Hi everyone. Thanks for keeping up on my blogs. I know that they have been few and far between lately. So you might not have been coming to check to see what I've been writing lately. But when you do, you'll realize that I'm no longer blogging here. For many different reasons, I decided to change my blog site so if you want to keep reading about my adventures in Uganda go to http://darrenyui.blogspot.com

Hope to see you there!!!

Sorry that it's been a month since my last post. Been very busy with teams, but Saturday, the Calvary team leaves and I'm not sure when the next team arrives after that. Don't have time to give a good update here, but just letting you know I went to a safari with some friends on the Hillcrest team and we had some cool adventures. Stay tuned.

I just had a very blessed trip to the US. It was super short: only 12 days. Some people asked why so short. Well, the purpose of my trip was to attend some graduations. The Class of 2009 includes students from my second year of teaching 6th grade. It was by far and away my favorite class. I'm not sure if I can remember all of their names from that year, but I will always remember that class: Madi, Favy, Brina, Kelsey, Eric/Harry, Britt, Hillbilly, Lizzy, Thomas, and many more (sorry if I forgot people here) I can't believe that they are graduating and going off to college. That's just crazy to me. But as sad as it is to say, I didn't keep in close contact with most of them or maybe vice versa. I've seen them in passing at church, football and basketball games, and around town. I was blessed to attend Hillcrest graduation and pray for Brittany. She has been a close friend for a long time and I hope that will continue. To be asked to pray for her at graduation was a blessing and an encouragement to me that an impact was made on her. Thanks for that Brittany!

However, I have to be honest and say that I didn't really come back for that graduation ceremony. Instead, I made a promise to a trio of students that attend Oaks that I would return for their graduation: Lindsay Cooper, Dani Germann, and Thomas Johnson. For me to leave at this time of year when we have visitors coming to Uganda from the US...actually, there are 5 students from Westmont College staying at my "house" the whole time I was gone...was a concern of mine. But I had to go to their graduation. I've known Dani and Thomas for years from youth group and had the privilege to coach both Dani and Coop in basketball for two years. I think as a teacher, youth leader, mentor, etc. you always look for some fruit from your work. As I began to read through the program during the Oaks graduation, someone pointed out my name in the program in Dani's section; then I turned to Coopster's section then Thomas'. I couldn't believe that they had all recognized me as someone who made an impact on their lives. Not that it wouldn't have been worth the trip anyway, but what a blessing. I love you three so much and am so proud of you. I hope we have many more great times together laughing!!

This was a note that I wrote on Facebook a few months ago when I was facing a difficult time of being away. One thing I can add to this note is that I am in route back to Uganda from the US and I definitely didn't feel at "home" while I was there. Hope you enjoy it.

No I'm not talking about aliens coming to visit us from another planet, but instead a more traditional use of the word: a resident born in or belonging to another country who has not acquired citizenship by naturalization. As you know I am an alien in Uganda. There are things that I am slowly becoming acquainted with: language, customs, traditions, lifestyle, etc. However, no matter how much I try to fit it, I will always be looked at as an outsider.

In the last month, this has hit me much harder than expected. I had gotten to the point where I felt so much on the outside of society, that I began to question why I was here in Uganda. I began to think if I was truly being used here to impact lives. I know that me being here financially helps a lot of people here in Uganda, but am I truly making an impact more than helping to pay for things here and there around the ministry. I doubted I was.

There were hurdles and obstacles with communication back to people in the US. (How can you have almost 600 friends on facebook and only hear from 2 or 3 in a week?) The economic situation began to affect my support. There were also hurdles and obstacles with communication with people here in Uganda though much different. You see many people in general here are not trustworthy. A lie here doesn't seem to mean much to most people, even Christians (or at least people who call themselves Christian). People tend to put on a show for mzungu (whites) when they are here because they think they might be able to get something from them. I was one of those who were fooled by them, but after being here for a longer period of time, I have seen the true colors of many people.

True friendship is something that has been hard to come by here. Ugandans, and Africans in general from what I hear, tend to have an unrealistic view of Americans. They believe we are all rich and that we will come and save the day by giving them handouts. Although we know that this idea is not true and especially not true for most people coming here on missions trips, it is reinforced by the fact that Americans go to foreign countries and flash their money around. (If you've seen Slumdog Millionaire, there's a part where the taxi driver begins beating a boy and the foreigners began giving the boy money.) If it's not money they want from you, it might be status. Just hanging out or being seen with you makes others view them differently. Then there are the people who know that I have gadgets and want to borrow them. The question is can I trust them?

