Hello everyone.I hope you look forward to reading these emails. Again, if they are tooburdensome for you let me know and I can easily remove your name. I willnot think of you as any less of a person.I started my first official day at work on Monday. I normally get upat around 6:30am to have some quiet time with God and then work startsat around 8am but we always have office prayer at 8:30am. It is soincredible working with a Christian ministry. Having God as yourfocus everyday makes work enjoyable because you know it is for Hissake and nothing else.Our first assignment was to go to a city and retrieve bus tickets forour trip to Rwanda next Monday (at that time I will be unable to sendemails) and also get a color cartridge for the printer. Well we havenever been to this city before but we had a map so we figured we couldmake it. Also, nobody told us where the bus station was. We justknew what it was close to. There is no mapquest here so you have tofigure it out. We ended up getting lost in this city and wonderingaround for hours. Ugandans are not very good with directions andhaven't learned how to read maps either. If you approach a Ugandanand ask him or her for directions to a place they will give youdirections even if they have no clue how to get there (they do notlike disappointing bazungus or white people). So we would ask oneperson who did not know English very well and he would tell us the busstation is south, the next person we asked after walking south for .25of a mile told us the station was north. Then we asked some morepeople and nobody ever pointed in the right direction. It wasfrustrating at the time but looking back at it, it was funny. Thestaff at eMi told us that next time you are lost ask people in thesame area and then take the average direction of what they told you.If you have money you can go to a boda driver (scooter driver) becausethey know their way around but they will not tell you unless you paythem. We call these guys "boda-quest" because they are our mapsaround Kampala.Another interesting event was that we had to hand wash our ownboxers/underwear because it is an insult if we ask the cleaning ladyto do it. So my roommate washed his and left it out to dry but whenhe came back he knew that one of his boxers was missing. He lookedall around and could not find it until some blue caught his eye in aherd of goats in our courtyard. It turns out that one of the goatssnatched his boxers from the line. My roommate did not want to fighta goat for what was left of his boxers so he let him have it. Thegoat seemed to like the strong detergent taste.I got my first taste of Ugandan basketball last night. I played withsome missionaries from the village. We played on a court that was aslevel and smooth as my Aunt and Uncles gravel road but the game turnedout alright. You had to compensate for the wind gusts and theslightly bent rim.We have dinner with a man today named Peter. We were warned that he"falls in love with buzungus" so we will have to be careful. He textmessaged me at least 8 times EARLY this morning (I wish I wasexaggerating) to make sure that we will be there.There are numerous species of plant and bird life here in Uganda. Iwill try to take pictures or sketches of as many as I can but thereare close to 30 species, if not more, of birds that I have yet toidentify. The plants thus far are sugar cane, banana trees, corn, andseveral wildflowers. I shall try to capture them all for yourenjoyment. Much love.

John

P.S. - please pray that the relationships here will be authentic. weare having trouble with selfish reasons to befriend us.