Rwenzori Mission School

Eli and Hailey are blessed to have the opportunity to attend Rwenzori Mission School. Named after the Rwenzori Mountains that dominate the landscape of Bundibugyo District, this two room school house has been educating missionary kids with World Harvest Mission for many years. The school currently meets in a building that was originally used for Bible translation when World Harvest worked in partnership with SIL. Now that the New Testament translation is complete, the building has been repurposed as a school. At times during the year, Eli and Hailey were the only students. With the return of two more missionary families, the school is currently bursting at the seems with an enrollment of five. Hailey is in Pre-K with a friend named Finch, Eli is in 1st grade, William is in 3rd grade and Elizabeth is in 7th grade. We have two wonderful teachers, Miss Ashley and Miss Alanna who shower the RMS students with love and knowledge each week.

Rwenzori Mission School

First day of school after our arrival in September. Eli and Hailey love their teacher, Miss Ashley, and their classmate, Finch.

Eli's desk

Hailey's desk

This has been our first year of homework with Eli. Some days are better than others :) With all the children outside our window calling him to come and play, it can be difficult for him to focus on math and spelling. But he is doing a great job. He's turning in his homework to Miss Ashley above.

Drawing reindeer and Christmas trees at the RMS Christmas Party.

Here is Katelyn trying to get in on the action.

Isaac likes to walk the kids to school with his backpack so he can pretend he is going as well.

One of our favorite things about RMS is that it is so close to home. No more rushing out of the house and struggling with car seats to get the kids to school. Just a short walk with a view of the Rwenzori Mountains in the background and we are there! When our new house is finished, we will be right next door.

We are so thankful for the RMS teachers, Miss Ashley and Miss Alanna. We don't know if we would be able to serve here if we were responsible for providing medical care for the community and homeschooling our children. Having a great school with American teachers has been a true blessing for our family. The teachers who are called here are sent through Serge with a two year commitment. They have a vision for serving missionary families by providing a quality education for their children. Miss Ashley will be returning home in the spring of 2017. If you have a degree in education and a heart for missions, would you consider serving in Bundibugyo, Uganda for a two year term? Please contact us or Serge if you would like more information.

Kampala!

YES we are still here! Hopefully, you are keeping current with us through our email updates that we are trying to send out every 1-2 months. We will have another one coming out this week. If however, you were relying on this blog to keep updated with our family... I'm soooo sorry! I had great plans (and still do) of getting on here every week to put together a little post about life in Uganda, but my aspirations appear to have been over ambitious. ;) We are in a busy season of life. Whether we are in Peoria, or in Bundibugyo, life has little margin right now as we parent four little ones and run our house. But we love hearing from you amidst the busyness and it actually helps us to remember to send out little updates like this. And we hope to update more regularly on the blog as routine finds its way into our lives again.

One of the things several people have asked us about over the past few months is how we do our grocery shopping and prepare our food. We are currently living in Nyahuka which is a little village in Bundibugyo district on the western border of Uganda. We are living very comfortably with electricity, indoor plumbing, and an adequate water supply. We have a refrigerator and a propane stove/oven and are even really spoiled with a washing machine. We buy lots of our food items locally each week at market or the little shops in town. We can get seasonal produce, eggs, legumes, rice, sugar, flour, oil, and a few random things like macaroni noodles. We can get fresh tilapia on Saturdays that is caught in a lake a few hours away. However, there are still many things we can't get here (like dairy, canned goods, and cereal) or prefer to buy in the capital city (like meat). So, our family piles into the car every 8-10 weeks to go to Kampala and restock on those items. Our next trip to Kampala is in one week and we are all getting excited for our break. These trips also provide me a break from having to cook every meal for our family! There are several great restaurants in Kampala that safely prepare food and some with menus that even cater to our American tastebuds. One of the malls has a shop with soft serve yogurt where you can put on all the yummy toppings, an outing we all look forward to. The drive to Kampala takes us about 8 hours which includes a lunch stop at our favorite pizza restaurant in Fort Portal. Though long, the drive is still very enjoyable. If you can ignore the pot holes, the many high speed bumps, and all the people yelling "Muzungu!" (which means English speaker) at your car, there is so much to see! I just can't get over the beauty this land has to behold. We usually see some monkeys along the way too which is a little more exciting than seeing another goat or cow.

