What a week it’s been. The first week of the term; filled with the activities of exams, teacher scheduling, student returns and cleaning. A week of meetings with some of our mission leaders from America: discussing the school, the team and our lives. A week of growth: a wonderful staff meeting (an answer to prayer from one of my last blog posts) where David built renewed and bigger trust with teachers, our children investing into new friendships, great time of prayer and counseling with pregnant students and their parents and a positive response to choosing life for their babies. A week of chaos in Kampala: staff who waded through violence to make it back to us were escorted by armored vehicles and AK 47s as they rode buses out of the city. Check out www.newvisionuganda.com for more stories and pictures on the awful conflict that has enveloped our capital city. We must pray.

As days pass, we see changes ahead. We don’t know all the details of when and how but we know that God is preparing us. I am learning a new respect and admiration for my husband, a new comfort in wading through sorrow with my children, a new thankfulness for friends. I said to David this week, “after all, it’s all about relationships, isn’t it.” His response has given me pause, a sense of reflectiveness: “I don’t think it’s all about relationships, I think it’s all about people.”

So as we pass a weekend in the safe haven of Bundibugyo (it’s not often that you feel safer here than in Kampala!), praying that the inter-tribal conflicts will not develop into something more, stockpiling fuel just in case, cooking pumpkin pie, eating pancakes with friends, watching old British comedy shows, playing games with the local kids, eating sugar cane, giving away books, sweeping out the endless ants . . . . As we pass a weekend in Bundibugyo . . . . we value people. People, both loveable and harder to love, who each reflect a precious facet of the Creator, who all have something to teach us about who we are and how to live. From the many graduated CSB students who are now in Primary Teachers College and came today to collect the pocket money we give them, to the former teacher who came to share with us about his new job in the city, to the team mates who discussed life and grief with us, to the baby next door who screamed ” mamma!” when she saw me pass by, and the current teacher to whom I carried scones to fatten him up after his month long bout with malaria. These are some of the lives that have passed into our yard or through our doors today. Who offer us the chance to be irritated, yes, but more importantly to learn, to love and to offer life.

I am reminded that even as some changes loom, some things will remain the same. It will always be about people because that’s where God’s heart is, in the precious beings who imagine, rage, doubt, hope, fear, suffer and believe that Someone and Something more exists. He is slowly giving me courage, He is slowly teaching me what I most need to know: “believe the unbelievable, come be a fool like Him.” (Michael Card)