Final preparations

We are planning to leave for Uganda on 12th Sept (or close to that). We are going via Japan to spend 10 days or so with our son and daughter in law living in Tokyo. Next Wednesday (3rd Aug) the container is being moved from the container yard where it has been for some time to a yard belonging to a company where a Christian brother from our church works. On Saturday 6th of Aug a number of folk from our church and some from outside our church will gather and entirely unpack and repack the container in a particular order (the order is very important for certain reasons) and make sure all is packed in a stable fashion for the long journey to Uganda. This brother has somehow convinced his company to provide free transport for the container from its current yard to the company yard, and ultimately from the company yard to the dock! Pam and I now have six days to pack the final boxes for the container and work on the paper work etc. We are packing up a house we are trying to live in and are feeling very exhausted trying to get it all done - we are looking forward to the container being sealed! There are a number of outstanding issues regarding getting the container to the town in Uganda (Jinja) where we want to clear customs and issues the Ugandan customs clearing process where we don't properly understand the process. After the container is sealed we plan to sell more of our unwanted goods in a garage sale on Sat 27th Aug. After that we know that anything left in the house is either 'throw out', 'give away' or 'store for when we return' (limited storage space) as we clear the house out ready to be rented. Pam is going to spend a week in Dubbo saying goodbye to her 93 yr old mother, and others in Dubbo. We will both spent four days or so in Armidale saying goodbye to my (Allan's) father (and sister and family). We are looking forward to finally arriving in Uganda. Comment for those who believe in prayer: please pray for us as we have so much to do and are feeling rather overwhelmed and exhausted, and need lots of wisdom in dealing with the number of issues.

Trying to finalise and send the shipping container

A priority right now is getting the shipping container on its way to Uganda. It is proving rather problematic making the arrangements - I (Allan) have spent a lot of time on it and haven't got that far. Shipping companies don't seem to want to handle sending a charitable container to Uganda from Sydney. When a shipping agent found one that would it would only ship to Kampala and not Jinja where we require it to go - back to step 1! Making arrangements the other end (in Uganda) is even more problematic due to issues I don't want to mention on a public blog. The contents need to be unpacked and repacked and full paper work produced where all items are valued - how do you value donated goods? I am looking forward to when the container it sent on its way!

Visit to Melbourne for a meeting

We have returned from a brief visit to Melbourne. We stayed in the Melbourne CBD and had two free days to explore the Melbourne downtown. We like the Melbourne CBD, the trams are convenient transport, it has interesting architecture, endless choice of inexpensive places to eat, etc. It was rather cold and windy though. On the last day we drove a hire car to a conference centre (Lyrebird Park at a country location near Melbourne) where Pioneers (mission agency) was holding an orientation week, and we had a meeting with Christine Perkins, our area leader in Africa who was visiting Australia for the conference. Christine is mainly based in Sudan which is next door to Uganda and has had over 20 years of experience in Africa, mostly in the area of education. We had a great chat and got to know each other a bit. We got lost on several occasions driving back to Melbourne airport to catch our return flight - we only managed to catch the plane because it turned out the flight was delayed by 45 minutes!