When we take these trips, we try to spend a few days of our week relaxing. We usually have a pool day where we swim at a local resort or hotel and just enjoy walking around the malls. The rest of the trip is pretty busy as we run endless amounts of errands. Since no single grocery store has everything we need, we usually have to stop at 4-5 places before the shopping list is complete. We place an order at a butcher shop to get meat frozen to allow us to travel back with it. We also freeze a two month supply of butter and cheese that we return with. The cooler is very full!!

And when we have finished all the shopping, we are quite a sight as we head back to Bundibugyo. Cleaning supplies, toilet paper, toiletries, perishables, non-perishables, and the list goes on and on. We were borrowing the vehicle of some teammates when we first arrived and there was not an inch of space to spare. Since then we have purchased a large van which now gives us a bit of extra room.

It is a wonder that we are able to fit the kids in the car. They are hard to even spot!

If you contributed to our one-time expense needs before we left the U.S., YOU helped us purchase this vehicle for our family. THANK YOU!! We feel like we got a really good deal on this vehicle and though it is a 2002 model with nearly 200,000 miles on it, it is much newer than many of the vans we had looked over. It also received a great report from the mechanic who did an inspection for us. You can pray with us that this van with serve our family well for many years to come.

Care Packages

Many have asked how they can send things to us! A fair warning is that international shipping is quite expensive. You can send up to 20 lbs. in a large size international flat rate shipping box (you can get these from your local post office) for around $87. You can send a padded mailing envelope for less. It takes about 5-6 weeks to get to us. You can also send letters! We love receiving mail. We live 8 hrs. from the grocery store and any major shopping so having something show up at the local post office is certainly a treat for us and REALLY exciting to our kids! Here are some suggestions if you would like to send a package our way (though we are thankful for anything you think we would enjoy!):

Care Packages

Hard candies like lemon drops, life savers, and suckers
protein/trail mix bars
small cans of diced green chilis
packets of powdered cheese taken out of the instant mac and cheese boxes (like Kraft, Horizon, or Auntie Anne's)
brownie, muffin, or cookie mixes
herbal teas, earl gray, and spiced chai tea
vanilla wafer cookies
pudding mix
pretzels
M&Ms, starburst, skittles
Real Lime and Real Lemon powder drink mixes
Gatorade powder
goldfish/cheez-its
foil packages of cooked chicken (in ziploc bag in case they leak)
craisins and raisins
pepperoni (in a ziploc bag in case they leak and the ones that have no air in the bag are less likely to pop open with air pressure in transit!)
parmesan cheese
nuts (walnuts, pecans, almonds)
Planter's mixed nuts
sunflower seeds, shelled
coloring books, crayons, markers
doll clothes
stickers
puzzles
pencils
small crafts for kids
hot wheels, small trucks
books
CDs/DVDs
magazines (cooking, southern living, national geographic and Time magazine)

When listing the items in the boxes on the mailing slip, please estimate the total value to be less than $100. Thank you!!

Please send all overseas mail to:
Marc and Stephanie Carrigan
c/o World Harvest Mission
PO Box 1142
Bundibugyo, Uganda
East Africa

Please send all stateside mail to:
Marc and Stephanie Carrigan
2511 Orleans Drive
Rogers, AR 72758

Month ONE in Uganda!!

Time has flown by for us over the past month. Somehow it seems like we have been here much longer! We already so dearly love this place and people. The general disposition of Ugandans is one of gentleness, reservation, and friendliness. All such pleasant characteristics to us as we engage with and adjust to this new culture. Our kids are doing really well. Isaac and Katelyn seemed to experience some stress initially with lots of new people and places but normalcy has made its way back.

We returned back to Bundibugyo last week from a four day team vision retreat. We are thankful for the team we are serving with here. Their gifts and compassion inspire us and we look forward to working side by side in the years to come! And they are loving our kids so well, too. :)

So here is a brief snapshot from our recent life...