Jay Butterfield

Greetings from Uganda. After three relatively uneventful flights and one lost bag, we arrived in Arua around 9:30 this morning. Following a quick cruise through the airport “gift shop”, we loaded the team and baggage into two vehicles and headed to the YWAM (Youth with a Mission) base. We dropped the bags and some team off at YWAM and headed to town with Pastor Stanley to get SIM cards for the phones. Life and connection definitely do not happen in Africa at the same pace they do back home. Who would have thought that getting a SIM card would be a long, arduous process? But it certainly is here. Throughout the ordeal, the words “be still” kept coming back to me, which, ironically, is not something that comes easily to most of us.

Once that task was completed, we picked up the team and took Pastor Stanley to lunch at White Castle. Nope, not the restaurant of slider game. While waiting for the food to be served, Stanley talked about how he came to be saved, how the Dreamland was formed, the events leading up to relocating to Uganda, and hopeful future plans of moving back to South Sudan. Everyone listened intently and asked great questions, which just fueled the team’s enthusiasm to meet those wonderful children.

Speaking of the team, eight of the ten are “newbies”, having never been to Africa before. It is always exciting to see the looks on faces as they take in the sensory overload that occurs on a first visit to a land and culture so vastly different from ours (except for the cell phones). Overall, the team is meshing nicely so far. No one is afraid to share their food with the team or give a high five for experiencing a function that might otherwise be taken for granted. There is no doubt that this will be a fun, rewarding week for all.

The evening ended with dinner at the YWAM base followed by the nightly team meeting. During the meeting, we shared “happys” and “crappys” for the day. This is always a fun and often sad time as teammates share their experiences of the day. Sometimes both the happy and the crappy can bring tears to your eyes. Chuck Morris is a YWAM veteran of 15 years of field service in various locations. Chuck’s happy for the day was, “realizing that I’m not done with this sort of thing yet.” No, Chuck, you aren’t. None of us are until we hear those amazing words, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

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