Staff meetings usually end up centering around something David hadn’t planned to talk about - good, but frustrating. This last week meetings turned to third term elective offerings and general curriculum discussions. I was reminded, as David and I talked through what he had learned and how he had responded, that ALL of this feels impossible. Which is why we must not allow for Impossibles in our lives.

We follow the national Ugandan curriculum in the hopes that our students will pass the national Ugandan exams but its quite hard to even determine some of the most basic things which might help us and the students succeed. For example, which subjects are compulsory as part of this high school education program? When David talked to the leadership team about this he was faced with new questions; what does compulsory even mean here in Uganda? It became clear after hours of conversation that no one is quite sure what subjects are compulsory in Uganda or even what it means for a subject to be compulsory.

In another example we recently went to the Ministry of Education looking for a list of approved textbooks. Surely a country with standard national exams for EVERY subject would have approved textbooks that the exams are based on. We found a list so outdated the the Ministry advised us not to use it. So we start from scratch, questioning other schools, talking to teachers, trying to reinvent the wheel as we choose textbooks in rural Uganda. It’s a clear waste of time and energy not to mention the money that can be spent on buying books that don’t work out well.

We began a new meal card system as part of our efforts to control the incredible food costs. Three meals per student, per day; 90 per month. The meals are certainly sufficient in size; normal size plates are mounded to several inches high with starch and a protein sauce; David can barely finish it. The second day of classes I was doing furniture inventory in the s3 classroom and had to laugh at the creative slogans posted on the chalkboard by enterprising students. In big cartoon bubbles, such messages as, “Four free eggs to the first person to defeat the meal plan by gaining access to at least two meal servings in one period.” Yes, these students are wonderful impossible also.

Power went out in one of our two classroom blocks just ten minutes after preps started on the first evening back. David went over to trouble shoot the next day and found the problem. In the absence of the proper lubricating material for battery connections, David had used an acceptable alternative, petroleum jelly, available locally. Problem is that African petroleum jelly contains a whole lotta extra junk. The batteries did not like it and David spent a morning cleaning every connection and reapplying pure petroleum jelly he found when we were in Kampala.

These are some of the impossibles of the week here, which, as you see, are not really impossibles. For with God, ALL things are possible. A sense of humor is helpful if not essential, and also a sense of perspective. This began before us and will continue long after us; we’re a part of this pictures, a piece of the puzzle of what God is doing here. He will not fail or succeed because of us.