On 7^th August Mark & I celebrated our ninth wedding anniversary. As I looked back I realised how much we have done in the past nine years. There are so many happy memories but also some difficult times as well. In each memory I can see Gods blessing, grace and faithfulness to us individually and as a couple.

Mark has always been really good at remembering special occasions and I received a wonderful bouquet of flowers. When I explained to Amy what they were for she got so excited about the fact that we are married. She ran off and put on her ‘princess’ dress and wanted a photo of herself with the flowers; “Just like mummy and daddy’s married photo” she said.

We celebrated our anniversary with a weekend away in the crater lake region of western Uganda.  Some good friends kept the children and we had a really relaxing time. A highlight of the trip was an afternoon chimpanzee trek in the Kibale forest, when we were fortunate enough to watch a whole group of chimpanzees in the wild for an hour.  An anniversary to remember!

Recently I got the opportunity to visit the MAF program in Juba, Sudan.

The program bought a large generator here in Kampala. Rather than transport it by truck and risk damaging it, we decided to disassemble the generator in order to transport it by MAF aircraft.

This is where I came in. I worked with Aaron (a Canadian guy helping out short term in Kampala & Juba) to disassemble the generator and prepare it for transportation. Loading it was quite an event, requiring careful planning that the floor loading of the aircraft wasn’t exceeded, even disassembled the actual engine/generator assembly still weighed 780kg’s (1,719 lbs).

Two days later Aaron & I arrived - our mission; to reassemble!

The reassembly went very well with most of it being completed in the first afternoon. The generator’s final resting place, a concrete pad, was still to be completed, so onto mixing cement!!!

By the time I left the generator had been run, most of the concrete had been laid, the Canon’s generator next door had been wired in and a burglar bar designed for some of the houses windows.

It’s always great to get to see another program and have the opportunity to get to know the team. The MAF Sudan program is especially interesting because of the relative newness of the program. Their work differs from MAF Uganda’s, in that there is no a/c maintenance performed there yet. But there is tons of work to do organizing, developing and securing the compound. In the near future the program will hopefully have an aircraft based there that they will operate themselves. Exciting times!!!

Whilst there, I was also taken on a tour of Juba. It is an interesting place with few tarmac roads. The poverty of people struggling to exist and the clash of ‘high end’ 4×4’s being driven around seemed to stand out more than in Kampala. It is a wonderful country which really needs peace and stability after many years of turmoil.