experience the mission compound.

Now that I'm home in Canada, many have asked what my living conditions were like in Uganda.
I did not live in a mud house like the locals.
My kitchen was not outside with the small charcoal stoves.
I didn't have to pump my water, or bathe in a makeshift shower...

Here's a video tour of our house! You don't really see the entire mission compound, which covers a fair bit of land. But here's a glimpse of where we lived our daily lives as missionaries in Bundibugyo, Uganda!

...In fact, our house was very much furnished and a lot nicer than I thought, but it did come with its fair share of challenges & quirks:

• our toilet: we peed in the shower, we pooped in the "cho"-an outhouse with a 10-15 foot deep hole in our backyard that continuously self decomposes itself.
• our shower: we always took cold showers. The first 2 minutes were always unbearable and shrieking-ly cold, but we would always end up feeling refreshed, clean and in good spirits:)
• our fridge: contrary to our fridge in North America that runs 24/7 on electricity, our fridge in Uganda ran on kerosine. This means that it would stop working, our freezer would then defrost, our food would start to spoil, everything would start melting...until I refilled the tank and re-lit the flame at least once a week. Except this would be a complicated process of me lying on my stomach on the ground with dust/black chaff/kerosine oil all over me, trying to re-light the wick 10-20 times, burning myself on the wick, failing, then calling George the maintenance man to come and fix it for me. I didn't get it to work on my own until the week we left! The locals do not have refrigerators, none of the local Ugandans keep their foods longer than a day.  
• our stove: again, not run on electricity. Our mini stand-up oven & stove was hooked up to a propane tank. Sort of like your typical barbecue! So whenever we had to turn on the stove-top or heat up the oven, we would have to turn on the propane gas and light a match to it! Very exciting, as it always lit up to a firry phwumm!!
• our electricity: I think having electricity in the middle of Africa is a huge luxury already. But our world is moving forward, the power lines came into town about a year ago. However, at the mission compound, things work a little different. We lost power "on the grid" for 5 weeks. So we depended on solar power which worked great on sunny days! And in the day time, we always had enough power to charge phones/computers, but at night if our battery wasn't charged enough...we reverted to headlamps & candles!

Doing missionary work is slow & exhausting. Most of the time, you don't see results and become discouraged by it. But God draws us closer to Him when He brings us through the jostling, rocky, treacherous roads. And at the end of a tiring work day, it's our relationship & encounter with Him that matters.