us her long ruling (usually another 7-14 days) by Monday November 1st!!!  After the short ruling you are allowed to proceed with US Embassy paperwork for VISA (which we did Wed. afternoon) and begin requesting for a health physical (scheduled for Monday), passport pictures (done Wednesday) and ministry of gender letter (scheduled for next week).  All told God shortened this trip tremendously by re-assigning our judge and giving us Isaac as our attorney!  To celebrate we scheduled an impromptu safari to Queen Elizabeth National Park.  The downside was a 9 hour drive with 10 people in a mid 1980's caravan complete with crazy roads with pot-holes, 5 children and ants all over the seats (you do the math).  The park was amazing and we saw incredible amounts of cool animals that could kill and eat you if they wanted to just a few feet away from us (all on video for those interested).  There are too many stories to share of that adventure to spell them all out here (bats above doorway to room, beetles the size your hand, mongooses, chasing baboons, warthogs within two feet of our room).  We have most on video or pictures and can't wait to share them with you. 

Joshua has not missed a beat.  I mean this without exaggeration that this young man was made for our family.  He is gregarious, kind, out-going, fun loving, rolls with all the changes and is an endless source of smiles for all of us.  Blessed be the name of our Lord!!  More to share, but all is wonderful for a family of seven plus three in a hotel room in Kampala.

Today we went to church at Watoto.  I wish I had words to describe the spiritual experience we all had.  My chest was ready to explode from the Holy Spirit within.  All I could think of was when the Pharisees asked Jesus to quiet the crowd and He simply said, "If they were to be silenced, the stones would cry out."  Watoto church has 8 places of worship (churches) within the surrounding Uganda country.  Each church has two services on Saturday and five services on Sunday.  Each service has roughly one thousand people jammed into the building for worship.  That is 56,000 individual people each weekend.  It was nothing short of life changing.  They had a guest pastor from London who was incredible and inspiring.  We were all covered in sweat and tears from the service from all the dancing and singing and preaching.  The Holy Spirit is alive and well in Uganda!

Tomorrow we will take Joshua for his visa physical.  We are trying to secure a visit to the Watoto village for tomorrow afternoon and tour one of their facilities where they care for the orphans by sending them to school all the way through university.  At Watoto church today as we were worshipping we noticed that the woman who stayed at our house a couple of years ago, was one of the worship leaders on the stage singing.  We got to meet her again, coupled with hugs and tears and would you believe she remembered every one of our names and knew things about us and our church and home that I could not believe she could remember!  Our God is BIG!! and our planet is small.

We are trying to arrange a trip to the source of the Nile River and a trip to really cool waterfall!  More on this later.  I will post some pictures once I get them downloaded on the computer.  We can feel the presence of your prayers through the Holy Spirit, please do not relent until we get home!