What a difference a year makes! This time last year the girls and I, alongside our dear team mates, landed in the UK not quite sure how the next days, months or even the next year would pan out. Well a year on its great to look back and see Gods goodness, his faithfulness and His bigger picture! A great lesson in trusting without being able to see the details! The programme is now going from strength to strength, quite literally as we now have both planes and three pilots in the programme (hooray!), and as we now head into a very busy flying period serving partners all over Chad!
At the end of September we headed out of Chad as a family for 4 weeks to have some time with family and friends, to take some holiday and for Sam to attend the regional managers conference for MAF which was taking place in Kenya. So we organised a little East Africa tour and made the most of every day! Just as we were leaving Chad I came across this...
I have to say we were all pretty exhausted as we took our leave, but being 'unplugged' for a few weeks has really made a huge difference for us to keep doing what we do!
Here are a few highlights of our time away...
First stop was Uganda - time with Kampala International Church (KIC) who support us to be in Chad, time with special friends in Kampala, and amazing time in Fort Portal with Sam's family and more special friends. The girls had not seen their grandparents, uncles, aunties, cousins and godparents for almost three years so the reunion was incredibly special. Plus we got to spend time at our cottage with green all around us, lakes, hills and mountains! It was food for the soul!
Our neighbour in Fort Portal has horses, much to Rachel's delight, so we had some fun time riding the different horses (with accompanying foal) with the help of Aunty Dani!
Bird watching with gogglers in princess dresses on Aunty Dani's porch, like you do!
An incredibly special time with Grandma and Grandad and amazingly we managed to get 17 of the 21 cousins together. A very special time together as the Baguma family!
We headed to Queen Elizabeth National Park just for the day and took a boat trip along the Kazinga Channel. The girls loved seeing so many elephants, water buffalo, hippos, birds, warthogs, Uganda cob and even a croc sunning himself with his mouth open!
After a great busy people filled time in Uganda we headed to Kenya for Sam to attend his meetings. While in Nairobi we found some more exciting things to do as well as connecting with more friends and godparents. A definite highlight though was visiting the Giraffe sanctuary.
As the meetings came to a close we jumped on the new high speed train from Nairobi to Mombasa and set off for a few days on the beach to end our time away. The train was great, it was a very spacious, clean, smooth ride and we even saw more animals as we headed through Savo West National Park.
Beach and pool time - three very happy days for the whole family!
A bit of snorkelling in the corals. We saw loads of amazing coloured fish. Rachel did well and enjoyed it for a bit. Becca wasn't so sure but gave it a try.
We had to take a ride in a tuc tuc as Rachel was fascinated with them!
So now we are back in Chad, settling into work and school routines and preparing for a very busy month of visitors and work. As we came back I was reading a blog (I can't remember the reference of whose it was!) and so I will leave you with a sentence that I feel God gave to me for this next season of life in Chad...
'May you listen to the music of each season, and dance elegantly the dance God has granted you within your home.'
