Our Ugandan Adventure: April 2015

Hey Everyone!

Here are a few highlights, a few prayer requests and some pictures.

Highlights

First, we want to thank everyone who read our request for some extra support on our last update. We know it can be an awkward subject but Becky & I really believe that God wants us here and we see all of our supporters as our partners in this. Just as a pastor is supported by his Church, we feel privileged to be partners with everyone who is helping us to be here.

Now regarding that request, we have received our support updates for last month and we received about half of what we need. We are in need of about $2,000 more to meet these needs. Thank you all so much for your help and helping to keep us in Uganda for our commitment.

For the past few months I (Jay) have been using a friends motorcycle (*see picture) while he and his family are in the US on furlough. It’s been great to sharpen my motorcycle skills and this has enabled me to get my Ugandan motorcycle license which I just received a few weeks ago. Woohoo!

Becky & the kids were on Spring Break from March 30 through April 10! They had a great time off from school and our family went out of town with some friends for a few days over Easter weekend. We went to a town east of Kampala, named Jinja, to a guesthouse that has a great pool for the kids. We had a blast. The highlight of the weekend happened one night after dinner. We went out with our friends that night and were on our way back to our guesthouse. It started pouring and I do mean POURING. When we got to our guesthouse, Becky & I ran while carrying the kids back to our room. We got absolutely drenched. It was the kind of event where you are so wet that you can’t keep from laughing (*see picture).

A few weeks ago we went on a day trip with our church to some local schools outside of town. We have a family in our church that makes & distributes sand water filters to households, villages, schools, etc. They brought a few water filters and we spent the day taking these to these schools, playing with the kids (*see picture), singing songs, finding chameleons (*see picture) and eating lunch. I think most of us fell asleep on the way home that day but we had a lot of fun and it was great to be a part of getting clean water to those kids.

The last highlight was a huge high point from March. Most Wednesdays on our construction sites we organize a chapel or devotional time for our site guys. We shut down the construction site and usually have one of our foremen/managers give a talk. Well this week it was my turn and I was so pumped (*see picture)! I talked about ‘Loving our Neighbor’. I gave 2 examples from the Bible on how God wants us to love others and how we were created to live. The guys got involved in the talk and seemed to enjoy it. I pray God uses those verses to make us more the men He created us to be.

Prayer Requests

First, please continue to pray for our work here and for our family.

Second, please pray that we would have all the resources we need to complete our commitment here.

Third, we would ask that you would pray with us in what God wants us to do after our commitment is up with EMI. We have given EMI a current commitment of 2 years which will be up in early 2016. That seems like a long way away but we have informally set a goal for ourselves to have a decision made by September so we can start planning. Now even as I am typing this out, I am reminded that following Jesus usually does not follow our plans, but it’s good to have goals nonetheless. So maybe God wants us to stay with EMI, maybe go home (Vancouver/Texas) or maybe do something totally not on the radar. We’ll see where He leads.

Thank you to all our family, friends & supporters again. We appreciate you all very much.

Please feel free to email us anytime with what’s going on in your lives. We would love to hear. (jaywhisnand@gmail.com / becky.whisnand@gmail.com)

Jay, Becky, Nathaniel & Bethany Whisnand

Support Info

If you want to contribute to our support account, please go to http://emiworld.org/donate.php. There are options for donating from the US or Canada. You can donate by CC or check. Any questions, please email.