MIA at the OPUM

[Hi! Sorry we have been absent from this blog for so long. I see our last post was over a month ago. :( For most of August and half of September, we were still in the Ik area. Our internet speed has gotten worse and worse this year, to the point where we were discouraged from even trying to blog. The last two weeks of September, we were in southern Karamoja (what this post is about), where we had internet but were caught up in a variety of fun activities. I know, excuses, excuses...]

So, if you were wondering why we were MIA on the blog recently, it's because we were definitely IA at the Orthodox Presbyterian Uganda Mission (OPUM) base in the village of Nakaale in southern Karamoja. Our good friends Bob & Martha Wright had invited us a while back to come visit them, their family, and the other families and volunteers that make up their team.

Our agenda for the ten days we were with them---besides having a great time with friends---was for Amber to spend time in their clinic, observing the work of a lab technician, for Kate to spend time with Martha, learning what an 'educational linguist' does (as opposed to a 'descriptive linguist' like Terrill) and helping her, and for Terrill to spend time with Bob and the boys, getting some good 'guy time' in, as well as getting some distraction-free computer work done.

We did have a good time with the OPC folks, and we so appreciate their hospitality. As a team they are serving the Pian sub-tribe of the Karimojong through evangelism, leadership training, literacy, healthcare, health education, farming (job creation), borehole drilling, and a host of other activities. Needless to say, they stay busy, but not too busy to incorporate the three of us into their community life, which was really something we needed.

This is a view of the mission station from a nearby hill:

This is Kate on the same hill:

And us: