Thomason update

July 26, 2008


Greetings from Lubowa (our new village),


Each term of service brings new rewards, new challenges, and more or better cultural understanding, if you participate as the learner. Consequently we remain in somewhat of a perpetual state of being stretched.

The project is going well with your normal daily disasters. (That's why I make the big bucks!) There is one area I could use specific prayer and that would be in the area of plaster. There are some complications probably from poor materials, not techniques, but because plastering is all but dead art in the U.S. I have very little experience with it. It is interesting to note that in 1969 one of my first summer construction jobs was working with a plastering company in Birmingham. I smile as I reflect on how God prepares us for service, usually in our ignorance. I thought it was just a summer job.

Sally continues to serve at the clinic. Giving Josephine a couple of days off each week is one of her priorities. She is now taking a special interest in some kids at the school with special needs. She will take these three kids to see an eye specialist August 5, thanks to a wonderful gift from the medical team from Birmingham and South Carolina. On Monday Sally and Josephine (the nurse on day shift) did a mini clinic at Nkumba Orphanage where they saw over 60 kids in a very busy day. Most of these children have lost parents due to AIDS. Yesterday she went to Garuga and helped with a small medical team. It was heartbreaking as several of the children were extremely malnourished, which is such a foreign concept in the States. One baby who was only a month old was severely dehydrated and so weak he could not suck to breast feed. They were able to take the baby to a nearby hospital where hopefully this Sudanese child can get some help. The young mother did not know how to take care of a baby and had no family to help. The needs here can be absolutely overwhelming.

Please pray for our effectiveness with the singles. We moved to our new location for safety and security issues but some of the locals do not feel comfortable coming here due to the location and distance. Pray that we can bridge the gap and for transportation issues as there is almost no public transportation in the immediate area. So we do a lot more walking and Sally has tuned up a bike that she rides to the clinic.

Driving to work one morning last week our driver narrowly missed a young man who darted to the center of the highway. Determined he could not outrun the oncoming traffic in the second lane. he reversed his field, causing us to narrowly miss him, only taking the color off his T-shirt. Tony (my interpreter) turned to me and said the Ugandans would tell him to go and eat his chicken. You must remember Africa is a verbal, not written, society and things are handed down through the generations by word of mouth. One must also keep in mind that village influence and the tribal/clan importance must be kept in the context of stories, idioms, etc. here. It seems that there was a master of the house who lived with a rat, a chicken, a goat, and a cow. The rat and chicken lived inside while the goat and cow lived outside. One day a snake comes in the house and goes into the rat hole. The rat approaches the chicken, Please help me get rid of the snake. No, he says, Go to the goat as I am too small. When the goat was approached he said, No, I don't live in the house. Go to the cow. The cow in turn said, No, as she had no interest in killing the snake as she did not live in the house either. The rat, determined to rid himself of the snake, proceeded to be bitten and died as did the master of the house. In turn, the snake bit the chicken, goat and cow, killing them all. The moral of the story is with full cooperation, death and disaster may have been avoided. In order to remember this lesson, whenever a person dies, the family eats chicken before the funeral, goat upon arriving home from the burial, and beef a short time thereafter. Hence the response to near-miss costing one his life is, Go eat your chicken, as you have cheated death.

To train a mazungu it takes a village. I think we are having vegetable soup for dinner!

Serving in East Africa,

Gorden and Sally