There is the language barrier. Though most people can speak some English, their preferred language is their native language. I feel for foreigners in the US because everyone expects them to speak English, and it's not such an easy language to learn. I now know how they feel. I sympathize with them when people make fun of my accent or misuse of words. But most of all, the thing that has bothered me is when people will deliberately speak in their native tongue to leave me or another American out of the conversation.

Through all of these struggles, I wondered if I just went home would everything be better. I missed my family (biological, adopted and Christian), and friends. I missed playing basketball. I missed the people at work. I missed real youth minstry. I missed American comforts. Then I recalled all my struggles in the US. Though many may not be aware of them, they were there.

I prayed and read the: Word. I listened to a sermon and realized that the reason I felt so out of place whether it was in Uganda or the US was that I don't belong in either place. My citizenship is not in Uganda or the US, but instead it is in heaven. I don't belong in any place but there. I won't ever truly have peace until I am there. I don't know how long God will ask me to serve in Uganda and I continue to seek His guidance, but instead of moving back to answer my so-called problems here, I instead decide to change my perspective knowing that I don't belong in either place.

So this Easter as we wait for the Lord to take us to be at home with Him, let us praise the Lord for our blessings and change our perspective on our situation.

But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ. Phil. 3:20

Sorry to all of you who are always looking to see if I have updated what is going on. There were a certain set of circumstances that kept me from blogging. First my computer broke (sometime in mid-april) then a truck decided to knock over the pole that brought our internet line to the school. Blogging is not easy from cafe's so I just said no like Nancy Reagan. I'm on my way back to Uganda from a trip to the US. I know I wasn't able to see many of you, but it was a super short trip (11 days) Keep in touch.

So I don't remember if I have told any stories about police officers pulling me over, but there are a few funny stories. This one however is not one of those. I was driving my friends Ashleigh back to the hospital from getting some things in town so she could get some test results. In the past two years, Uganda has begun to use traffic lights. However, they don't use them well and often have police directing traffic no matter what the traffic light says. On this day, I had a lot of things to do so I was rushing to get Ashleigh's results and return to school to work. I was following a taxi (van) when the light turned yellow and he decided to stop, but there was enough room for me to pass him and make my left turn so I did so only to see the traffic officer waving at me to pull over. If you didn't know the traffic officer or police officer doesn't have a car and chase you down like in the US, but instead they stand at the side of the road and just raise their hand and you're supposed to know to pull over. I can't tell you how many times I almost just drove by. Anyway, the traffic officer (not police officer) told me I ran a red light. I disagreed telling him it was still yellow when I crossed it. He disagreed. So I told him to just give me the ticket and I would pay it. Maybe he was looking for me to pay him off because he told me it was 40000 shilllngs (about $20). I said okay, just write the ticket. He told me he didn't have the tickets so we had to go to the police station. Remember he was just a traffic officer. After some haggling and attempts to direct me to the police station, he jumped in the van to show me where to go. As I pulled up to the police station, I just waited. A police officer greeted me and asked me what happened and I told him my story, that the light was yellow and not red. But I also told him that I wasn't here to argue and I was in a rush so just write the ticket so I could go. He told me he didn't want to write the ticket if I didn't agree. I told him I didn't care because I had somewhere to go. He asked where and I told him I was going to the hospital, and I didn't have time to argue with him. That's when he changed and said, "Okay, you go." And he didn't write me the ticket and I was off on my merry way.

See all you girls/women out there, there are better ways to get out of a traffic violation than just crying. Just kidding. I was lucky and very surprised that they let me go. I'm sure they were just looking to get a bribe from me, but when I just kept asking for the ticket, they knew I wasn't going to give them anything. Praise the Lord.

Last month included sports day for the students at God Cares Nursery and Primary School. What did that mean for this term: track & field. Well, at least they had track. The students trained for about 2 weeks in events such as 100 m, 200 m, long jump, discus, and many more. Finally, the day came...it was Friday the 13th. Unfortunately the host school was not well prepared for the event. They did not have any of the things needed for the field events. We were really disappointed as the studnets trained very hard for those events. Not all have the ability to run. As we competed in the track events, I found some shining starts in our school. We placed in many of the events, but the most exciting for me was to watch the 100 m and 200 m. Two of our boys shined in those events. Shafiq was amazing in the prelims for the 100m. He was so far ahead of the rest of the pack in his heat that they called a rerace maybe there was a false start or something, but as he ran again, he smoked the pack again this time coming from maybe two meters behind to pass everyone. Both him and Kalega shined as well in the 200 m both coming from behind in the stretch run to pass other competitors. Word has it that the host school had secondary members competing against our primary memebers. But could that stop us...no way. Our school finished on top of all the other schools in our region. A few of our students went on to the next few levels of competition, but none to the national level. Either way, it was fun to watch and root for our kids.

