Melissa Graham April 7th 2012

I Love Easter, wherever I am.

Easter!!!

A weekend of celebration and what a weekend it was! Full of fun; On Good Friday three of us went to join the local Catholic (called Lomission- a 'charismatic reformed' church that love to talk about Jesus!) church's Cross Walk - we walked through town for half an hour, stopping at 10 certain spots where a traumatic event in town had occured and all knelt down on the dirt road! I'd never done anything like it before haha and we couldn't really understand much of what was going on so we read through 10 different appropriate and wonderful Bible passages each time. On the way back we sang worship songs together, again surrounded by perplexed and curious faces. It's easy to feel like an 'alien of the world here' we sure look like it.

Saturday we climbed a mountain (see photos) and it was stunning, a fun time of getting to know some of the girls here too.

Easter Sunday/Resurrection Day was sooooo much fun, it consisted of an Easter Egg hunt (thanks for the chocolate Mum!), baking hot cross buns in a very difficult and laborious yet strangely fun and satisfying way using a solar oven- we made our own icing sugar for the cross! Then we listenened to a John Piper Easter podcast and then at 1pm started on dinner. We had a feast with 17 or so people from the community that are specifically involved with the vet mission here, and us. We had lamb! Or really mutten :) His name was Oscar, bought on Saturday and then honourably discharged from life by me. We got to do a post mortem on him too! Score. The Karamajong people eat as much of the animal as they can; head, feet, intestines, tongue, tail, etc. We were happy to let them take as much as they wanted! I'm not going to lie it made me feel a little sick during the preparation! But all in all a great mix of an African and Australian Easter.

One of the funniest moment I have experienced here was only hilarious in the safety of retrospect. During the meat preparations the two night guards for the two parts of the compound where we stay, James and Andrew (old Karamojong men) were hanging about, giving us tips and trying to take over because they knew they could do it better haha and then suddenly (they were talking in Karamojong the whole time) they erupted and were almost ripping each others throats out, one of them grabbed the spear I had used to slaughter poor but delicious Oscar and were threatening each other. We were all like ahhhh what is happening!? Jean started laughing and said that they were fighting over who gets to eat Oscar's male 'parts' haha. TIA

Uganda is on the equator and a cool thing that comes with that is that the sunsets and sunrises are quick and spectacular. Also, because we are on the equator we can see both the northern and southern hemisphere star constellations!!! So I can see the big dipper on one side of the sky (to the right of the moon) and then turn and see the Southern cross on the other side!

Hope you are all doing well!

Miss you

Love Melissa

Prayer Points:

l  Praise God that he loved the world so much that he gave us his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

l  Thank him for the wonderful things he is doing here in Karamoja, the land of people who feel left behind by the rest of Uganda, who feel like no-one cares. Help them to know that God cares more than they can comprehend.

l  Thank him for the times our fellowship and fun the team here was able to have over Easter, celebrating the reason for the season, celebrating the defeat of life over death that Jesus did on that cross that so much of the world hang aroud their necks, whether they realise the significance of that symbol or not.

l  Dr Tom and Jean will soon be leaving the team, leaving Miriam, Summer and I here alone. Pray for team unity and prayerfulness.

l  This also means the vet work and training the staff here falls mainly on me, pray that I can do my best to do this effectively, showing Christ's love as I go and praying with the Karamojan people about our God who loves us so much and has brought me to them.