It's been a rough week.

We came from a relaxing vacation full of greenery, water and fat people to what feels like a desert wasteland with hunger everywhere. The common greeting right now in answer to, "how are you?" is, "I'm hungry". It's hunger season.

And we, although not hungry, are feeling it acutely. 

This week Michaela and Cody were given a baby. She was two weeks old and severely dehydrated and starving. She hadn't been fed since birth and weighed in at 2 1/2 pounds. She suffered from a chromosomal abnormality called Trisomy 18 which caused her feet to be deformed (rocker bottom feet) and her hands to be twisted. She was so small I could hold her head in my hand. 

That same day we got a call from a pastor down south, asking us to take a baby. His sister is 14 and recently had a baby she cannot care for. She has no food and hence, no milk for her little one. Her baby is five weeks old.

Yesterday Rainbow Mike spent the day with a family whose mother had died last week. Two of the older boys are street kids, and there are four little girls that lived with the mom at home. They have no other family and are now living with a neighbor. She has no room for all four at night, so she parcels them out to her neighbors. They were sobbing because they don't know what will happen to them.

Life is so harsh here. As we have said often this week, only the strong survive. And through these situations we see so clearly the heartbeat of Christ for his children. Oh, how his heart must break when he sees the lack of compassion for his little ones. Oh, how he loves them!

Please pray for our hearts to survive....that we can love until it hurts and then love more.

Jesus loves the little children
All the children of the world
Red and yellow, black and white
They are precious in his sight
Jesus loves the little children of the world

I apologize for the lapse in communication...again!  We missed a week and decided to just wait until we were down south with power and a faster connection.  We thought we'd share a few pictures of the kids and our vacation time so far.  It's been so nice to be away from Karamoja without needing to "do" anything except rest and relax.  Although we've traveled a lot to Kampala, none of our trips have been relaxing in the least! This one has proven to be different so far, and we are loving it :)


I have to start off with these pictures of Selah because, well, she's just so stinkin' cute! She's sitting up well by herself now and has two teeth!  She'll be 6 months old on Feb. 8th.

My boys are so proud of their little sister! They are always asking to hold her, and I often have to tell them to give her some room to breathe! It's great to know that she will be well cared for when the boys come a-knockin', as we know they will!

Izzy decided he needed to help me make brownies! He is definitely more of a mess-maker than a good helper, but he never fails to make all of us laugh hysterically! 

He wrote a new song for this Ugandan election season called "Museventy". He sang it quite a bit on the drive down south, especially as Museveni's posters became more and more prevalent. 

He's a very smart kid and can point out Egypt, Liberia, Uganda, Ethiopia, South Africa, Madagascar and a few other African countries on a map thanks to his Auntie's help.

We usually go over this bridge on the way to Jinja (because it's the only way we know), but thankfully it was dry season and we were able to drive through the riverbed instead. I guess there are benefits to having no surface water across the region. We will probably need to find a new route come rainy season!

On the first day of our vacation we took a trip to Sipi Falls and stayed in a little backpacker outfit called the Crow's Nest.  This was a short hike we took to a waterfall.  It was overcast on that day or we would have gone in swimming!

The kids found a cave and were posing with their friend and our tour guide, Dennis.  A couple of days later Izzy is still asking me, "Where's Dennis?"

The view from our hotel is beautiful! Here the kids are posing on our balcony in front of the Nile River. They have enjoyed a lot of swimming so far this week. Hopefully we'll complete a swimming crash course before vacation ends.

We hope you all are having a wonderful week! We'll add more pictures soon!