What a great time Leigh and I are having in Uganda spending time with and getting to know our son! The first week went very slowly, probably because of the jetlag, and the second went by in the blink of an eye! We have really been pampered while we’re here. Our great friend, Joseph Agape Uganda, and his wife Gladys (you can follow them on Facebook) have brought us into their family and treated us great. The people of Uganda have two greetings for us…one is “Hello, how are you”, while the other is, “Mzungu, Mzungu.” Mzungu literally means, “someone who roams around aimlessly,” yet now it has turned into “White skin”. Apparently, white people did not know how to embrace the laid back atmosphere of the Ugandan people, so they ran around aimlessly like chicken’s with their heads cut off! This story has led to the fact that everyone points their finger at us yelling, Mzungu!! Mzungu!!! But it’s really funny and we’ve embraced our Mzungu name.
So today was our court date, July 8th 2016. We were scheduled to arrive at court around 1 pm in the afternoon and thought we would be one of the first cases to proceed. We were running a little late, because we were obviously on “Ugandan” time and not “Mzungu” time, so we took our son to get some food, scarfed it down quickly and rushed off to court to get there right at 1 pm.
I’ll start off by saying today was probably the best day we’ve had in Uganda. Mainly because two really awesome things happened today.
First, we were finally able to spend the first day with our son by himself outside of the orphanage and what a blast that was. We had 2 family meals (Joseph was included of course), but we ate at 2 of the swankiest restaurants in Kampala with our 2 ½ year old son! He did great in both. We ordered him a quesadilla kids meal in one and he shared with us in the second. Both cases he sat down and ate like a champion without making a big mess or scene! We hope that continues when we decide to take him to our favorite spots back home too.
As we were waiting for our court hearing, our son waited patiently for over 5 ½ hours. He even fell asleep in Leigh’s arms, which was one of the sweetest pictures we have from the time here so far. The time spent away from the orphanage today felt like we moved forward years in trust and love for our relationship. Some of the best things are when he copies our whisper; “I love you” to “I wuv eww” back at us.
Second awesome thing from today was that we actually saw someone we know in UGANDA! That’s right, we got to hang out with some of our friends from church who are also in the process of adopting 3 little ones. We got to spend the day with a familiar face, which is really nice when you don’t see too many from day to day. We also got to see that our son will be able to grow up with other children from Uganda!!! We are so excited and are praying that they will become great friends over the years. We love our church and are thankful for the focus on global orphan care. We can’t wait to see them back in Greensboro and will make sure to bring our families together.
If your first thought was that we were granted guardianship from the judge immediately that would’ve been awesome, but it didn’t happen today. We actually didn’t even meet with the judge today. No families saw the judge today because of other meetings, so our case was moved back to July 18th. Yes, it’s unfortunate that it happened, but we had such a great day with our son, 10 more days really didn’t seem to matter in the big scheme of things. It was our first day out as a family. We had all sorts of snacks, books and games packed. It couldn’t have gone any better.