Day Thirteen, April 27:

Steve and Gina Gant prepared our breakfast and graciously explained the ministry of Wells of Hope (www.WellsOfHope.org). They take the true religion of James 1:27, tending to the needs of the orphans and widows, and combine it with visiting the imprisoned and meeting the needs of the needy which Jesus commended in Matthew 25:36.

James 1:27 NIV
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

Matthew 25:36 NIV
I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

Wells of Hope, and therefore Gant Ministries, visits men in prison, encouraging them, discipling them, and caring for them. One of their greatest needs is for someone to check on and care for their families. Wells of Hope does that. They go out and find the families, bring back photos, reunite children who have sometimes been told their fathers have been executed or died in prison, and they work to ensure the fathers have a place in the lives of their families, even if a small one. Furthermore, Wells of Hope operates a school and home for the children of these prisoners, who often have no one else to care for them. This is called the Wells of Hope Academy, where we attended church service today.

We drove for about an hour and a half to get to the Academy, the last few kilometers of which was through a swamp which overwhelmed the roadway in several places. The swampy landscape is what Steve credited for the affordability of the land on which the Academy is situated.

When we pulled up to the complex, we found two large white buildings: a dormitory and a school, with one large thatched-roof shelter in between them. Under the shade of that shelter on a concrete slab were about forty-five of the most precious little worshippers I've ever seen, singing, clapping, and dancing in the name of Jesus. One of their teachers preached, but then a few of the children preached too, and did an excellent job! Ella, a volunteer who is a children's music teacher by profession, led worship, and the children really worshipped the Lord like I have never seen kids of that age do. They weren't just singing, but each one was praying and loving God in an individual way. It was fantastic!

When church was over Steve and Gina took us on a tour of the facility. The dormitories were nicely constructed and adequately furnished, but with wooden furniture, and the state instructed them to replace the wood bunks with metal. The classrooms of the school were empty because the kids dragged all the combination bench-desk pieces of furniture out to the church shelter for prayer meeting and would carry them all back in when it was over. They could use some benches just for the meeting shelter.

We saw how the ministry works with what it has and is seeking to make it better. Steve talked about future plans for upgrading facilities, improving land for productive purposes like farming, and working to include the children in keeping their campus nice. We saw the chicken house, the piggery, the only cow, and we walked to the nearest borehole well, where all the kids have to go to fetch their personal bathing water. They carry it in Gerry-cans, big plastic canisters reminiscent of the fuel cans used by the Germans in World War 2 (thus the name), and have it poured over themselves as there is no running water in much of Uganda. Being among these children and worshipping in such simple purity was refreshing, and seeing how Wells of Hope is caring for the children of the imprisoned was inspiring. Being with the Gants was a lot of fun too. Steve and I are two peas in a pod!

We kept the Gants up again, this time Steve and I swapped war-stories from his Navy experience and my police career. We must have bored the girls, because we found ourselves alone laughing at each other's anecdotes. We are having a great time!

Day Twelve, April 26:

I misspoke about our driver, Anthony, yesterday. He is not Busoga, but Buganda. He confirmed that the Busoga people are very poorly resourced and a main target group for missionaries in Jinja.

He accompanied us to the Noah's Ark Children's Home (www.nacmu.org), where we met Peter Buitendijk, the CEO and founder. When we entered the property we thought we had entered a highly organized village, and security personnel directed us to the proper building. After we parked, a small child of about five greeted us and asked what we were there for. When we told him, he took Cindy's hand and escorted us to "Pappa," which is everyone's nickname for Peter. We were guided past huge buildings of western design and quality, and invited to sit on comfortable patio furniture outside a large, beautiful house. Inside the house, a Dutch man of imposing stature tended to business, addressed employees and dealt with someone on the phone, with all the appearance of a business tycoon or political leader of a small country. A few minutes later, Peter emerged and greeted us as if we were no distraction at all. He asked us our story and after showing slight amusement at our explanation, told us his. From his teen years as a misfit among his peers and exceptionally gifted bucker of systems and reinventor of wheels, aided by his wife whom he married at age 17 by permission of the queen of Holland, he started a life of enterprise and ingenuity, which flourished everywhere he went. When he got bored reinventing metal works in Holland, he began smuggling Bibles into Soviet countries. When that was no longer an adventure, he turned to missionary work, and since 2006, has carved out of this mountainside forest a complete village to sustain orphans and school children. With supporters from the US, UK, Germany, Holland, and other places, he credits God, the owner of all cattle on all hills with resourcing his vision for this enterprise. He didn't say how many children he ministers to, but with just under 200 employees, trucks, tractors, cars, intermodal containers, and thousands of acres of farmland and investment property, workshops, every level of school there is, and more children than I could estimate, he is a patriarch. He works on simple principles: if it's not good enough for me then it's not good enough for my kids; waste nothing but repurpose and reuse everything; use good business sense buying low and selling high; God's way works best. He uses the last one I mentioned as his first priority, requiring no less from his employees and business contacts. He is a wise man of enterprise, and he has obviously combined that with his heart for children quite successfully.

When we left Noah's Ark, we began to question the faith of ourselves and of mission endeavors which seemed to struggle, always at the brink of financial disaster. Peter's ideas pivoted on the supposition that if God is truly one's resource, His bounty would accompany His directive. Still, he cautioned that Uganda is difficult on new ministries, and said few last longer than ten years. Witnessing this vast children's project brought a strange mix of emotions that just left me with more questions than answers. It challenged the expectation that God's ministers live by daily provision and that blind faith drives beat-up cars and second-hand clothes. Godliness apparently does not require poverty.

