Hi All,

We have been in Uganda for ONE year!!! Can you believe it!? In one sense, it feels like we just got here and in another it feels like way more than one year (Travis halfway jokes that one year here aged him 5 years). Time sure is a funny thing, especially when your sense of time is thrown off by not having your normal four seasons, national holidays, and other annual time markers. Rainy season is about halfway over. The sorghum, maize, and sunflower fields have grown tall. The grasses and bushes have grown tall and thick too, everything is green! In some ways, it feels like summer does in the Northeast, with cool mornings and hot afternoons.

When people ask how our first year has been or what we have learned in it, I wonder how to best answer that question. Should I tell them of the bad? …. The illnesses and exhaustion, a really sick child requiring us to travel for hospital care and IV medication, the snakes, the constant poverty/illness/death around us, the sin that seems so prevalent and dark here, even the sin in our own hearts, OR Should I tell of the good? …. The friendships, the new members at church, the faithful believers, the sick who were healed, the beautiful view of the mountains. But what I think often about and want to share most with you over this last year is not the good, or the bad, or even the ugly… it is the one truth that has carried us through all of it. It is that the Lord is faithful. He has been present in our fear, our joy, our grief, our sin, our love, our learning, and all the rest of it too. He is using it for His glory and our good. The work we do is not in vain for it is not ours, but His and He is doing it – in us, through us, despite us… What a blessing to have a faithful God and to clearly see it on display in this past year. We hope you have seen it too!

Visitors!

Our Pastor and his wife were able to join us shortly after you received our last newsletter. What a sweet gift to hug them and show them our life here. It was not all sunshine and butterflies though.. I (Bonnie) had malaria shortly before they got here which was our first experience with it .. and of course Uganda has the worst kind of malaria. Recovering from that and then having a stomach virus go through half our family definitely was not what I envisioned for their visit. Thankfully, we were still able to have a sweet time together and even got to take them to see some wildlife! It was definitely a hard goodbye, and we miss them and our home church a great deal.

We had a VBS team come from the States. They were a fun group who worked hard alongside the local church and our team to share the Gospel with 3 local schools, totalling around 810 children. We were able to go the first week to the closest school and then stayed back with whatever mission children wanted to stay at the mission for the second and third weeks. It was a blessing to see the Lord’s church from all over at work together for His Kingdom. They stayed for 3.5 weeks and it was a wonderful time but also an exhausting time.

Beatrix, the young lady who signed up for a year with us, finished her year and left alongside the VBS team. She was an incredible friend, helper, and joy to our family over this year. She showed up and cared for us so well – when a kid was sick, she would come over early so we could take them to the clinic while she watched the others, when I was sick, she would drop off a meal and pop over to take the kiddos outside so Travis could get other stuff done, she read numerous books, was “slain” as a monster/dragon in many a game, prepped and cooked meals with us, did my dishes more times than I can count (a mom’s dream come true!) and encouraged me through the ups and downs of our first year and all the chaos that it entailed. We definitely felt the ache of that goodbye … as our three-year-old said, “Mama, our family is missing.” We are so thankful for her time here and that she made it safely back to the States with her family. Pray for her as she figures out what the Lord would have her do next!

The ‘calm’ after the ‘storm’?

When all the visitors left, we were the only family on the mission for a few days and it was really quiet. Thankfully, we are somewhat used to that – it felt like when summer camp ends and it goes from so many people to almost none. It was an opportune time to reset as a family. However, it feels different when you are the only missionaries/foreigners in a certain location. Can you imagine what it must have been like for missionaries going off to lands unknown and being completely on their own weeks, sometimes months away from the next closest believer, missionary, or expat- with hardly any communication ability at all?? That would take some true courage).

In Christ,

The Emmett’s

Praises

We have so many things to be thankful for in this newsletter. The Lord is good!

  • We survived our first year!!

  • The Lord’s faithfulness to us
  • The Church gained 6 new members and a baby was baptized in July
  • Many children and their teachers heard the Gospel in 3 local schools
  • 1st Grade has started for the twins!

Prayers

  • Health, safety, and good rest for all

  • Wisdom and patience in parenting

  • Salvation for our children
  • Nakaale Presbyterian Church (Karamoja) & All Nations Presbyterian Church (Mbale) as they continue to gain independence – that they would have all wisdom and knowledge and remain faithful to God, His Word, and His people.
  • Locero, one of our ministry men, had his shop broken into and a good deal of money stolen while only his children were at the shop. Pray that they would find the group who did it, his money would be restored, and his children wouldn’t be fearful.