Week 7 email

This past week was rough. Culturally, physically, mentally, emotionally, etc.

I am always grateful for these times because they help me to learn,
grow, and ultimately become better... but I'll stand by one of my
favorite statements "suffering is mandatory but misery is optional."

Amid the difficulties there were some awesome moments of which included :

(A) one of the volunteers (Kenny) is about to graduate with a degree
in Economics. He is super smart and is working on some awesome
business classes and other projects that have to do with budgeting,
business ideas, saving, and creating curriculum. On Tuesday he was
really sick, but needed someone to fill in for him and teach a
business class to the people of Bunabuwyeka. He asked me to do it
about thirty minutes before he was supposed to leave. He gave me a
piece of paper with the basic material and briefed me for about ten
minutes on what I was supposed to teach. After that it was up to me. I
summoned all the powers of the universe and somehow taught an hour
long lesson to a bunch of middle aged men and women on business
tactics, budgeting, and creativity. And it went well. And they liked
it. I was sweating bullets by the end of it. But it was a pretty sweet
experience.

(B) We began our sanitary pad lesson in two of the schools here. The
first one was a bunch of 11-13 year olds. The second one was 14-18
year olds. It went better than we could have ever hoped. The first
lesson was on the menstrual cycle and in general, sex education. They
have never been educated on anything in regards to this because their
parents don't know either and it is not a subject that is brought up
in school... because the teachers don't know either. The cool thing
about teaching these lessons was that I felt like we were making an
impact. It is a very important project. (One of the headmasters at the
school told me that they have some of their students sexually active
at the age of 7... crazy). Our next lesson addresses the issue of birth
control and abstinence until marriage. I hope this will impact the
students we teach in the right way.

The crazy part of this story happens on Thursday. We got a call from
Child of Hope (one of the schools we had taught the lesson at earlier
on in the week) asking us to come back again to teach the same lesson.
We went back thinking it would be a different group of young girls...
but it was a room full of parents! We spent the next two hours
answering many, many questions. All of their questions were very
basic, but they had not idea about anything! Some of their questions I
was even tempted to laugh at. Thankfully we were able to answer them
all correctly because of an extensive manual we all read for our
project that another NGO provided us with.

 Something interesting to also note about this situation is that these
women were all from the slum of Namatala. The slum houses around
20,000 people and is filled with people who came to take refuge from
Northern Uganda during the war/crazy happenings. The men in the slum
are known to be drunk and lazy. The women pick up the slack with the
work, but have to deal with sever abuse from the men. It was a very
neat experience for me to talk with them about their lives and the
issues they are facing. These are the types of experiences that I will
never forget. They are also they experiences that have me counting my
blessings (one by one). I am very glad that I get to be a women, but a
women in America where we are considered and treated as equal.

(D) We are going to build a latrine at a primary school here. The
latrine they have now only has one stall for almost 200 people. The
new latrine we're building (starting tomorrow) will have six stalls.
The schools we are building it at we LOVE. I am excited about this
project and will send some good pictures along once it's finished.

(E) On Friday we took Elder Halladay and his companion out for lunch.
They were thrilled. In his entire mission he has never been taken out
to lunch (only one other time) because the people are too poor to do
that. He enjoyed the meal very much. Near the end of it he talked to
me about the U that someone had painted on our lawn years ago during
the BYU v Utah rivalry week. He then told me that it was him, Erik,
and Jim Griffin! I didn't know if you guys knew that or not, but I was
shocked. haha they got away with it after all these years.


So like I said, this week was hard for various reasons... but I know the
challenges I am having and things I am learning here are preparing me
for my future occupation and for my future family (as cheesy as that
sounds). So cheers to new weeks and capitalizing on the 50 days I have
left here. Love you all and hope you are all doing well and happy!

Ray