Extraordinary Day - Part 1: Retrak

There are some days in our lives that we are so privileged to live that years later we look back and wonder, Wow - How did I get so lucky?? Today was such a day - so extraordinary in fact, that I am actually going to break my blog up into pieces in order to be able to share more information and photos.

Well, after only 5 hours of sleep, I was eager to face the morning and to get my first glimpse of Uganda by day. Alexis and I are already "one mind" as we greeted each other simultaneously with the words "Good Morning Sunshine" - a funny foreshadowing of a day filled with happy coincidences and encounters which we all know are not coincidences at all but rather little evidences of something divine in our lives.

So, Alexis and Agnes have planned a fantastic itinerary for me for my time in Uganda with the goal of showing me the challenges, possibilities and joys of working in Uganda. Our first stop was to a soccer field on the property of the King of Uganda, near his palace (one of the photos is of Agnes and me in front of the palace where, we learned, you are not supposed to take photos -whoops!). So, on the soccer field, we were scheduled to meet Isabel Turner, Director of Retrak Uganda and dear friend of Alexis (and angel here on earth as I was to learn later in the day).

Retrak is a charity which reaches out to street children, boys in particular, and provides them with food, shelter, clothing and the medical care that they so desperately need. Beyond meeting their physical needs, Retrak employs social workers to look into the reasons of why a child is living on the street and they work to either reunite that child with his family or to find a loving foster family for the child. The soccer game which we attended this morning is part of the outreach that retrak does in order to build the relationship and trust with the boys. You can read more about their extraordinary work at http://www.retrak.org/ .

The additional pictures above are of our visit to Retrak - The one little boy was very sweet, named Edwin, and I told him that my father's middle name is Edwin so it's a very special and excellent name. As today was Friday, Retrak sponsored a meal for any street child who wished to come eat (which is a good way to reach out to children who are not in the Retrak program) - they served rice, beans with cabbage and pineapple - the pots were HUGE and it smelled and looked delicious!!