Day 5

Hey loves!!

Thanks everyone for the messages and comments about this blog, they mean a lot to me.

I need to be praying more for everyone back at home so pleas please please send my prayer requests and updates via facebook or email!!!!!!

I'm trying to find a time to put pictures up on facebook but who knows when that will be, i already have 280 and it's only been 5 days, haha.

Today was a "relaxing day" as they said. We had a very unusual breakfast in the hotel this morning, with odd food and people were complaining left and right so it was cool being able to show thankfulness and a good attitude about the food that we did have. Hopefully people noticed!

Then we took a 2 hour bus ride from the King Fisher Resort to Lake Bunyoni (the second largest lake in the world, 6500 feet deep!) and I got the spend the time getting to know one of the MUBS faculty members. He is the head of the Business Law department and he wants to open up an orphanage a couple of years from now, how cool is that!). It was also a great time to show some loving to some of the Drake students when they needed stuff.

This morning I read 1 John 3:18 "let us not love in word or talk but in deed and truth." so I've been trying to love people in action (and in the ways that they feel loved the most). We're still getting to know everyone but my goal is to let every single person here know that I love them in some way before the trip is over - I need to be intentional about this because I know it wont just happen if I hope for it.

Anyway, we arrived at the Lake Bunyoni resort around lunch time and went straight to some of these canoe-y boats where we proceeded on a two hour tour around the lake (Mom you would have loved it, can't wait to show you pictures!) (it's huge as well as deep with 5 or 6 islands so it took the whole two hours. On my boat was a couple of Christians from Drake (juniors, I'm not sure if they're in fellowship but they are Christians), Emily, and this older couple, the Phillips, who are like the mom and dad on the trip. (He used to teach at Drake and heard about the trip so they are tagging along. They are really sweet Christians who I've been talking to a lot. On the bus today they told me they brought some devotional books for me since they saw in my bio thing that we filled out before the trip that I love Jesus and reading the Bible, how cool is that? They're so great! anyway...). Somehow the conversation I had with the Muslim MUBS student came up and they mentioned that they had heard some of it. I'm hoping this means that other Drake students heard a bunch of it too! So I got to share a little about the conversation.

Random fact tangent: One of the islands on the lake is called Punishment Island because it was an island where the people (only a few decades ago) would send girls when they got pregnant out of wedlock. What the people thought was that the girls were just left to die there but what actually happened was men who didn't want to pay a dowry would come and take the girls as their wives for free. Crazy.....

We got to hang out at the resort for a bit after the boat rides and our lunch (that was at 3 pm, haha). And the topic of drinking came up (which didnt' surprise me). I was the only Christian at the table and everyone else was telling drinking stories so I got to share my conviction about drinking with people!

Afterwards we took another bus ride back to our hotel and I got to talk with people and get to know them more, which was a lot of fun. There is one girl, a pharmacy major here that just needs people to love her and I'm really excited to build into her life. This is one relationship I know that needs to be pursued, her heart is very soft and I can't wait to talk with her more about God! We got to talk a little on the plane rides when she noticed I was reading my bible so you can pray for her!

Susie, Emily, and I are doing well. I think we might do some sort of bible study and prayer when we return from this 3 day adventure in southern Uganda. We need to start re-vamping our fellowship with each other here. We've been sharing verses and things but I know we can be encouraging each other more and praying with each other more, etc. etc. so please pray for wisdom with that!

Prayer requests:
-faithfulness with QT's
-soft hearts
-opportunities for conversations with people
-wisdom on how to love people
-that we will encourage and sharpen each other as we're here

Love, Loren