The past year has been quite exciting…graduated from college, moved across the country, reunited with my best friend and made some wonderful new ones, started grad school, began working at a health department, got accepted for an internship in Uganda, got engaged, began planning a wedding on top of an internship on top of completing school work, found new faces who will be much needed familiar faces for me in Uganda, finished my first year at Oregon State, began formulating the idea of sightseeing with my cousin towards the end of my trip, and realized I have one week left before I leave. Overwhelming? Slightly. Exciting? Definitely. Hopefully this blog will serve you well and satisfy your desires for an update on my trip and my internship with TERREWODE and service with CLIDE. God is so good and He has blessed me abundantly. Throughout this year, I have seen how He answers our prayers, hears our cries, knows our weaknesses and our fears, and comes to our side and lets us know He is there. Always has been and always will be. He's also a pretty good travel agent. More on that later. So, a quick run down of my plans for the summer for those of you who don't know. I am so thankful for the opportunity I have to go and work with TERREWODE. TERREWODE is a Ugandan-based NGO that mainly works with women suffering from Obstetric Fistula. Obstetric Fistula is an injury received when a woman has prolonged obstructed labor...something very common when there is a lack of access to care. During this, the baby's head gets lodged in the woman's pelvis, cutting off the blood supply to her tissues. This causes necrosis of the tissues and a fistula (hole) forms between the woman's birth canal and her urethra or rectum. This leaves her incontinent of urine and/or feces. As you can imagine, this is a devastating injury, one that often leaves a woman ostracized from her community. TERREWODE is working to not only help provide these women with surgery to rectify the problem, but also to give them counseling services and reintegrate them into society. I will be helping TERREWODE create training manuals for their staff, a monitoring and evaluation system, and awareness and advocacy materials. I have a feeling I will be doing a lot of learning along the way. While in Uganda, I will also be meeting up with a team from my church for a couple of days. Did I mention God hears our prayers and works in some pretty awesome ways? The week after I decided to accept this internship (after much debate), I found out (through sharing a prayer request in my small group and a girl approaching me after) that a team from my church in Corvallis will be traveling to the same small town in Uganda for a week while I am there. Here my big hold up on accepting the internship was fear (as my mom so kindly pointed out to me on the phone the day before...she was right). I was terrified of leaving the country alone. And not only leaving alone but staying in Uganda for 9 weeks alone. I got in touch with Steve, the leader of the group from my church, and applied to join their team. The next Sunday I met Steve and his wife Laurie...and was greeted with the phrase "you're an answer to our prayers"...Well that was shocking...here I thought they were the answer to mine. Like I said, God's the best travel agent there is. I think it's safe to say he orchestrated that one...the fact that a team from my church will be in the same area of Uganda the same time I will be...let's just say I think it's a little too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence.While with the team from Northwest Hills, I will be helping with a camp for kids. The Timothy Retreat is an annual gathering of students sponsored by individuals through an organization called CLIDE. So not only will I see some familiar faces about a month into my time in Uganda, but I will have the opportunity to work with kids while there. And final cool tidbit of information. I log onto facebook the other day and see my cousin is advertising Mt Kilmanjaro in September. So of course I had to suggest he stop in Uganda first and do some sightseeing with his cousin. How amazing would that be. So for those of you who know him...you should encourage him in this direction. Please and thank you. So that's a brief rundown of my plans for the summer. I begin my travels July 4 and will be arriving back in the states on September 6. OH one more thing in case you were still unsure as to whether or not God is a good travel agent...I finally bought my ticket at 1 am one morning after reading and rereading the itinerary 13 times to make sure it looked alright (big purchases are a little frightening to me...it took a lot to get me to push the button). Anyways, I finally booked the ticket and then read the itinerary one more time in the confirmation email...apparently I missed the fact that I would have a 20 hour layover. Not exactly what I was hoping for...and not only that but I had NO idea what airport IAD was. I was a little bummed. Ok, so maybe a lot bummed. Until I looked up the airport. And saw that it was less than 3 hours from home. So, my 20 hour layover has now turned into a much longed for opportunity to see my parents before I leave the country for several months. Still unsure of His capabilities?