To celebrate our 9th Uganda-versary, we thought it would be fun for Adalyn, our twelve year old daughter, to write a blog post about living and growing up in Uganda. We moved to Uganda when she had just turned 3 years old, so she really doesn’t remember life before Uganda. Here are her thoughts about living in Uganda:

Living in Uganda means that I feel at home and safe. It has been the best 9 years of my life and the best place to grow up. As I have grown up, I now realize that one day I will have to leave, and I don’t think I will ever be ready to leave. It also scares me to think of leaving because I have grown up here and I am used to Uganda.

There are so many blessings and challenges of living in Uganda. One blessing is that I have been immersed in so many different languages, all of them are so unique and different. Uganda has over 70 languages – that’s a lot to learn. Another blessing is the mini farm we have in our backyard: we have 3 dogs, 1 rabbit, 7 chickens, and 1 turkey. At one point, we had 3 other dogs, a hedgehog, and a goat. I am so blessed with an amazingly big backyard, so there’s plenty of room for me to be a kid and play. As I have gotten older, one of the challenges has been the number of men looking at me and trying to get my attention. I know that is common all over the world, but I still don’t like the feeling. Another challenge is the fact that my grandparents have only been at 4 of my birthdays, and I don’t get to celebrate holidays or special occasions with them or other family. Being so far away from family is really hard. Every time I call my grandparents or other family, I just wish I could fly across the world to give them the biggest hug in the whole world.

My life would be completely different if we had never moved to Uganda. If we never moved to Uganda, I might not even know where Uganda was on a map! I wouldn’t have made these amazingly close friendships with different people from around the world, and I wouldn’t be in such a close and caring community of other missionary families. If we hadn’t moved to Uganda, I also wouldn’t have learned so many different sports from around the world (football, rugby, cricket, handball, to name a few).

I see God in everything around me in Uganda. Every year at school we are not sure whether or not we will have teachers for that year, but every year God provides what we need. These past years have been a struggle with teachers coming and going, but God has made sure that we have what we need every year. Also, God has provided what we need as a family, like when our back-up batteries broke or my mom’s car broke, God provided the money to get those things fixed.

I really love Uganda, and I am so blessed to live here. I am thankful for everything God has provided for our family, and I am thankful for all of your prayers.