Kigali to Kampala to Jinja and Back

I realize that it was been way too long since I last updated my blog. My life is a pretty steady flow: Wake up, go to school, go to student council, jazz band, drama, or Bible study (depending on the day), come home and eat dinner, do homework, go to bed, do it all again the next day. As you can see that does not leave a whole lot of free time.  I do have some exiting things to share and so I have created some time for me to sit down and update my blog.

Let me start with this: God is doing something big in my life. He is changing me. I’m still Grace Gaskill, but I’m maturing and growing and changing spiritually. I’m so glad that God called my family and me to Rwanda and life here is great, but it’s not always easy. I’ve actually been struggling lately, and I’ve had some rough days. Here’s the deal: I have been praying for about three months now that God will show me His plan for my life. I understand that I will not be truly happy and filled up unless I’m living in His will. And that’s exactly what I want. I want to go wherever and do whatever God wants me to do. When I first started praying that prayer, I expected God to tell me what He wanted…right away. I did not count on it taking this long and I did not plan on going through this whole process. Right now, I’m not ready to hear His plan. That’s why He hasn’t told me yet. I have to learn more things and go through more things in order to be ready for The Plan. He has taken away all of my desires and my own plans for life after high school. As of right now, I’ll be staying at home doing nothing for the rest of my life because I don’t have a single plan or desire. I have had some very hard days. I’ve felt like giving up, in fact, I’ve felt like I had reached rock bottom. Here I am, giving my whole life over to God and I find myself feeling alone and not having a single plan. But, God is teaching me to rely entirely on Him. If He takes everything that I know away from me, is life still good? The answer is yes. God has given me countless verses of encouragement. Jeremiah 29:11-13. Proverbs 16:3 and 16:9. Matthew 6:25-34. James 1:12. Hebrews 13:5-6…God has also given me Sara Groves. Sara Groves is a wonderful, Christian artist who has written some truly fantastic music. Her lyrics are great, and there are several songs that I feel were written specifically for me, they have been so encouraging to me. Particularly this one phrase in her song, Song for my Sons, “I can’t say that life will always go on like it should, but I can say that God is always good.” My life is definitely not going on like it should, or going on the way I wanted it to go, but God is still good. Right now I’m “in the waiting”. I’m waiting on God to tell me what He wants from me. I’m open to anything. I know that He will adequately prepare me for whatever He has in mind for my life. I realize that the roads will not always be easy…but He will be with me every step of the way.

Now, for a change of topic…My family and I just spent this past week in Uganda! We had the week off from school and so we decided to take advantage of the holiday and see a little bit more of Africa. It was quite a trip. We left Kigali on Monday morning and we arrived back into town last night. We experienced some pretty wild things during our trip, starting with the bus ride…

Yes, we rode on a bus all the way from Kigali, Rwanda to Kampala, Uganda. (Kampala is the capital of Uganda.) The bus ride was terrible. That’s really the only way to describe it. Imagine spending ten hours in a bus driving down windy, bumpy African roads. I thought I knew what it was like to be car sick, but let me tell you…Also, the bus driver played very loud music. Sometimes rap, sometimes pop, sometimes Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers, but whatever it was, it was loud. So loud that I could not even carry on a conversation with my mom, who was sitting right next to me. I couldn’t read, I couldn’t talk, all I could do was sleep and day dream. Like I said, it was terrible.

We arrived in Kampala after around 8:30 on Monday night. Kampala is much different than Kigali. Kampala is not a safe as Kigali and it’s not as orderly and clean. Arriving in a foreign city, at night, and being the only mzungus (white people) at the bus station was probably not the smartest idea, but thankfully a friend in Kigali had arranged for a driver to pick us up from the bus station and take us to our guest house. If Ivan (the driver) had not come to pick us up, I have no idea what we would have done.

Kampala was not our final destination though. We were headed to Jinja, Uganda to see some good friends from our home church in North Carolina, the Greers. Technically we were headed to Good Shephard’s Fold Orphanage (GSF) which is located in the middle of a sugar cane field just outside of Jinja. We woke up on Tuesday morning and a driver came to pick us up and take us to GSF. It was about an hour and a half drive, and it was much smoother and quieter than the bus ride.  We spent the rest of Tuesday and all of Wednesday and Thursday at GSF. It was so great to see the Greers, to play with all of those sweet kids, and enjoy a change of pace. Life is much slower paced at GSF, especially compared to our life in Kigali.  Many church groups come to visit the Greers and help out at the orphanage. Our time with the GSF was a little different than most. For starters, we were already used to bumpy dirt roads, the food, sleeping under a mosquito net…etc. We did not really have to adapt ourselves too much that way.  Also, we came for more of a vacation. Yes, we did help out with a few projects and we played with the kids, but it wasn’t like we were there on a short-term mission trip. The Greers took us into Jinja on Thursday afternoon. We went on a little boat ride on the Nile River and saw some exotic birds and lizards. Chances are there were other reptiles but I, thankfully, did not see any of them.  After the boat ride, we went into downtown Jinja. There were so many things to do and see on that one little road in Jinja, it was so cool.

Our driver came to get us on Friday morning and take us back to Kampala. Kampala is a little bit more westernized than Kigali. There are more places to shop, and you can find things in Kampala that you can’t find in Kigali. We took advantage of the cheaper prices and did some shopping on Friday and Saturday. Oreos are one thing that you can find in Kampala. Let me tell you…I was one happy girl when I had my first double-stuffed Oreo in three months. You begin to appreciate little things like Oreos when you don’t have access to them anymore. There are several large shopping malls in Kampala too. I’m pretty sure we experienced culture shock when we walked into Game (a store that is similar to Wal-mart). It was crazy! The lighting, the aisles, all the stuff! I felt like I’d been out in a village for three years, but really I’ve been living in a city for three months. Another thing that we did while in Kampala is go bowling. Yes, Kampala has a real bowling alley. It was pretty fun. Kampala is much more polluted and disorganized than Kigali. Traffic is bad…very bad. Often times, in the States, people will say something like “That guy needs to get off the road; he doesn't know how to drive.” People in the States have no idea what a bad driver is. Driving in Kampala is quite the experience. It’s similar to driving in Kigali, but Kigali is not as crowded as Kampala. Also, the boda-bodas are another reason why the streets are so crowded. Boda-bodas are the equivalent to motos which are the equivalent to motorcycle taxis. Boda-bodas are much more dangerous than motos though, because you don’t wear a helmet and you can put four or five people on one boda-boda. (Remember, it’s just the size of a regular motorcycle.)

Instead of taking the bus back to Kigali on Sunday, we hired a driver. The drive was still long, and not always the smoothest, but it was much, much nicer.  On this trip, I crossed a boarder, I crossed the equator and I crossed the Nile (a small section of it, anyways). It was a great trip, but I am so glad to be back in Kigali.

Well, that’s our trip in a nutshell. We go back to school tomorrow, so the pace will pick up again. I’ll do my best to keep you updated with our life here. Thank you for your support and thank you for your prayers. We miss everyone back home, but we love life here in Kigali.