28th June First week

Have had a great first week here in Uganda. Had the Monday off to recover. Doing all those flights one after the other is hard work. Managed to sleep on the flight from KL to Dubai and felt really good by the time I got to Dubai. Was going to take a night-time night and day flu tablet to help me sleep but by the time we left the ground I was a sleep. Had a headache in Dubai and found some panadol to buy. I think that was more because I was so tired. On the Monday I climbed up in the roof of the Grainger’s house as none of the lights in the living room area worked (apparently since they had been here). Traced the fault out to isolate two lights and left it at that. I have never seen such bad wiring in all my life. There are wires twisted together for joins and exposed and metal cable clips lying across phases. How the power ever works in this country I will never know. I have 2 hot water cylinders to look at yet.

Packed the car up and went to Lawero on Tuesday. Experienced my first night in the village. No worries just like staying down the farm sheds at home. We finished concreting the fence posts in on the Wednesday. On the Wednesday when we got up the living area outside was crawling in large red ants. We were fighting them with ash fire and a can of fly spray. (I lit the fly spray so it was more of a flame thrower and it seem to work well.) Deane was too scared to do it. We have a video of it so we might be able to get it home at some stage.
Heading back on Monday to start the wiring of the fences. We have to go to Kampala, load a truck with 66 rolls of barb wire and follow it out there it make sure it all gets there. Will be there till Thursday when we need to be back to pick up a team of 11 from the States.

Ryan (Shannon’s brothers friend who we picked up from the airport Thursday night) and I went down to Makono to get a bar made up for reeling the wire out this week. Deane and Sherrilyn went and to Paul's (One of the locals living with Shannon) school for parent interviews so they dropped us off down there and we got a Boda back.

We went and got tyres and rims for Shannon’s vehicle yesterday all day job. But there was a gas station there and I brought us all a drink 4 x 500ml bottles for 4000 shillings. Zach had spotted a place where you get 800 shillings for an empty so the drink cost 200 shilling ~18c NZ. So I decided to buy a crate. This gets better. They charged me 15900 shillings for 20 bottles. And 4000 shillings for the plastic crate. I keep the crate if Zach is right with the empty bottle price the coke has cost me nothing.

I am not going to buy a phone at this stage. Deane and I are going to be working together all the time so they have said I can use their phone whenever I want. So if you want to text me use that number.

The internet is working on my computer at this stage but the connection speed here is painfully slow. Yesterday morning was the best we had had at 2.3kb/s but most of the time it is 1-3b/s.

22nd June Last Flight

Sitting in Dubai airport waiting for my last 7hr flight. I slept for all but 2hrs of the flight from KL. Feeling a lot more awake now but got a headache. Brought some panadol to take hopefully feel a bit better after that.

Arrived in Entebbe to the Graingers waiting for me. Feels good to finally have arrived.

Arrived at the house with I job to look at already. The lights in the living area don't work. A quick look and decided to leave it till tomorrow as a search in the roof is required.

21st June Leaving Auckland

Got my extra 10kg of weight allocated to me by Malaysian airlines on Thursday but declined still by Emeritus as I wasn’t flying with them out of NZ. My travel agent has been working very hard this week to get it and it has been much appreciated. We packed my bag by the scales in the middle Auckland airport on Saturday morning hoping we will get the 10kgs from Emirates. So with a bag packed with 30kgs to KL and heading off to check in (either going to dump stuff and repack in KL or pay excess weight costs) we received an answer to prayer and the travel agent was on the phone to say the allowance had come through and I was able to take 30kgs all the way to Entebbe.
A quick good bye to Mum, Dad, Clinton, Amy, Raewyn, and Xiu had turned up at the airport as well to see Mum and Dad. I walked through customs and straight on to the plane. Repacking the bag had meant that we didn’t get much time to sit down and talk very much before I left.

17th June Back to LA

The girls were up at 9am ready to leave as planned the night before. Our room consisting of Phil Matt and myself were woken up by a phone call at 9:30am from the girls ringing from the front desk. They weren’t impressed. We continued to blame them that it was their fault for not sleeping as they wanted to leave later the night before. 11pm we were on the road. Hit another shopping mall on the way out of Palm Springs on the side of the freeway. Arriving in LA to visit Forest Lawn cemetery and the painting of the last supper and crucifiction. Wrong cemetery, there are 3 so we looked at the paintings of the history of America and independence. Then went on to the crucifiction and the last supper to find them closed.

Went to Universal studios, Hard Rock cafe, Hollywood on the Wednesday. Had a look at Venice beach on the Thursday before Raewyn and I flew home.

13th June Resolved

Went did some shopping at Ontario Mills shopping mail for 2 hours. Jeans were cheap. Bought 2 pairs for less than 1 pair at home. Shorts are however the opposite. Headed to Palm Springs to find our Hotel and arrive in 45oC temperatures. The first session started at 8pm so we decided after a short break to settle in we would go for a walk to find some tea, Pizza’s.
After tea we headed off to the conference to hear the first of 12 messages of the weekend. Rick Holland opened with the naming of resolved (Named after Jonathan Edwards) and 5 of his resolutions that he wrote describing Heaven and Hell. The weekend was a challenging time of teaching from the John MacArthur, C.J. Mahoney, Rick Holland, John Piper, and Steve Lawson. The weekend was full on with 2 messages between breakfast and lunch and two from 6pm. So a late lunch and 11pm dinner was the way of life for four days.
On the Saturday a few of us went up the tram way for a bit of sightseeing in the afternoon. The tram way climbs the mountain 8000 feet and takes 10mins. There is a change in 30oF from the bottom to the top so it was rather refreshing at the top as it was 48oC at the bottom in Palm Springs. Awesome views from the top, out over the desert and a pine forest on the other side. So called bush walk in concrete paths like a city pavement. If only the Americans knew what a bush walk was.
Some of us struggled to stay awake during the sessions as we were up at 7am to get to the first session in time to get seats at 8am. And not going to bed till midnight after getting tea when the last session finished at 10:30pm. Friday night Rudolf had us walking all over town in the wrong direction to the motel to look for a supermarket that would still be open at midnight. In the end some of us saw the light and decided to go back to the motel before we had to walk another city block away from the motel, we were already 4 blocks away. One block would be 4 times the size of the blocks in Hastings.
The Resolved conference is a great place for young people that are well based in their faith as well as ones that are not Christians. The gospel was preached at each session.

12th June Heading off to LA

Arriving in LAX to be met by Dirk a friend of Nigel & Serena Shailer’s. Who displayed a perfect example of servant hood to stringers. This is a very generous man who treated us to more than he ever needed. After cruising around LA for a few hours while waited for Rudolf’s plain to arrive 6 hours after ours (which was meant to arrive 1 hour before ours but was delayed in Auckland due to an air conditioning mall function). We Final headed up to our motel in Ontario at 6:30pm. All very tired as we had not slept very well on the plain. Some of us fell asleep watching the Lakers basketball game before we went and had tea at 9pm.