Lazy Sunday's

I cannot believe that in 35 days we will be well into our 18 hour journey to Uganda! Some days I think March 3rd cannot get here fast enough and other days I wish I could freeze time so I had more time to get ready. There is so much to do and I can never shake the feeling that I am forgetting something! I have never been a good sleeper, but now I find myself waking in the middle of the night panicked over memory cards, malaria pills, and ankle length skirts. But in all of the hecticness that will undoubtedly ensue over the next few weeks, I am so happy and so incredibly blessed to not only have this amazing opportunity to travel to a country near and dear to my heart and share a life changing experience with my best friend!

I am thrilled that Lindsay was finally able to share with you some of the details of her hospital's contribution to our trip. I know that the medical supplies we are able to bring with us to the HUMBLE school will continue to help long after we have said our goodbyes. We have both done a wonderful job raising money for this trip and are eternally grateful to our friends and family members who have supported us both financially and emotionally. For those of you who have not had the opportunity to make a donation, there is still time! Every penny helps and no contribution is too small.

Lind's Donation Update

It has been a little over 2 weeks since our Mission Trip acceptance to Mukono, Uganda & in this short time period the emotional & financial support from our family & friends has been truly amazing!

.... so far I have raised $920!! THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH!

Yesterday my employer, Floyd Medical Center generously donated medical supplies for the children of the HUMBLE School! From band-aids to disposable stehoscopes, the material management team handpicked many great items for our trip! I am so excited to bring all these much needed supplies to the children of Mukono!! Thanks again FMC!!

The next 35 days preparing for our trip will be busy- Judi has already gotten her vaccines & I hopefully will be starting mine sometime next week when I have a few days off! I have been blessed with being able to work overtime shifts at work & although I have been tired emotionally & physically from working extra 12+ hour shifts, it all is totally worth it to help the beautiful children of Uganda! I am so excited & happy to share this life-changing journey with you all & truly thank you all from the bottom of my heart for your love & continued support!!

Judi's vaccines

We have not had much traffic on the site for a while, so please make sure that you are passing our blog on to your family and friends!

Today I got the 4 vaccines I needed to have in order to make my trip to Uganda! Unfortunately for Lindsay she will have to have a few more :-S but its worth it! I made it through all 4 shots but my condition rapidly diminished shortly after my yellow fever shot. Thankfully I was able to pull it together enough to get home and I have spent the majority of the day sleeping off the effects of getting my vaccines.

For those of you who are not familiar with some of the vaccines I got today, yellow fever is the most risky. Uganda has a high rate of yellow fever, an acute viral ideas passed to humans through mosquitos. The symptoms of yellow fever are fever (weird), nausea, pain and many of those also associated with jaundice such as yellowing of the skin and eyes. According to the world health organization the yellow fever virus is responsible for 200,000 illnesses and more than 30,000 deaths a year. There is no know treatment for yellow fever and both the WHO and CDC recommend preventative vaccines as the only measure to reeducate the population of transmitting mosquitos. If we were not traveling to a region where yellow fever is prevalent, we would not be receiving the yellow fever vaccination. About 20% of immunized patients will feel flu like symptoms, 1% of immunized patients will cause YEL-AVD (yellow fever vaccine-associated viscertropic disease) which is fatal in 60% of the reported cases. Because yellow fever is highly prevalent in Uganda, yellow fever vaccination is compulsory and vaccination benefits highly outweigh the potential risks associated with the vaccine. With all of this being said the close family and friends will be advised to watch for jaundice type symptoms in both Lindsay and I for 10 days following inoculation. BUT the worst is over :-)

35 days :-)

The children of Mukono, Uganda STILL need your help!! It's not too late to donate financially and/or offer our mission trip team your emotional support & prayers! Only a few short days until we turn in the funds we have raised so far so Rev. Dalton can book our plane tickets!! Even if you can only donate $5 or $10 it is greatly appreciated & will truly make a difference!!


Thank you all for your continued support!! God Bless!

Quick Update

A battle with parasites and French has had me off the radar for a few days. Thanks so much to my bfffffff Lindz for picking up my slack! I promise we will get the skype interview for our story up this week! But until then I wanted to give an update :-)

we have 38 days to go!

Judi-$1076.61
Lindz-$521.02

We are so grateful for the generosity of our friends and family members! We cannot wait to get to uganda to start making a difference! Please keep following us and keep donating!

Videos about Uganda

Wanted to post some videos I found on Youtube depicting the beauty of Uganda & what types of food we may be trying on our 10 day trip!


Documentary video of Uganda's attractions & natural beauty
http://youtu.be/kcU7RrKPCVk

Cuisine of Uganda http://youtu.be/BuAbnJUHXB8













**A BIG THANK YOU TO ALL OUR SUPPORTERS SO FAR, WE ARE TRULY BLESSED! **

Sorry but it had to be done! I am an advocate for freedom of media as much as the next person. But I think in light of things like this anti SOPA movement it is clear how easy it is to lose sight of how much better off we are as Americans. Simply being an american is something that is envied by a large majority of the worlds population. So, I promise to not turn this blog into my personal soapbox BUT this particular post had to be done....because if only we could rally occupy wall street or SOPA support for international issues maybe everyone would be better off? just a thought

It's finally hitting me....