On another shining note if you hadn't already heard: the University of North Carolina Tar Heels are the mens National Champions for basketball. I think they just wanted to drive me crazy this year becuase I couldn't be there to watch all those games. However, I did get to watch a few via Skype through friends (thanks Trenton and the Kirchners) and listen to games through March Madness on demand. Only later to find out that all the games were broadcast on ESPN here in Uganda. So next year I have to get satellite TV so I can watch march madness!!!

Finally, I have also had the opportunity to play basketball over the last few months as well. It's not the competition that was present in the US, but it's still playing. Hopefully I'll get to the university soon to play against some other people.

At the end of February, we had a big kickoff event at the church to show the youth the new changes to the ministry and announce events for the upcoming year. We had planned to begin at 10:00 am so we told the people we were starting at 9:00 am. Wouldn't you know it that most people didn't show until almost 12. They knew that lunch was provided for free so they didn't want to miss that so as usual the planned schedule here does not work because of lack of an audience. I think next time we will start with lunch and if they come late, sorry Charlie.

Anyway, one of the things they do here is they love to sing. It doesn't matter if they can sing or not, but many have no self-esteem issues and will get in front of the crowd and belt away. I can't find myself enjoying any of this for many reasons. First of all, you usually can't tell if the person can sing anyway because they are singing over a track. What I mean is that they have a song on CD that already has someone singing and yet they play that and get up and sing over the CD vocals. Secondly, I'm embarassed for the people that get up there. The people that won't get up there and sing still think they can sing better (though it's not true for most) will just sit and laugh at them. If you've been to Uganda and you know some of the people, then you know the person I am talking about, but most likely you think that person is awesome so i won't mention names. Third, it's just painful to hear not only because of the fact that many cannot sing, but also because in Uganda, they have no clue how to mix a sound board. They turn the highs very high and the lows very low (or up if you know what I mean) and then pierce your ears with that. I don't think they've yet discovered what midrange is for. So in a nutshell, I didn't stay for the end of the event as all they were doing was singing. So I guess it's like African Idol, but only the first few days when they show the people who can't sing. It's not even like karaoke because they could just lip sync the whole song and some people might never know. I guess it's too bad that Milli Vanilli spoiled their opportunity to be successful in the world when they were outed as lip syncers not singers.

Ok so I looked at the date of my last post and I've definitely slacked. Not that everything was my fault. I had some mishaps along the way that derailed me as well. First, I found my computer not working. Apparently there is some sort of faulty chip that Nvidia gave to Apple where the chip will go bad and therefore...nothing on the screen. The good news is that they will fix it for free. The better news is that somehow I was still able to retrieve critical files on my computer after that. The bad news, I have to send it back to the US to get it fixed. Lucky for me, Pastor Dongo leaves at the end of this month to go to the US and a few weeks later a team from Westmont will be coming to visit. So in the meantime, I am very thankful that my friend, Mark, gave me another computer to bring to Uganda when I was back in the States. So here I am on a much slower computer, but very thankful that I can still access the internet and connect with friends. There were a lot of things to write about over the past 6 weeks so I'll be trying to catch up on all those things over the course of the next week! Thanks for all your continued support.

So one of the biggest things that I have been reminded as I am here in Uganda is that I am very much an introvert at heart. Take for example tonight. It's Valentine's Day (or as I like to call it...everyone's favorite Hallmark holiday or See's candies favorite holiday...anyway I digress). I am content at being here at home by myself much like every other night spent in Uganda.  Well technically, I live with about 160 students here at the school, but I can choose to be with them or just hang out in my guest house. Most of the time I choose to be in the guest house. So for my special night, I prepared matooke and g-nut sauce for my supper. Of course I had to have a Mirinda Pineapple (thanks Michael for introducing me to my new favorite drink here) with it. After supper, I played Wii (by myself) for about an hour. Then I took a shower, and now I'm writing this just before I will watch the newest episodes of Lost and The Office. Looks like the perfect night for me. I'm content with that.

On the other hand, my counterpart, Ashleigh who is here working at the school as well, went home and got ready to go to a wedding reception with one of the Ugandans from church. She was pretty excited. All I could think of was how I could be stuck there for hours with tons of people that I didn't know and many of which I could not communicate with. I mean I don't really much care for parties when I'm at home in the US unless I know a significant number of people there that will make it less awkward for me.

Don't get me wrong, I love hanging out with friends and family. And many of you would disagree that I am an introvert becuase I am so comfortable around you that I'm not really introverted at those times. However, I've seen it in me more and more during my stay here in Uganda. There are numerous opportunities to do things with other ex-patriots here, but often I choose to stay home and just hang out...me and my best friend, my computer. Some of you might be thinking how sad that is, but until God provides the right woman for me, I'd rather hang out with my computer...