Meeting families - building a mut house

Hi All,

Luke and I and team have had a great first couple days. Yesterday we went around and met all of the sponsored families of the people on the team. We met Robert and his family first. You may remember Robert and his family from our trip last year. Robert's wife died in December of 2007 of AIDS. Robert also has HIV AIDS. Robert has five children. We have sponsored Robert and his family for a little over a year now. It was great to see them all again. He is doing well. He was so happy to see us - he was literally running to the bus to greet us and had some great hugs for us (normal mode of greeting in Uganda is a hug). We gave Robert and his family some gifts, then he gave us some gifts - two big sugar cane stalks, a live chicken, then a hand made picture that said 'May God Bless Gene Weaver' - it was very cool and touching. By the way, we received two other live chickens as gifts and a bunch of eggs. So today we had eggs for breakfast and this evening we had.... chicken :) We also went and met our other sponsored family. She is a widow with nine children and her 80 year old mother-in-law - living in a small house. Another great time to meet with them and share gifts. It is just amazing to see how these people live. Much of the time, they are in survival mode. Children running around with rags on, red dirt everywhere, no running water, no electricity, many of the homes are small mud homes, etc.

Today, we helped build a mud house. We will be doing the same tomorrow. We also had the opportunity to help out some people financially. We sent a mother and sick child to the clinic for treatment. We met a man with AIDS that had some issue with his legs. He was bed ridden with very swollen legs and feet. It looked like elephantiasis, but I don't think it was in that elephantiasis has a strong oder to it. We prayed for the man and gave him a little money for help. We are going to check back tomorrow to see what the medicine costs to help there as well. His elderly mother was there with him. She has already buried four other children so we are hoping to help this man get better. The thing about AIDS is that it is usually not AIDS that kill the person, it is the secondary illness that tends to be the issue in that the immune system is destroyed with the AIDS virus.

Here is a link to pictures. I will post pictures on this site versus within this blog as the internet here is pretty tough.

http://picasaweb.google.com/genew64/Africa2009LukeAndGene#

More posts to come...