Location, Location, Location

Booking a hotel or guest house in Uganda is not the same as in the US. There are no fancy discount websites, in fact, there are no websites at all. Some places have facebook pages, but even those offer no pictures and little details. Our adoption agency gave us a few suggestions of places to start but we found the best information from the families that traveled before us.

Then the orphanage moved. We were the first family to start this process now that the orphanage is outside of Kampala. (In the end one family did end up coming before us. They are adopting a child with more severe special needs and they were able to jump the line a bit. However, they choose to stay in Kampala and stick with the original plan.)

With no past references or experiences of people before us we turned to Ken and Cathy directly for advice. They led us to the African Village Hotel. This place did have a website and we were wowed by the pictures. There is no way we could afford a place this nice, but based on Ken and Cathy's recommendation we contacted them anyway to see what they would say. We were amazed when they came back with a price we couldn't refuse.

That would have been enough in and of itself, but we are finding God put us here for way more than the financial savings and convenient location.

*This resort has it's own medical clinic (where they take Americans when they get hurt) which will help us get an accurate weight for Isaac and begin any treatments he needs once he is in our care.

*All of the proceeds from this resort (and I call it a resort because it has a restaurant and a pool!) go to support two orphanages that are on the property. So even though the money isn't going toward Ken and Cathy, we can feel good knowing that a huge part of our expense (even a good rate times 8 weeks adds up!) is still going to make a difference here in some ways.

*It has a bakery (praise God! - Ugandan's don't do dessert) that sells ice cream! We are visiting it tonight for the first time :)

*It has a big church on site that we can attend on Sundays (and one of us can leave early and walk home if one of the kids can't sit still)

It get's better...

When we realized we were going to be here over Christmas we decided that we were not going to have a traditional Christmas this year. Our whole family agreed that it would be too difficult to try and exchange gifts this year (knowing that even if we waited until we got home we could not guarantee that Isaac would be up for such an overwhelming event anytime soon). We decided to ask Ken and Cathy if there was a way we could bless the kids at the orphanage. That is how my mural project began. However, we knew there was more we could do. We noticed that there is no playground in the new location. We looked into buying something Little Tikes here but it was $1,300 (more than our Christmas budget by a long shot). Ken and Cathy suggested we build something out of wood. They showed us pictures of what they wanted and Bill felt confident he could build it. Ken, Raymond and Vincent (a young man who does a huge variety of jobs for the orphanage) all jumped at the chance to help build something for the kids.

So we had a team of men ready to build, but what would we do about wood and tools? You're going to laugh...our resort has a school on the property and they have a wood shop! We went to speak to the man in charge this morning and Bill is currently at the lumber yard with him purchasing wood and supplies. He is giving us some of the best wood in his shop (which he was saving to build a bed for himself) because he said, "I will do anything to help my people." He has agreed to have his class help cut all of the wood into the pieces and sizes we need. All we need to do is transport it to the orphanage and assemble.

So this week I'll be painting and the men will be building and by Cara's birthday on Friday the orphanage will be transformed into a play place! I can't wait to post pictures :)