Friends and family,To be honest I could not forget to mention the last few days here inUganda. I must say it is unbelievable knowing that I will be leaving sosoon. I do not think it will set in that I am out of Africa until I setfoot in the Dallas airport.I look forward to seeing each of you when I get back to the States. As muchas I include in these emails, I leave out many other stories. However I dowant to tell you about the most recent incident at Bible study. To give yousome background, I have held a Bible study for the local church at myhouse. As of right now the membership consists of me and about threeothers. As African custom insists, the person who hosts the meetingalso needs to lead it. I still have not understood why I need to leadevery week but I went with it. This last week I was extremely busy atwork so I was unable to prepare like I wanted to Bible study. Soinstead of having an in-depth look at scripture, we decided to talkabout essential ways a Christian should live. It was a very practicaldiscussion. The discussion was about Biblical accountability. Themembers of the church were familiar with accountability but wereunsure why they needed it and how it was to be incorporated in theireveryday lives. We discussed the nature of man as being sinful andthat only through faith in Christ can we have victory in this life andbe seen as fully pleasing to God. Therefore, we must have ourbrothers for the men and the sisters for the women being active in ourlives so we can help each other live a life worthy to God. We spokeabout the importance of same sex accountability and in marriage yourwife or husband becomes your main accountability partner. Thediscussion went very well and I look forward to seeing how theyimplement this new but old thought into their church. One of theattenders of the study is the college/young adults leader. He planson teaching this to the group.So the background was a little long...sorry, but many times somethingfunny happens every study. Well the other day, one of the members(Dan) picked an electronic appliance and asked "John what is this for?" Now you must understand that Ugandans are very resourceful andcan do or make anything dealing with their hands but they are not usedto seeing electronic appliances that are specialized for only one ortwo purposes...so with that in mind I enlightened Dan that what he washolding is for roasting bread and is called a toaster. He looked atit funny and put it aside. The locals here think that toasting breadis a silly think to do. They wonder why someone would want to takesoft bread and burn it to make it hard.I had a good laugh about it on the inside and realized just how manyluxuries we have that we see as necessities but are BY FAR luxuries.We had our last service at church today and the members of the churchsurprised some of us with going away gifts. They say that good byesare not necessary because we will see each other in Heaven, so theygave us a gift and said "if you come back to Uganda, come see us...ifnot we will worship beside you in Heaven."This email is longer than I planned so I will cease my stories.Please pray for me these next couple of days. A lot is going on and Iam very anxious to see my family and friends. It is going to bereally hard to say my farewells to my friends here. God satisfies more than anything else.

John