A "New" House

August was a busy month for the Mortons. One of the reasons for that was our move to a "new" house. I say "new" because although it is new to us, it is actually one of the oldest buildings at New Hope. No one has lived in this house since last December and it hadn't had any fix-ups for even longer. This made it a little more difficult. To help you understand our trouble I'll give you a few examples of the problems. When we flushed the toilet, the water literally poured out on to the floor. And when you turned on the sink, the water just poured right out the drain into the cupboard underneath. And the bathroom sink cabinet was extremely mouldy (it had been leaking too). And there was a bad jackfruit (meaning the fruit was bad) tree outside that allowed no sunlight in the house, and dropped giant, rotting jackfruit on the roof (and potentially on people's heads as they walked by). And there was no furniture, no stove, and no fridge. Don't get me wrong. We are very thankful that we could have this house in a great location. We just needed to get a lot of work done on it which took a lot of effort on the part of my parents and Uncle Brian. Anyway, we (the famous "we"--I really didn't do much of anything) fixed the toilet, fixed the sink, replaced the other sink, cut down the jackfruit tree, bought furniture and a stove, and repainted. When we were finished, we (I was very involved in this part) lugged our tubs up the hill from the Vogts house. John and I were very thankful for our friends, Sam, Toby, Acacia, and Kevin who helped us out. Finally, we moved in, and fell asleep on our very hard mattresses. (Most mattresses you can buy in Uganda start out as hard as rock, but they are softening.) We love the house a lot now. It's nice to have our own place without having to worry about breaking things. We are very close to David Family and church, and much closer to Hope Family, Secondary, the office, and Treasures Class. We also have very close neighbours now. The house is a duplex so the Mwanjes live in the other half of the building. It was an adventure but I definitely think it was worth it.

Our half of the house goes to where you see the wall come out a bit.
My room (and Catriona's) is the one on the far right. John's is in the middle and the living room is on the far left.

Our door and porch

In Entebbe

I'm sitting in the Airport Guest House in Entebbe. At 1:00 in the morning our flight for London will leave and at 8:00 at night we'll arrive in Calgary. We are going to be there for 5 weeks before coming back here. I'm sorry I haven't posted anything since July 29. I have been super busy recently but I hope to catch up while we're back in Canada. In short, moving, working, home alone, washing clothes, packing, and saying good-bye. Hopefully, I'll be able to elaborate on all these things in the next few weeks. Pray for us as we travel and as we deal with minor culture shock and MAJOR weather shock. (Calgary got 10 inches of snow in the past two days and we're coming from 30 degree temperatures.)