A while back, there was a popular song by Colbie Caillat called “Try”, and while the chorus is lacking depth, the lyrics are pretty true about the struggle of living in a busy, always look your best, put your game face on, comparing, overachieving culture. Continue reading
Author: Gina Sawyer
Living in Weaknesses
I went walking a while ago with a new friend here in Mbale and we talked about the transition of moving to Africa. She’s been here about 6 months before me, so we are at a similar stage of life adjustment. The thing we realized is that everyone who comes as missionaries all come from different places in life, have different roles and expectations here, deal with things differently, have different family dynamics, settle into life differently, have different needs and have different relationships with God.
With that being said, there’s an element of living in a place completely foreign to your “norm” that people can’t fully understand until they experience it for themselves. It’s challenging to try to explain how different every day life is. Continue reading
Come all who are weary…
This past week, I had the pleasure of attending a women’s retreat with other missionaries from around East Africa. What an experience! Being the newest person in Africa, I didn’t feel worthy to be in the same room as these women who have spent 2 years, 5 years, 10 years, 15 years, etc. serving in Africa. Continue reading
Our New Home
For your viewing pleasure, here are some before and after photos of our new home in Uganda. We love it and it’s perfect for our family. We look forward to building many relationships here and we pray this home is a place where people feel God’s love. Continue reading
A Glimpse of Life in Mbale, Uganda
We drove through town and realized several people would probably like to see what we see every day. So here is a small glimpse of our life… Continue reading
The feeling of being overwhelmed…
We were told about it and we were trained for it, but nothing could prepare us for the feeling of total helpless in a place so new and so different.
We have had to rely on our team for housing, for food, to go anywhere, to help clear our container, to schedule picking up our dog, to know who to contact to help get our new home ready, to go to the market or to the bank or to the supermarket… Continue reading
The Move is Here
What a whirlwind of travel and emotions! We spent our time the weekend before alternating between stressing over packing all of our stuff, finding time to see family and friends one more time and enjoying quality time with our parents before we left. We were blessed to have parents who enjoyed hanging out with Adalyn while we packed. It turns out it’s a lot harder to pack to move across the world than we imagined… 
And this was just the stuff we accumulated after we shipped our container. But we did it with 9 free bags and only 1 of them overweight. Once we made it through the weekend, it was time to say goodbyes and that was so difficult. Continue reading
Good Goodbyes
As the goodbyes are ramping up, we are realizing just how hard it is to say goodbye. It’s not just the act of telling people we love goodbye because we’ll miss them, but goodbye seems so permanent and we are learning that most of us humans have a hard time with that. Even when saying goodbye to people we know we’ll never see again and we’re ok with that, we still find ourselves saying “see you later” even after we’ve tried to say goodbye. It’s an interesting aspect of our human nature. Continue reading
Merry Christmas!!!
One of our family values is making the Christmas season about more than gifts. This year, Adalyn was able to enjoy the festivities with us and we decided to give to people within our community. Continue reading
Love just one…
A few months ago, we had lunch with some friends who are doing amazing ministry with the homeless community in Boulder. They are missionaries, serving in their community, so I feel blessed to learn from them. Our conversation still comes back to me and is a daily reminder.
We were talking about how easy it is to get overwhelmed with the need and desire to serve everyone, to minister to everyone, to love everyone. Continue reading
Sawyers In Uganda 