10:00 Thursday came and I was off to the airport with my bag and two large totes of material for Abby and David Kakeeto and their non-profit, Transformed for Life. Our Mending the Soul training (see the previous post) will happen on their grounds.
Those big totes and the fact that KLM did not recognize my humanitarian ticket meant that they wanted to charge me about $800 for checked baggage despite the fact that my Delta ticket clearly showed they should be free! So my travel anxieties were ticked before the trip began!
The inexperienced KLM lady was wonderful joyful about my status, where and why I was going and in very short order, the three items were checked I was on my way.
My flight was originally booked with Qatar Airlines so I could take advantage of my high status on Alaska/One World. That got interrupted by a little thing called a war! One status thing is my Lounge access. I went to the lounge and was completely honest with the lady. She checked and kindly but clearly told me it was true: my One World pass did not work with a Delta boarding pass. Then she covered her mouth and whispered, “Come on in!”
After 90 minutes of relaxing I headed to D15 to meet Michelle Lown and her daughter, Myla. She is a psychologist, highly skilled and experienced in neuro-cognitive aspects of trauma therapy. She practices at Cornerstone Clinical Services. She will be teaching the counseling sessions and Myla will be assisting Abby in working with at risk teen age African boys in a parallel session.
Portland to Amsterdam is a long way when sitting in a window seat in coach where I could barely squeeze my backpack through to go under the seat ahead of me. The kind couple between me and the aisle were quite interested in what I’d be doing which made the cramped realities more endurable. We met Joshua and Brina in Amsterdam and the five of us continued for another 11 hours to Entebbe via Kigali.
Entrance into the country, retrieving our luggage, transporting everyone/thing to the guest house occurred without incident – other than a wild thunderstorm for context! A few hours of sleep and we were on our way to the Shalom Center [please do a web search for it – I am blocked probably because of where I am trying to access it]
It requires an expert driver like Peter to negotiate the roads in the second half of our drive after leaving the paved highways. That did not detract from the beauty of the Ugandan hills, the crops planted everywhere (look closely).
Our tour was partly done on the Gator, initially with Myla driving – see how triumphant she looks! There is no way to summarize all the things that are developing at the Shalom Center – you’ll have to look at the webpage.
The darkness of sunset meant we needed to depart and go to Mubende for another overnight stay to continue our long journey.
Sunday meant another drive to to Kibale and the guest center where we will stay for the duration of our conference. The hour or hour and a half drive each way for the teaching team is an indication of how remote the Transformed for Life site in Ndama really is.
One context note: the Congolese teams from Goma spent two full days in transit to the TFL site, traveling by rented car, bus and such. They got stuck in the mud and were there for over an hour before they were finally able to get out!
We want your prayers!