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Hi everyone!

It’s been a long few months since we last blogged! We’re sitting in Emma’s Mum and Dads caravan in Grassington (Yorkshire Dales) – its cold, wet and rained all week so it couldn’t be further away from Uganda!

People who know us quite well will be a bit surprised that we are going back to Uganda, when we returned having had a very difficult last month at the hospital we’d both said ‘we’re not going back’ but God had better ideas! So we’re heading back to Kuluva tomorrow for six weeks before we start jobs back in the UK.

We’ve been reading a really powerful novel called The Shack, it’s about a man called Mack and his journey to find forgiveness after his daughter is murdered. Towards the end he asks God if his life matters and God answers Mack by saying;

‘….if anything matters then everything matters. Because you are important everything you do is important. Everytime you forgive the universe changes; everytime you reach out and touch a heart or a life, the world changes; with every kindness and service seen or unseen, my purposes are accomplished and nothing will ever be the same.’

This is in essence why we’re going back, because no small or insignificant thing is pointless if we do it for Jesus. We want to glorify Jesus in everything we do and going back even though it’s only for six short weeks is hopefully going to do that! Jesus himself said in Matthew 25 v40 ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’

The last three months have been really busy doing a fulltime diploma at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and catching up with all our friends and family. The course was great,  we had a fantastic course weekend away in Snowdon and also learnt lots about tropical medicine! We’re looking forwards to diagnosing some of the interesting diseases we probably missed like African sleeping sickness, n’yong n’yong, loa loa and paragonimus! (Pete would be pleased to even pronounce n’yong n’yong nevermind diagnosing it!). We also made loads of international friends who will be now all over the world by now doing different amazing stuff – so BIG HELLO’s to the DTM&H class ’09!!

We’ve both had great news of jobs which will start when we get back from Uganda. Emma’s got a lecturers job at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine which will involve lots of travelling to Africa doing research whilst Pete’s going be starting A&E training at Trafford Hospital in August.

We’ve been keeping up to date with Kuluva and have had news of the difficulties and struggles the hospital is going through. Firstly two of the three Ugandan doctors have left and they have been unable to find a replacement, this obviously has left a massive strain on the staff especially Dr Patrick who is left alone but will also be very difficult for us going back into that situation. Secondly the hospital is having big financial difficulties and has been unable to pay staff for two months and last week made 25 staff redundant, again it will be difficult for us to see our friends in this situation and we know it will be the patients who suffer more than ever. We hope that our return for this short time will be of some encouragement and relief to the ongoing difficulties.

Just before we go we wanted to say a massive thank you to Katherine and Rob Davies for letting us stay with them for the past three months and making us feel really at home. You’ve both been amazing friends and so generous to us!

Please keep praying for our safety as we travel, health and that we can be faithful to God in what he has planned for us.

See you soon

P+E xxx

PS.If anyone wants to contact us you can call us on (don’t forget the #!)

Tel: (6p/min) 0871 754 1212 wait for speaking then dial 00256 773687761#

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