Church in Uganda

The worship in the Ft. Portal Church was so uplifting. I was truly blessed just by being there. What a blessing to worship with people who came to know Christ as adults and have a true understanding of what grace is and to hear them share about the pain and suffering of their past life in sin. Those of us who were baptized young in families who have a heritage of Christianity can easily forget the true sacrifice of the Cross. I know I have been guilty of losing this image from my heart.

Ladies Bible Study

Grace and the Cashes

oops

We broke at least one trunk when Jeff pulled into a parking garage in Entebbe and hit the roof of the garage with the trunks. We had to load and unload twice to get back out of the garage. why twice, well Kristin and Cheryl would say, because we're men.

First day in Uganda

First day in Uganda. At the hotel in Entebbe.

This is a picture of Grace and Faith. Faith is the daughter of a couple who are from Uganda but were studying in Springfield, MO. When I asked her what school she went to she said, Sherwood Elementary. The same elementary school I went to 21 years ago when I was her age. We met them in Amsterdam. What an amazing coincidence.

Leaving on March 10

Home

Well, we are home. We are so thankful to see our wonderful children. Madelyn and Samuel were at the house waiting on us. Aaron is still in Oklahoma and will come tomorrow with Kristin's sister. The saddest story ever is from Kristin's mom. Aaron was outside playing just the other day (almost 2 weeks separated from us) and became so quiet that grandma had to go check on him. He was sitting still on the porch and when grandma asked him what was wrong he said, "I'm sad". She asked what he was sad about and his reply was, "My mommy and daddy are not coming back to get me". We both cried over this. We cannot wait to see our little Aaron.

We traveled for 20 hours and the longer we traveled, the less luggage we had. We left Tyler with 7 trunks. We left two with the Cashes on purpose. We checked five trunks in at Uganda. When we arrived in Detroit we were down to three trunks. After going through customs we rechecked the three remaining bags and flew on to DFW. When we arrived at the baggage claim in DFW we only had one bag left. The lost baggage attendant was perplexed. We prayed before we left Uganda that God would give us peace if we lost luggage. We were nearly forced to separate ourselves from our passports and luggage in Uganda for reasons that was unclear to both of us. We said to each other that getting to the US with all trunks would be unlikely and that is what led us to pray at that moment for peace and acceptance if this did occur.

I want to comment Grace for her wonderful travel skills. She never complained about walking through the airports with her bag and never spent time pouting because of her significant fatigue.

I am sorry I did not post more pictures but will do so now. I will try to label some of them so that you see where they were taken.

Thank you all so much for praying for us. We have been blessed by the trip, the Cashes, Jenkins, Hixons and the Ugandan and Rwandan Churches.

coming home

I am so sorry that the pictures are so hard to upload. We have had a wonderful time and God has truly blessed us. We have enjoyed spending time with the wonderful people in Rwanda. We were able to travel out to the Ruhengeri valley where there are 5 visible volcano peaks and one snow top mountain visible from the town. When we get back to the US, I will post the photos.

We spent the night in Ruhengeri and enjoyed good food (expensive food) and enjoyed seeing the town. It is a tourist place since it is were Americans and Europeans come to see the mountain gorillas. We did not get to see the gorillas. You have to be 15 to go into the gorilla park and we could not take Grace. Also it is very expensive.

Have to go now. more later.

Rwanda

Well, here we are in Rwanda. Now we have internet but still having trouble getting pictures on the blog. I will keep trying. We have had a great time and enjoy the wonderful people we have been staying with.

The 40 foot container arrived in Uganda on Saturday and it took us 11 hours to unload. WOW! It was bittersweet. We enjoyed being there to see it and help unload it, for the first 8 hours. The last couple were rough. The heaviest stuff was on the back. The new church tent, most of the 400 chairs and the airplane engine and a large riding mower. The 4 bags that had the tent pieces (the fabric only) took 4 people to lift off the ground and 5 people to move once you lifted them. The fifth person just gave a little shove and then gravity and momentum took over.

The fire equipment arrived as well and Jeff was elated. He is so anxious to get his fire dept going. Part of the market burned down and after this the leaders of his town and the King of the tribe called the Prime Minister and complained about the fire. They said that Jeff had stuff to help and the Prime Minister asked why Jeff didn't help with the fire and the King said, "Because you have his stuff and the customs workers won't release it without a bribe". The Prime Minister got the taxes paid by the government ($30,000) and got the container released immediately. Since that time the Ft. Portal church of Christ was mentioned in Parliament three days in a row and on the radio one day. Before, they could not get attention and now every politician in Kampala is trying to take credit for getting the container out and helping "the church" with its fire department. God has done great things for the church in Ft. Portal. We sure pray that the ministries that have been on hold due to the container will now impact many people.

Grace and Cash kids

Grace and Faith

Grace was awesome. She stayed awake the entire first leg to Amsterdam and kept saying, “I’m not tired”.

