God's protection....

Last weekend I took some vacation days to go up north to Murchison Falls, the biggest game park in Uganda, with my friend Patience (who is also a nurse). We left on Thursday and headed to Kampala, the capital, where we would meet up with our tour company and leave the next day. We arrived to Kampala a little before 7pm and decided to go into one of the 2 grocery stores we have in Kampala that make you actually feel like you are kind of in America to buy some mineral water to take on our trip. We were in the store around 30 minutes, if that, and came out to find my car had been broken into! Both our bags for the trip were stolen as well as my digital camera and some money! I couldn't believe it....we had left the car locked (i'm almost positive) and there were like 5 security guards around 'guarding' the parking lot. The security guards were of course no help though...said they didn't see anything which I don't see how is possible since the shopping center was closing and there were only like 3 cars in the parking lot. It was a frustrating ordeal cause you can't just call the police to come (you have to actually go to the police station) and no one was really helping me. So we had nothing but the clothes on our backs and we were supposed to be leaving for a 3 day trip the next day! I felt like it was like The Amazing Race t.v. show and they had just taken away all our belongings :) But Patience, who is also a believer just reminded me to be grateful for God's protection. We were ok, we didn't lose our major money for the trip and our passports that were thankfully in our purses, and even more amazingly Spencer had let me borrow his really nice camera and it wasn't stolen! It was the most expensive thing in the car and it was still there, by God's grace.

I was pretty shaken up after this incident and didn't see how there was any way we could go on our trip now especially since we didn't have any clothes or even a toothbrush! But Christy, my friend in Kampala said we should come borrow stuff from her and still go. So thankfully we did. A volunteer who was there visiting even left me some of her makeup which was a blessing since you can't get stuff like that here. So even in the small things God provided. God just really showed me through this expereince how temporal our material posessions are and how all we need is Him. Frustrating things happen, but God is always in control and I have peace knowing that He ordained this for His glory. Our two Bibles were stolen so who knows, maybe the theives will come to know the Lord :)

Here I am with Patience in front of the falls....this is the Nile River by the way. I'm so glad we ended up going...I got to finally see giraffes! It was amazing...I hope to put up some more pictures sometime this week.