Here in country. The totality of our luggage managed to arrive with us. Entebbe was having some sort of bug mating season and we crunched millions of little exoskeletons on the tarmac and in the airport entrance.
The ride to Mbale was fraught with delay, but dinner with some friends of the Okkens was a nice payoff to a difficult day. We had church in Mbale this morning, planning to leave at noon for Karamoja. The rain was coming in powerfully as we left, and we were soon inundated. The road to Karamoja was a flood and destroyed because of the mud and ruts. We gathered intelligence that the bus was sideways across the road and would make our passage impossible. Dave had, under heavy encouragement from me, been valiant in his attempts, but the combination of a passing tomato truck nearly tipping sideways and distributing free tomatoes to everyone and the news of the bus put into question the wisdom I had been handing out, and it was decided that we were losing daylight and couldn’t afford any further problems.
This possibility did not seem forthcoming, so we turned around to Mbale and will make an attempt tomorrow when the roads have perhaps dried a bit and we have a full day to make our attempt. We will also change vehicles in an additional bid to get there.
As it happens, the friends of the Okkens, Stuart and MJ, who took us to dinner last night, have opened their home to us tonight. We missed the surprise birthday/Independence Day party in Karamoja tonight, but we did get to have fish & chips and watch TBN for dinner, and the Karamoja missionaries called to say they had not waited to eat my cake.
Pray for us tomorrow. Pray that God will hold the rain for us, and that the roads will be safe for travel. It’s been a long ride for the Okken kids as well, so pray for Sunshine, who is performing perhaps the most valiant task of anyone.