We had a 1 hour layover in Amsterdam and Kristin and I were tired. They don’t have trams in Amsterdam to take you from one terminal to another. After walking a mile or so we found our flight. We had to recheck through security since they have metal detectors at all gates. While waiting for our trip we had the pleasure of meeting young family from Uganda who were returning home after the father had finished his MBA in America. The little girls name was Faith and so she and Grace had a great time. I asked the father where he was in school at and he said that he had graduated from Missouri State University in Springfield, MO. I said, “Hey, I grew up there”. WOW what a coincidence. I asked the little girl were she went to school and she said the name of the school and I looked in disbelief. Thirty-one years ago, when I was her exact age, I went to the exact same school. Amazing. To find this family in Amsterdam and to suddenly have this great connection. We really enjoyed talking to them.

On the plane to Entebbe, Uganda, we all fell asleep instantly. Praise the Lord. Grace slept for about 3 hours and I slept about 2-3 and Kristin slept less than 1. She never sleeps well in moving vehicles.

We arrived at 10 pm in Entebbe so after going through customs we were able to get to a hotel that was very pleasant. It had netting over the bed. In the dark it was hard to tell that we were not in America but when I saw the mosquito netting, I knew we were not in America. I have been having panic dreams for weeks about getting malaria.

We awoke early in the morning due to the time difference but about 630 this morning Grace came running into the room saying she was scared because she was hearing a weird noise. It was a rooster in someone’s yard that started crowing about 6 am. Reminded me of growing up on our farm in Missouri. We just kind of laughed at her. She thought it was great once she realized what it was.

We are repacking our trunks now so that they will fit one the Cashes truck. We have to take all 370 lb of stuff and all 6 of us back to Ft. Portal (4 hours) in their one vehicle. I am now very thankful for the money the church raised for their new vehicle. This is a ROI (return on investment) I did not expect to receive when I gave money for this. Praise God.

Grace loves the Cash family. We have had a very nice and pleasant morning with them and are so happy to be here.

God bless all of you and we ask that you keep praying for us and the Cashes.

Love the Robinsons

Plane Travel

Day 1: delayed. We had a safe trip, as I mentioned before but here are a few pictures of our travel.

Powerless

Well, Most of you are wondering where our pictures and posts are. Well, first of all, this is our first day with power since we arrived in Uganda. We had power the first night but only between 1:30 am and 4:30 am.
We have had a great time and have really enjoyed being in Uganda. We have seen much that has been "unusual" to say the least. We have really enjoyed being with the Cash family and Grace has had a great time. We had the chance to see much of the city yesterday including the hospital. I am ashamed that we argue over whether we can have samples or clocks with drug names on them. One day here would shut up many folks back home. We have enjoyed seeing the people here but going to places like the market is quite unusual. They sell all kinds of food from fruits and vegetables to raw dried fish and the beef is cut fresh each morning and hung on hooks out in the open or laid out on a table to purchase each day. We did not buy any meat.

We are sorry that there are no pictures but I cannot get them onto the computer I'm using so I will post pictures when we arrive in Rwanda. They have a more universal network and a much faster connection.

Hope all are well. Will post again when we can.

God bless.
Brian, Kristin and Grace

It' Time!

Well, today is the day. I want to say thanks to all of you who are praying for us. We are blessed to have such good friends and family. We will be praying for all of you as we travel. The weather is wet but not too cold.

Grace is so hyper she can't hardly talk straight. She loves her carry-on bag because it has wheels. We asked her what she was most excited about and expected her to say the plane ride, the airport or some other 8 year old thing but she said, "I can't wait to see Kenley". Kenley is the oldest daughter of our friends the Cashes in Uganda. We are so happy that Grace is excited to see her. This is the reason we chose to take Grace with us. We wanted her to be a blessing to the Cash children and to learn from them as well.

Continue to pray for us.

God bless all of you.

br

Finishing Packing

We are just at the end of our packing. We thought we were done but as always we found some things we forgot. Like toothpaste, toothbrushes and things like that. We had to repack two trunks just to get the weight right again. We are each allowed 2 checked baggage weighing 50 lb each. It's like 7 (we have to pay for an extra one) 3-D puzzles.

Shakey Start

Well, we left Thursday for Orlando but never made it. I flew to DFW on Thursday at 8 am and Kristin was to come on a later flight at noon. She arrived at 1pm and sat on the plane for 1.5 hours because there was no gate. After it started to snow they announced that a gate was available but that they would have to walk in the snow to the terminal.

Shortly after our rendezvous AA announced that the Orlando Flight we were on was canceled. Then, about 30 min later, that all Orlando Flights were canceled.

This is the point where we realized that our bag was gone. We spoke to the girl at baggage and she said that our bag had to go to Orlando on the next flight and that she did not have the authority to get it back, even though we all knew it was in the building.

We finally had to call some wonderful friends (Craig and Leslee Altrock) to see if we could spend the night with their family. Not only did they let us stay with them, they came to get us. They returned us to the airport at 6am only to have three consecutive flights to Tyler canceled. We finally became weary of excuses and rented a car and drove back to Tyler. We spent the weekend in Tyler, alone in our home without kids. That is still a vacation.

We are indebted to our dear friends the Altrocks for their hospitality.

Please pray that our trip to Uganda has a better start than our trip to Orlando.

God bless,
Brian

Africa Pictures

This blog is a temporary blog for the posting of pictures from our trip to Africa.

The adventure starts Monday March 10, 2008.