Empower 1 in Arua

The next morning (should be Oct 7🤦😂), we woke up and ate breakfast at the hotel restaurant. Will got reprimanded by one of the serving attendants because he didn't use a separate plate for his fruit. He put everything on one plate, and apparently that was wrong 😬😂. As we were leaving the restaurant, we saw another muzungu (white person), and so we said hi and talked for a little while. He said that he was a surgeon from Oconomowoc, WI and was observing some surgeons in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that he trained a while back. The crazy part was that he had to fly in and out of the city because it was under siege, so no one is able to enter by land. 

We went to Empower 1, which is an organization that "empowers local leaders in the hard places of Africa to establish churches among the unreached and under-engaged peoples for generations to come" according to their website. We met some awesome men like Favour and David, who showed us around their small property. David absolutely blew our minds when he told us about the refugee camp in Bidi Bidi. The people there were displaced during the South Sudanese War and are called IDPs (internally displaced persons). He said that each IDP is given 4kg of maize and 2kg of beans per month. That is 8.8lbs of corn and 4.4lbs of beans. That's crazy!! 90% of the camp is made up of women and children because most of the men try to find jobs or are soldiers. There is nothing to do in this camp, which makes it a great place for pastors from Empower 1 to go and minister. People will listen to God's word no matter what. 

We then did a small devotion with the staff present at Empower 1. It was so awesome to be able to read a universal book with fellow believers and share our love for the gospel. We studied 2 Corinthians 8, which is a great reminder to give generously and to support our brothers and sisters in the faith. Giving does not have to be monetary. Jesus gave of himself. The pastors in this organization, like David, do not make much money for being pastors. Most of them in the area have another occupation, such as farming, because they do not get paid more than $25 a month usually. They just give from their heart. "We give because we've been given to", one of the men said during the devotion, "Jesus knows what we have, and we are to be faithful stewards for His kingdom". We also sang a few songs from the song book below. I left Arua with the feeling of a full cup 😊.

We traveled back down to RG, so that we could grab a few last things and say our goodbyes to Dr. Tim and Mama Janice. We stopped at a gas station and purchased gum that dad thought tasted like cough drops and ice cream that Will tried to convince us was tuna flavored. Looking out the window never gets old when you're in a different country, especially Uganda. 

I had been a little frustrated that Gift had laughed at us for going home because of Ebola, but when we got to RG he could tell I was sad, and so he said this: "Maybe you can spend time here at RG and do all this whenever you come back. I think that you will understand when you're a parent some day. He [dad] doesn't want people to think he just dumped off his daughter in a country with this deadly disease. Sometimes, it's not worth the risk".

That made me feel a little bit better, but it still didn't make saying goodbye to Dr. Tim and Mama Janice any easier. I didn't get to see the kids at RG or paint or do anything that I had really wanted to do. But, they assured me that there were no hard feelings and that they were returning home to the US in two weeks anyways, regardless of the Ebola outbreak. That same day, we drove all the way to Kampala to our favorite hotel, Shine Country Hotel.