Padd Solutions

So its been quite a few days since any updates but so much has happened since that time and again i am at a loss for words really to desribe what has happened and what is going on. Like elton and I were saying... this ain't Japan haha.

one thing though that has stood out to me over the past few days.... soccer balls. If you're reading this i'm sure you recieved an email from me about them. but i never thought that it have the reception that its been having. the beauty of it is that its something that a whole group of kids could enjoy too.

But until I saw what they actually used as a soccer ball i guess I didn't understand the depth of it. You should be able to see a ball that they used as a soccer ball to the left. its just a bunch of bags smushed together and tied together with twine... and this is one of the nicer ones too. I've seen kids play with flattened soccer balls, balls with gaping holes in it, and tiny little toy balls you win at dave and buster....



so really. again. thank you. thank you for the soccer balls and the gifts you gave that mean so much to those who have so little.

anyways. again I leave you with pictures from the past few days to complete the picture that i cannot.

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Mokono, Uganda:


1 girl in a family of 9, the father died and left 2 wives with 9 children.


typical scene of children crowding around for candy.


mokono is very poor, this is almost typical of the state of clothes they wear. this kid stood out because he ran after our bus for awhile as we drove by.



kids LOVE pictures, and love looking at themselves too :)


Day Off:


Cyp, a buddy from a neighboring country hanging out w/ us.

Kamwenge, Uganda (day 1):


one of the many barely trodden roads we went down to look for families.


a girl with a toy that we gave her. even though she cried, i think she liked it :)


people of the village waving goodbye as we drive off. they seem happy eh? its nice to see that.

Kamwenge, Uganda (day 2):


this is our bus. this thing is a rock, it has taken us to the most unbelievable places. Moses is our driver... wierd huh haha.


This kid was a neighbor to the hotel we stayed at. He was so awesome and full of life, so even though he wasn't in a GFR family we had to bless him with an old school warriors shirt and shrek 3 hat :)


Lisa with Monica and her son. one of the families that GFR is sponsoring.



Brian is a kid from the orphanage that we visited today. He wrote a poem for us and is reciting it here. it was pretty powerful, i'll post a transcript later. Note though all the kids behind him... they are all orphans whos parents mostly died from aids or other sicknesses.

After the incredibly long plane trip (4 hours to chicago, 6.5 hours to london, 14 hour layover, 8 hours to uganda) today was finally the first day we got out there to see first hand what we were dealing with.

Today we had the opportunity to spend some time building a new home for a blind woman named Cece. Her story is tragic in every way. Her husband came home and killed her mother [his mother-in-law] and beat her to the point of losing her eyesight. The husband was killed from mob retaliation within their village, mob justice as they call it and apparently its pretty common. She found out later that her husband infected her with HIV after cheating on her and she is left blind, widowed with four kids.

Her whole home that she shares with her four kids is about the size of my room. It was just saddening tearing down her place and just seeing all the things that she had. And honestly it seems like stuff you would find in a trash dump in the states.

As sad as it was the kids were just awesome. they were all hanging out and playing with us all day. A few of them were singing that one song... something like "nobodoy want to see us together but it don't matter noo (cuz i got you)" i don't know the name of the song but i recognize it from the radio. It was really sweet. They just loved hanging out with us and playing with us. I'm really not the oooh-look-at-the-cute-baby type of guy but they were pretty cute and they came up to play with me even if i didn't come up to them. One of the boys even held my hand as we were walking.... it was unexpectedly nice :)

After a long day of destruction, construction, half-mile water treks carrying 2 4 gallon jugs, visiting families, and playing with kiddos. We spent some time debriefing tonite and we talked about some of the stuff we saw today and how it compares to what we're gonna see in the next week or so, and from what I gather this is only still no where near what we'll see in the more remote villages of Uganda. Its gonna be crazy.

I wish I could write more, about today or even the emotions that I felt but its hard to put into words currently. Too many interruptions, slow internet connection, and the enormity of it all. So I'll just let some of the pictures below give you a glimpse of what we experienced.

These were all taken from today.

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