Team Five Morris

I've taken long writing any updates on here.  I blame it on slow internet that kicks me off repeatedly.  Life has gotten interesting yet again.  We have our old intern Kostya, from Ukraine, living with us for a time.  He arrived back on Ugandan soil two weeks ago.  We are so excited to have him back on the team!  He is sharing a room, and a triple bunk bed, with Aiden and Ben.  He's a real trooper.

We also invited a new friend to stay with us until January.  Her name is Meredith and she is 23.  She gets the privilege of sharing a room with Hannah.  Meredith's home church is the one partnering with us to form a child sponsorship here in our neighborhood.

So our small house is full!  Dan's dad has also been visiting us for the last few weeks but goes home right before Christmas.  It has been a great time for him to see what we do here.

Christmas is feeling a little strange this year.  We just went swimming today in 85 degree instead of bundling up in sweaters like I usually do in December back home.  Our pitiful little tree is shiny with tacky ornaments and blinking colored lights.  We will have a few gifts under the tree.  But we sure do miss home right now.  To stay busy Meredith and I are helping the kids at Arise and Shine Church put on a Christmas play on Christmas night.  Christmas Eve we will be hosting a huge neighborhood dinner.  I'm happy to have a full house to make this season feel more festive.

Dan and Pastor Moses completed the medical clinic they were building and they are open for business!  This is a huge praise!

Our NGO papers still haven't gone through so we get to give Uganda's government more money to stay here.  I'm trying to be good natured about this but it's getting a little old!  Hopefully on Monday we'll find out if the NGO papers were accepted.  I also pick up our special passes on Tuesday, so pray that we don't get deported or anything right before Christmas!

We will be sending out our newsletter soon so if you aren't on our mailing list or if you aren't sure please get your info to us soon!  Merry Christmas dear friends!  We wish you all a blessed season and a happy New Year!

Going on ten months here in Uganda and I got my first taste of sickness.  The ironic thing is that the day I fell ill I was at the hospital helping out a friend who was also sick.  We spent hours there waiting to be seen as my throat got more and more painful and my head began to swim.  I told my other friend Betty, "I am NOT feeling well at all."  I made it home and went to bed.  By the middle of the night I couldn't swallow at all and was the most miserable I'd been in a long long time.  By 5:30 am I knew I needed a doctor after I tried swallowing a Tylenol 3 pill and it got stuck in my enlarged tonsils. 

I hopped on a boda and had a harrowing early morining ride through Kampala.  Luckily I was the only one at the clinic that early.  By the time the doctor called me into his office I warned him I might vomit.  He chuckled good naturedly and said, "Go ahead...I'm a doctor."  I eyed him suspiciously.  He handed me a HUGE cup of liquid tylenol for kids and told me to drink it down.  I warned him again that I would for sure throw up if he made me do it.  Again he gave a little shrug and said, "Go stand by the trash can then."  So I get the first revolting sip down and start to sweat.  The second sip barely makes it down and I just know what is coming.  The third sip put me over the edge and sure enough I puked right there in the doctor's office.  It was a strange satisfying moment.  I wanted to say, "I told you so" and stick out my toungue but I was too busy retching. 

I think he finally realized that yes I was indeed sick.  So what does he make me do?  He wants to stick a speculum down my already enraged throat.  I sighed with resignation as if to say, "You want me to puke again?".  He came at me and stuck it on my tongue and had to jump back as I started to gag.  He gave up.  "Well, lets do a blood test." He says.

So after a blood test and a shot to alleviate my puke-fest tendencies I waited for an hour to find out what was wrong with me.  I begged them to let me go home but them made me wait in a room and lie down.  Dan arrived and sat patiently while we waited for the diagnosis.  This doc was not quick to say I had strep but I was certain.  Anytime you'd rather rub pepper in your eye than swallow I think you can say you have strep. 

Turns out I did have some bacterial infection going on so he puts me on sulpha and sends me home.  My sister is allergic to sulpha and apparently so am I.  I broke out in a rash (that thankfully didn't itch) and turned bright red.  Aiden came in at one point to check on me and said, "Mom, your head looks like a strawberry!".  Great.  Another sleepless painful night.  The next morning after gagging on my pills again and getting one stuck in one of my tonsils I begged Dan to put me out of my misery. 

He wisely called the doctor back and asked if we could do injections of antibiotics instead of pills.  They told him to bring me back in to see the head doctor.  Off we go again.  The head doctor is a super sarcastic British guy who I adore.  He is so funny and says inappropriate things yet manages to convey doctorly wisdom.  He tells me to stop taking the sulpha and go home.  I was not happy.  Then he says come to the nurses station and get some meds and lets do another blood test.  "I'm sure you've got H1N1." He says.  So after swallowing more absolutely vile concoctions I rest in the emergency room for an hour waiting for the blood labs.  The doctor determines that while I do have a bacterial "something" going on he doesn't think it's strep but still maintains the likelyhood of it being swine flu. 