Mukono, by the way, is considered the center for ancestor worship and dark arts in Uganda.

On to our friends Stephen and Gina Gant! These are folks we had heard very little about. Terri Terrill, a friend of mine from work told me she had friends who were missionaries in Uganda but knowing there are many, I gave it little thought until she actually connected me with them. The Gants invited us to stay with them in the capital city of Kampala, and were eager to introduce us to Wells of Hope, the ministry with which they are affiliated (www.wellsofhope.org). We followed the detailed directions to their house, and were allowed onto the compound in which their house and several of their neighbors' houses are situated. Warm smiles, firm handshakes, and the friendly barking of their sweet, silly dog, Molly, made us right at home. As we got to know one another it was uncanny how much alike we are. Not only so, but we discovered we were neighbors back home, with our houses less than a mile and a half apart. Stephen and I are about the same age, and he just retired from the Navy just before I retired from the Sheriff's Office. They made recommendations, encouraged us, and warned us about pitfalls of doing business in Uganda. We four had fun talking about ministry and the growth of our faith and relished the fellowship until yawns got long and eyes got droopy. I never know when to hush! It was tough, but I let them get some sleep, and we retired to our guest room. There were three.

Day Seven, April 21:

Up before dawn which, at the equator, is always 7am, we finally got to experience one of the infamous Ugandan power outages. We were told that it had been an Easter miracle that our power had only been off for a few hours one night while we were sleeping, but now it was out for real, and just as we were needing to pack and leave. Laurie Dickerson, Carol's houseguest, had the place nicely illuminated with candles, and was browning toast in a skillet on a gas-burning stove for us. Laurie is a missionary herself, a pastor of the Four Square Church. She has been quite the helper and well of advice and anecdotal reference. She let us know when our plans were too crazy to be carried out, but I think we left Carol and Laurie both fairly convinced we were crazy, maybe just crazy enough.

It was tough to say goodbye, but Anthony's urging and his warning that we really needed to arrive in Gulu by dark was enough to get us going. It seemed like such a short stay!

As we left the Fort Portal area, we left behind the wealth and cleanliness of their community too. I noticed even the soil seemed less rich, as the clay began to turn from a dark red to a more yellow orange. The clothing of the people we passed got dingier and a little more tattered, though it was still dresses, trousers and dress shirts, short-sleeved ones began to appear, some with holes torn in them from wear and t-shirts began to show up in greater number. The houses got a little farther apart, and a little more run-down, and I felt like we had crossed over into a more rural Uganda.

As Cindy and I began to doze Anthony woke us up with the call, "baboons!" There along the side of the road as we crossed through the Budongo Forest, was a group of baboons, pretty as you please! Neither Cindy nor I could get to a camera fast enough to prove it, but Anthony assured us they would be along the road in several places. Sure enough, eight million potholes later, as we wound our way through the clay obstacle course that passes for a road in Northwest Uganda, as we skirted the Murchison Falls National Park, Uganda's largest game park, we encountered dozens of baboons, all lining the highway as if on display. A few seemed as interested in us as we were in them, but we didn't stop, and we kept in mind the advice we got from Laurie earlier: don't open your windows around baboons no matter what. Apparently baboons are very curious and also aggressive.

We crossed the Nile River and were both surprised to see a beautifully roaring river over rocks and falls, rather than the long sleepy hippo watering hole we had both pictured in our heads. I guess the Congo River Rapids ride at Busch Gardens was named for this part, not the sweet stream that gently brought Moses to Pharaoh's daughter. Speaking of Congo, we spent the day paralleling the mountain chain that separates D. R. Congo from Uganda. We could only imagine what was going on just the other side of those mountains.

After we crossed the Nile was when I think we began seeing the round mud huts with thatched grass roofs one sees in storybooks about African people. These huts, though, were really neatly made, most appeared cleanly kept, and efficient for their purpose and the climate. I was amazed at how nice some were. Painted with solid doors, some had clothes lines strung between them. Others had laundry drying right on the grass roof. Seeing the ventilation and the thick layers of grass used in the construction, I began to feel sorry for the folks in rectangular brick houses under tin roofs in the equatorial sun.

As we neared our destination much earlier than we had feared, Anthony announced he was hungry much to my relief. We stopped at a roadside restaurant in Kamdini and had some chicken and rice to tide us until supper. Nancy Cordoza, our Gulu hostess, had prepared us dinner so we kept our late lunch light. It was a compromise for me to eat at a roadside restaurant, given the health concerns, but I prayed extra fervently over it and God kept it from being a problem. Cindy, however, had exhausted our supply of G-nuts while we weren't looking, and was too full for roadside fare. She amused herself taking pictures of me taking the adventuresome risk.

Nancy met us at a landmark hotel near her house because (and she is not the first) meeting us and directing us in was easier than giving directions on unnamed (or at least unmarked) roads. When we arrived at her compound, we were shocked at the aesthetic appeal. Even the walls and gates were ornate. The house was no different. Nancy explained the rental process and the fact there are no public utilities was how she found such a bargain, but she makes a lack of refrigeration and laundry work well for her, and we found it comfortable too. Cooking with gas, assisted by a pressure cooker, she prepared us a Ugandan dinner of beans, rice, chicken, bananas, and odie (G-nut sauce).

She made her home our own as she described her ministry to the local Acholi women. She is currently running a quilting group and looking for marketing venues in the U.S. And Canada, to help the women support themselves. She showed us some of the quilts and they were very nice. This group meets on Tuesdays, so we will join them tomorrow.

I got to talk to my daughter briefly tonight, in an attempt to resolve my banking issue, but it's way past bedtime. So good night.