Short version: Great trip; Hal and I located, augured by hand and installed a well with a manual pump to supply some people with clean water.
Long version: 1 May - Arrived at Entebbe International at 7:30 A.M. Our checked-in baggage included the equipment needed for hand drilling a well, thus it was good to see all six of our bags arrive. We took a taxi up to Kampala (Capital City of Uganda) to Darrie and Debbie Turner's home. Dad and Mom know the Turners, for they are from the Portland area, and my parents have been supporting and following the Turner's missionary ministry for over a decade.
To reinforce the notion that this large world can be small, a team of men were at the Turners and were getting ready to fly out - they had been helping Darrie build a beefed-up electric fence to keep the elephants from eating and destroying the garden at a Bible school. The garden produce is vital for supplying the students with food as they attend the Bible School. The men helping were from the Coos Bay, Oregon. The youth pastor of the group, originally from Esticada, was a former High School student of my brother-in-law Chad.
For the next couple of days, we procured a pump, well casing and supplies (no small feat in a developing country), Hal reunited with numerous friends and we attended Kampala Baptist Church on Sunday.
Engineering Ministry International (eMi) loaned us a water level indicator (this instrument is helpful in well development) and it was good to meet some of their top-shelf engineers and hear about the projects they were working on in Uganda.
Monday evening provided one of the highlights of my trip: I attended a men's BSF class. For the first time in a very long time I was able to attend as a member. The Kampala class is similar in size to our Sacramento class - around 300 men.
The discussion leader of the group I was placed in, a local MD, did a superb job with the group. It was sobering for an American to hear some of the weekly struggles of these men - they identify with the Israelites wandering in the wilderness in a manner I cannot. The Teaching Leader's (TL) name was Patrick . After enjoying and being challenged by his lecture, I approached him, identified myself as a fellow TL - his eyes came alive as we shared about the classes we serve. With all the sights and stories and poverty I came into contact with on this trip, I cried twice (some of this may be blamed on lack of sleep): once was being a part of a worship service with the Africans in Gulu and the other was while I was praying for Patrick and the BSF class in Kampala that evening.Tuesday, 5 May, we departed the big city and the hospitality of the Turners for Gulu - six hours to the north. The Turners loaned us their four-cylinder, four-wheel drive; with well casing and pump rod straped to the top we made the journey.
Our new home is to be Hotel Roma - a small concrete block room, populated with cockroaches, no ventilation, intermittent power and mosquito nets with as many holes as a Barry Bonds steroid denial. It did have a toilet and thus no complaints from me about the room.Wednesday, 6 May, was to be our first day in getting out into the brush to look at some possible well locations. The church was holding a youth conference in one of the Internally Displaced Person (IDP) Camps - families have been living in these camps for years as they were displaced from there home villages by the waring rebel army. The church asked me to to speak at the youth rally on marriage.
Through an interpreter, I spoke on the Old and New Covenant God made with us, how the covenants build on each other and give us a picture of the future. Then I tied in another covenant: the marriage covenant and how it also points to something bigger - the covenant Jesus has with his bride (the church). The relationship agreement of marriage is to be taken very seriously, and thus placed above our own selfish desires. It is a common practice in Northern Uganda for a husband to "return" his wife to her family, and get a refund for the price he paid if she does not produce a child with in a year or two. The church was doing a good work by holding a youth conference on marriage.Literally, moments after I finished speaking, and Hal was giving an illustration on marriage, my lower GI tract was introduced to a small African organism. The meeting did not go well. I spent the next half-hour squatting over a hole in the ground as my inside expressed its anger at meeting this new acquaintance. Hal, who knew the drill from previous trips to Uganda, got me back to Gulu, straight to a pharmacy (no prescription necessary in this country) and I was back to working order in no time. I did have to miss the meeting with the church pastors that evening to discuss our plans for locating and installing a well as I spent the evening in the hotel room. The toilet was a great luxury.
The next day we traveled north of Gulu for a couple of hours until the dirt road transitioned into a walking trail and we came to the home village of David - one of the pastors of the church. This was off the beaten path. As with all the villages outside of the Gulu, sun-dried clay bricks held up a thatched roof to make the circular huts composing the living quarters for the families. First impression: the amount of children numbered or out numbered the adults and the poverty was profound.
A number of the children had no clothes; I tried to make a point of ignoring the action of some of the older boys I was conversing with as they attempted to cover their nakedness with the rags they wore. The lack of pigment in my skin is not something the children saw often and some, it appeared, saw a white man for the first time as a couple of the younger children starred with wide eyes and broke out in frightened crying as they ran off to their mothers.From the village, we hiked for a mile or two out into the brush to observe a potential well location.
A stream provides surface water that keeps the people living. Near the stream, and topographically above the flood level, we augured down for an hour or so to explore the possibility of placing a well. 
Not feasible at this location for the groundwater was too low and soil too rocky for our low technology. The day was not wasted, for Pastor David walked us over to a tree and explained this was the tree his mother knelt down and accepted Jesus as herGod and Savior. I will gladly give up a day to see and hear the story of a soul coming together with my living God. I look forward to meeting David's Mother in eternity and I can let her know I visited the tree were her life begin.
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