Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Support Update #7 – The Next Step

Boy have we got some big announcements with this blog entry. In fact, we have some of the biggest announcements of our entire lives. For starters we’ll get to the one that excites us the most:

Stephanie is pregnant. We will have our firstborn in October of this year. We are both excited and scared about becoming parents, but isn’t everybody?

Next: I thought I would only go on one project trip while in Uganda, but I was pleased to learn that I’ll get to serve on another project trip in Iganga to serve Abundant Life International Ministries by designing a secondary school. Click the link to read all about it. I leave in two weeks.

The final announcement is preceded by an awesome testimony.

God has really provided for us.

We sent our letters and made our calls and then just figured God would provide enough money. What blew us away was not that God provided what we needed, but that he provided ABOVE AND BEYOND what we needed.

By the time support raising was completed, we realized we had enough money to extend our time with eMi an entire semester. So we thought and prayed about it over the past year and decided to extend our time with eMi. I will serve at the eMi world headquarters in Colorado Springs.

Some of you may be thinking: What? Colorado? I thought eMi served in third world nations?

Well, yes, we do. The difference between our office here in Kampala and the Colorado Springs office is in location and scope. Here at the East Africa office, we serve ministries in Uganda and the surrounding nations exclusively. We bus/fly to the ministry site for two weeks on the project trip (see the last update) and then we come back to our office to finish the report portion of the job.

The Colorado Springs office operates the exact same way, except they serve ministries all over the world. They fly to their ministry site, stay for two weeks, and then come back to the office to finish the report portion of the job.

I won’t know what project I’ll work on or where they will send me until June, but I’m told that they’ll probably send me to Africa.

So our time with eMi will continue, even though our time in Uganda is coming to an end.

We return to Texas on July 9th where we will see friends and family for about five weeks (If you can employ either of us during this time, we would greatly appreciate it). Then, Stephanie’s parents will help us move to Colorado Springs in mid August. Doug will participate in the annual eMi golf marathon fundraiser where he’ll golf for the East Africa office (for more info or to sponsor him, email Doug: vettedoug@gmail.com). The semester will last until December and then THE THREE OF US come back to Texas for the Holidays.

After that, who knows.

Enough of the future, now I’m going to talk about what we’ve done since the last update. Both my parents, Stephanie’s parents and her cousin came to visit us for a week. Here’s some pictures:



Doug, Diana, Mari, Steph and Greg at Murchison Falls




Greg, Bob, Christina and Steph at the source of the Nile

Prayer Requests:

1. Pray for Steph’s health and the health of our Baby (16 weeks now)
2. Pray that the eMi team will serve Abundant Life International Ministries with the best design possible. That communication will be good and people’s lives will be changed.
3. We only have a month left in Uganda, so pray that we finish out our time here well.
4. Pray for Heritage International School, they are switching from an American Curriculum to a British one.

Thank you all,

Greg

(Since I’m such a dork, I put a code in the Project Trip Report – Kapchorwa update that announces Stephanie’s Pregnancy. It’s only in the section I wrote though, not in Steph’s section)

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Turns out the Bible is a Forgery...

At least according to Libyan leader Col Gadaffi.

Yes, it is a forgery simply because it never mentions the prophet Mohammed. Therefore it could not be the word of God. That's what he told the crowd in Uganda that gathered to celebrate the opening of a new mosque in downtown Kampala, complete with President Museveni's attendance.

Ok, so this kind of silliness would at best be reported in the religion section of a newspaper in America. But nope, not here in Uganda. The front page headline read: "The Bible is a Forgery says Col Gadaffi."

I read the article cause I was in the mood for amusement, and what shocked me was this:

"President Museveni said he would put the Archbishop of Uganda, Luke Orombi and Bishop Cyprian Lwanga of Kampala Archdiocese to task to explain the omission of Prophet Muhammad from the Bible."

What on earth, does he want to give credibility to such a ludicrous claim?

So a few days later, the Arch Bishop replied, and the front page headline read "Bible is real says Archbishop," Another shocking headline.

And then the BBC picked up on the shocking story.

I guess Americans have their silly front page headlines as well, a few pop figures drug records, prison sentences, divorces and custody battles come to mind.