Counting Down the Days!

Only 3 more days and we will be on a plane for the long trip to Uganda! After months of planning,  we will leave on July 20 to work with the Watoto Childcare Ministries (www.watoto.com) to help build villages for children who have been orphaned due to AIDS or war.

Our team includes two married couples, a mother-daughter duo, another teen, and other adults from South Salem Nazarene church who answered God's call to join this Work & Witness trip.  Our travel experience ranges from never having flown on a plane, to having visited more than a dozen countries. None of us has been to Uganda, but we are universally excited and nervous to be venturing so far from home to serve in God's name.

Here's the team photo we took in our custom Watoto t-shirts. We should be able to easily find each other in a crowded airport with these on - and make it fairly obvious we are traveling as a team!

L to R, top: Dan Page, Garth Dettwyler, Renee Burchett, Kathy Page, Heather Kramer, Barb Stoner

bottom: Celeste Barber, Jill Dettwyler, Cindy Garrett, Jill Peters (& Raelene Cabrera, not shown)

We had our last prep/planning meeting Sunday to go over final details, divide the supplies and food we need to take, and decide what time to arrive at church Friday for a 4:30 a.m. departure from Salem to the Portland airport. Our Typhoid, Yellow Fever and various other immunizations are complete, we have our malaria pills and industrial-strengh mosquito repellent on hand, are bags are packed with rolls of toilet paper and bags of American snack food to provide some comforts of home. We are ready to go!

We hope to get Internet access at times from Kampala (the nearest city to the Watoto village) or possibly even the guest house where we will be staying. So please subscribe to this blog if you'd like to get updates on our trip.

We'd greatly appreciate your prayers for our team's safety, health and spirit of unity; for opportunities to share God's love throughout the trip and to support/encourage the people we meet in Uganda; and for all of our words and actions to glorify the Lord.

God Bless,
The South Salem Nazarene Watoto Work & Witness team