Hurry Up, Then Wait

We've completed our third full day on the ground in Uganda and begun to experience the best and the worst of the local economy. First, we were able to get an awesome deal on the shoes for the kids. Then we had to wait for a full day for the order to be filled from the warehouse! Hurry up and get the money to pay for the shoes so they can pull the order from the shelves, then wait as one by one, box by box, they find and load the sizes we need. There is never any rush!

After waiting all of Thursday for the shoes, we were finally summoned to the factory on Friday morning early to pay the remainder of the money so they could load all the shoes up to be delivered. That took about three hours. Then the fun began. We off-loaded, sorted and stacked 680 pairs of shoes and began the process of dividing them into groups for the first four distribution sites. The joy of the day was getting to actually hand out the first pairs of shoes! To do that, we traveled about 40 minutes East of Kampala to a town call Gayaza to meet Patrick,the headmaster of a primary school in this very poor community. He and three other partners founded this primary school as a for profit business. Part of their charter is to allow 40 children to attend for free. Our task was to provide these and other needy kids with shoes and socks so they can attend when the semester begins next week. For many of these kids it was there first pair of shoes! It was easy to see when we began attempting to fit shoes to their feet. Since they were not used to shoes, there feet were often very wide and needed to be fairly crammed into shoes. We were assured that the shoes will soften and eventually mold to their feet.

It was a joy to represent my church family in distributing these shoes to families who absolutely need them! Today we head off the Kiwatule to distribute close to 400 shoes. Pray for our stamina and strength for the day!