Uganda or Bust...

With the onset of the new year upon us, Billy and I will officially begin our preparations for our mission trip to Uganda. As I stated in a previous post, we will be traveling with the adoption agency we adopted Vivi from and a church youth group. One of the things I am most excited about it is gathering the items we will take over in duffle bags as relief aide to the baby home that our agency has partnered with to find homes for orphaned infants. I will blog here about the details as they come to play and will also be sharing information about the baby home's progress (they currently have four babies) and work we will be doing with Africa Renewal Ministries. I am working on putting the finishing touches on our support letters and hope to have them in the mail by the second week in January. I am also looking into passports and visas. I hope to get those applications done and sent out in the next few days.

I will be spending this time reading up on the plight of women and children around the world, to prepare my heart for what God has in store for us. I found this book at Half Price and it is a Latin American woman's story as told by President George Bush's daughter who spent time working with Unicef. Below is the description.

"Ana's life is a collection of bits and pieces of her past. Infected with HIV at birth, she's unaware of many details of her early childhood and barely remembers her mother. Living with her strict grandmother, she learns how to keep secrets – secrets about her infection and about the abuse she endures at home. But after Ana falls in love and becomes pregnant at seventeen, she begins a journey of hope – a journey of protecting herself and others. She is living with HIV, not dying from it.
Jenna Bush tells of Ana's struggle to break free from the cycle of abuse, silence, and illness with passion and eloquence. But this is not just Ana's story. It is also the story of many children around the world who are marginalized, neglected, and mistreated."