No Place Like Home for the Holidays

Hey Everyone!

I want to start out this post with a big THANK YOU for all of you who follow us on our blog. Its been so fun seeing people at home and hearing that they have been following along with us on this journey and praying for us. I cannot tell you how much we appreciate it. It makes our lives so much easier knowing that we have so much love and support from all of you at home and other places around the country/world.

 

So life has been as exciting and busy as usual. I left off with our post about Thanksgiving which I hear was enjoyed by those of you who read it, so thanks for the feedback! It was a holiday to remember.

After Thanksgiving, we had another PMI team of volunteers come for a week of outreach. It was a huge success and it was a really great team. We had around 45 people come and they saw about 1500 patients I believe that week. Some of them stayed back and helped out at our clinic, MKMC, for a few days which was AMAZING!! I really ate up that time with those nurses because I got to learn so much when they were there. They had some really good suggestions for us and for the clinic, and they were also just so encouraging to me which was really nice. Sometimes I get overwhelmed with the tasks at hand and trying to figure out a way to improve our clinic with the resources available to us, and these nurses were just so encouraging and creative in helping me think of solutions. Even when we couldn’t think of solutions, its just nice having someone there to see what our challenges are and know how to pray for us. I wish they could have all stayed for a year!

Throughout that week, Newman and I prepared to go home as we were flying home with the team for a month off in the U.S. It was a busy week, but lots of great work was accomplished, and I now have a long list of things to work on improving at the clinic when I return as a result of the team’s great work.

We arrived home in Charleston on December 17^th. We had a wonderful welcome at the airport from family and friends. I think my sister Liza was the most excited J. She loves having her family around her more than anyone I’ve ever known, and I love that about her. Our first stop when we got home… Mexican food! We ate at one of our favorite Mexican restaurants, El Mercadito, on Johns Island with some of our family and friends. I think only the adrenaline of being home was keeping us awake at that point. It was a 15hr flight from Africa to the U.S. so we were pretty worn out.

The next week we spent adjusting to the time difference, relaxing, and getting the house decorated for Christmas before my Mom and Dad returned from Wisconsin. Dad just finished his first semester up there. Mom and Dad got home the evening of the 23^rd. I felt like I was in a classic Christmas movie when all of the family arrives to celebrate Christmas. There were tears of joy and we all sat and had a supper by the Christmas Tree that night. From then on through to the 26^th or so, we celebrated Christmas with our usual traditions. We are so blessed to have both my parents and Newman’s family here in Charleston, so we were able to spilt our time with them all. We have had many other gatherings since then, and we will continue to until its time to return to Uganda on the 18^th of January. We are so happy that Newman’s older brother, Stratton, and his fiancé, Hunter, will be returning with us for a month in Uganda. We will also have other visitors from PMI and from our church here in Charleston when we return. 2013 is shaping up to be a really busy year already, but a really good year at the same time. We have something going on it seems like every month almost, so I know the time will fly by. We are really going to try to focus on the tasks before us and soak up our time, because if next year goes by as quickly as these past 8 months have, it will be time to come home before we know it.

 

Throughout our time home, Newman and I seem to be having the same feelings about our life. We love it, but we can’t quite wrap our minds around it. We have 2 totally different worlds that are both such a part of us now. We have Charleston and our lives here with our family and friends and all of out hobbies such as hunting, boating, fishing, camping, (shopping for meJ ), etc… We also have our lives in Uganda which include our friends and neighbors there, the places we like to travel to, the daily adventures we have, and the hardships and blessings that come with all of that. Both of these lives are SO drastically different, but we love them both so much. We now have culture shock when we go to the U.S. and when we arrive in Uganda but for different reasons. There are things that I love about both, and there are things that I don’t love about both. I appreciate both places for what they are and for what we are able to experience in each place. I think Newman and I were both surprised to find ourselves missing certain things about our lives in Uganda after only being home a few days. I don’t know if we will ever be able to fully wrap our minds around both worlds, and that’s ok. I am just happy and I feel so blessed to have both experiences as part of our lives.

To end I wanted to post some pictures, but its just not wanting to work today. I will try another day, but in the mean time, I posted a bunch on facebook today so if you are my friend, you can check those out. Next post will be back in Uganda!

Thanks! Love,
Trish