They send me home all full of gross meds again promising me that in a few days I'll feel human again.  Well here I am on day five of this illness and I may not be human yet but I'm on my way.  I had a break down last night and threw myself down on the bed in hysterics while my husband looked on in amused silence.  (This has been hard on him too!). 

All the time I was feeling poorly I kept think about thanking God even in the hard times.  I DID NOT want to say thank you for the illness at all.  I wanted to wallow in bitterness and misery OR I wanted a miraculous healing.  It doesn't look like the miraculous healing is coming but I do know God is faithful.  This has been one of the hardest tests of my faith and patience since we've been here.  It's so easy to say we "will praise YOU in the storm" but DO we really do it?  If this stupid illness continues for another two weeks will I still be able to praise God?  It is always harder to put into practice what you preach about God.  So please pray NOT for the miraculous healing that I long for but for a miraculous heart change even in the illness.  I want to feel better for sure but I want God to get His glory even when I feel miserable. 

Thanks for all you who have been praying for me through this last week.  Do pray that God would protect my kids from this illness but as always...His will be done.  This little piggy is going back to bed but I praise God for stustaining me even in this!  Love you all!

So Halloween just passed.  Not one trick or treater knocked on our gate.  In fact the whole day passed before I realized it was Halloween.  They don't celebrate Halloween here in Uganda.  They don't celebrate a lot of the holidays I grew up with.  Halloween especially because they have real witches here so no need to dress up.  I have to admit there was a brief moment of wistful nastalgia thinking about the leaves falling and kids reveling in fantasy and sugar induced comas.  This morning I saw a white girl on the back of a motorcycle taxi with remnants of her Halloween costume still painted on her face.  Otherwise it was just another day. 

Thanksgiving is next on the American holiday horizon.  Our old intern Kostya is thinking he may be back here in time to celebrate the day with us even though he is from Ukraine and had no idea what Thanksgiving was.  I have no idea what we will do or if we will celebrate it at all.  The only turkeys I see are gross rancid looking birds scaveging on the streets.  It doesn't really inspire me to cook a juicy Thanksgiving meal.  This year it may be matooke and beans in place of mashed potatoes and gravy. 

And of course the big one...Christmas.  How in the world do you celebrate Christmas in 90 degree weather?  (I grew up in the Pacific Northwest and more recently spent eight years in Montana so I'm used to cold weather and usually a white Christmas.)  Honestly I get depressed thinking about the rest of my family triming the tree with our childhood ornaments and planning feasts and buying stocking stuffers.  For the last few years Dan and I have both tried to make the focus of Christmas about Jesus and not presents.  But still...the traditions we grow up with are hard to just let go of.  I have none of my Christmas decorations, no nativity scene, no Jewel Christmas album.  So this year maybe just maybe it really will be about Jesus and not the STUFF or TRADITIONS that consume us each year at the holidays. 

Dan and I decided that there is no way to fabricate a Montana Christmas here so we may as well do something radically different.  This year our plan is to buy as much food as we can, cook all day and then open our gates on Christmas Eve and welcome the neighborhood for a meal.  I have considered setting up the projector on our newly heightened compound wall and playing a Christmas movie too.  It will be a very different holiday then we are used to but I do see it as an opportunity to remind our neighborhood of the HOPE that came to earth when Christ was born.  No one else in our neighborhood will have a decorated tree or stockings hung on the mantle.  No one else will spend countless hours making cookies and peanut butter balls.  No one else on our street will take a color coordinated family picture to send out on Christmas cards.  Christmas will most likely be just another day for the people in our neighborhood.  It may be more than just another day for us but this year we will begin a new tradition for the Morris family. 

This will be the first time in 31 years that I haven't seen my parent's smiling faces on Christmas morning and been greeted with a stocking full of treats.  This may be the first Thanksgiving in my history that we don't dine on turkey and mashed potatoes.  But we are learing how to adjust.  We are learning that there is so much more than just traditions.  On Thanksgiving we will be thankful for all that God has done in the last year.  On Christmas we will serve our community with a meal and a reminder of the promise of HOPE.  It will be different and it will be strange but I hope it will be wonderful. 

We miss you all and wish we could be part of all the holiday festivities of our native land but for now we learn to celebrate wherever we are!  Love you all!

Our friends at www.troysrealestate.com are busy at work joining our efforts in Uganda. They are a Seattle-based real estate team who have made it their goal to raise $100,000 dollars by November 2012 with their commissions for their partnership with us. Inspired by the book Crazy Love by Francis Chan, they have decided to make a radical difference with their lives and job. They realized the average income for an American family is $48,000 per year and this is one hundred times the global average. So instead of collecting big commission checks, they take only a small salary and give the rest away. While this $100,000 pledge to us is a start, they have even greater plans. Please visit their site, and please refer all your friends in Seattle to them. They have to be the only real estate agents in the world that give their money away to missions!