Just sitting here on the couch, relaxing after a long 13 hour day at work & I think reality is finally hitting me that I am actually going to Uganda in a few short weeks!! I spoke with my Nurse Manager today & got her permission to put up flyers/support letters up on our unit today & around the hospital, in hopes of support from my awesome co-workers/work family. I also have sent out many facebook messages to my fellow online friends; facebook really is a great way to get a hold of a mass amount of people in a short time period, so thank you facebook for all your help!

So it is all sinking inr that I am actually a member of this mission trip team & I have so many mixed emotions at this point- I am excited, nervous, happy & stressed all at the same time. But most of all I honestly I feel so blessed to have this opportunity to serve in Africa; I have been wanting to do this since nursing school! Just a few weeks ago I was actually filling out a ton of interest forms for various medical mission trips around the world & 5 days ago I learned I was actually going to finally be a part of an already organized mission trip!

Now I admit to being a procrastinator, I truly do work better under pressure for some insane reason & yes it is very overwhelming to appropriately prepare, meet all required deadlines and raise enough money for this mission trip in such a short time period. Honestly (for many reasons) I believe that this opportunity was meant for me & I wouldn't change the circumstances for anything! I am very thankful to be sharing this whole opportunity with my best friend from highschool, Judi. Not only is is great to travel somewhere new with someone you know, I think its comforting to me, as well as my family that she will be by my side. Most of you probably don't know Judi & I's full friendship story, but we both were involved in a car accident with a tractor trailer truck on our spring break senior year of highschool. That experience in itself has resulted in a unique & meaningful bond that we will always share, we have realized that we escaped death that day (April 7, 2003- will never forget the date) & we are both truly lucky to be alive!

We are meant to be here for some reason. I truly believe that my reason of still being here on this earth is to serve & help others; as a nurse I know I help others everyday, but I still want something more, something more fulfilling. I want to travel to a community that is in desperate need of our help, to a place where children do not have the luxury of runing water or access to advanced healthcare; to a school/orphanage where most of the children do not know their parents because they have passed from HIV/AIDS. The HUMBLE School in Mukono, Uganda is the perfect place for me to go on my first mission trip & I look forward this life-changing experience.

Lastly, I want to thank all my family/friends & my amazing boyfriend Zach for all their continued support during this whirlwind journey; without all your kindness, prayers & donations this trip would not be possible!!! xoxoxo

Its only tuesday!

Ugh I cannot believe it is only tuesday! We have so much to do and life certainly does not stop for us to prepare for our adventure. I would like to take this moment to preemptively apologize to all of the wonderful ladies I work with who would undoubtedly hate me on March 15th 2012.

With that being said, we have 44 days until I leave for Atlanta en route to Uganda. I have tons going on at work so spending the next 6 weeks tying up lose ends is my #1 work priority. But, when I get home we have shots, and purchasing, packing the purchases........., and the list seems endless. On the bright side we officially have our flight itinerary!!!!

Delta#56 03MAR Atlanta - Amsterdam 535pm - 820am next day

KLM#535 04MAR Amsterdam - Entebbe 1005am - 1020pm

KLM#537 12MAR Entebbe - Amsterdam 1130pm - 555am next day

Delta#57 13MAR Amsterdam - Atlanta 1050am - 345pm

With the time changes I know that we will feel like we've only just arrived when we are packing up to leave. But I am STOKED to have this opportunity to get lindz hooked on Africa and I can only hope this is the first of our many trips! 

ANd too the $$ today we have raised $170.00. Bringing our let to raise total to $1845.00. Again a HUGE Thank you to those of you who have donated! Without your help this dream would not be possible. For those of you who have not donated please remember that even a small amount is appreciated! 

We hope to be able to officially announce Lindsay's hospital's donation soon. And please do not miss our friday video post, it is going to be an intense one as Lindsay and I remember out story. 

On January 10th 2012 we needed $3,200 to go to Uganda

AS OF TODAY 

January 16th 2012 we have raised $1,185 

THANK-YOU TO THOSE OF WHO HAVE SUPPORTED US!

Ashley Welman

Gordon Schaeffer

Jenny Wood

Vanessa Elswick

Ray Uzwyshyn

Lee-Deane Elmore

Debbie Morello

Please continue to support us emotionally and financially!!!! 

First video blog

We are so excited to have the opportunity to share our preparations for Uganda with all of you. As you can see Lindsay is working on adding some video from other's trips to the HUMBLE school. Those should be up today. Please share our blog with your family and friends and please donate if you can!

HUMBLE School History

This slideshow depicts some of the volunteer work from 1999-2009 at the HUMBLE School in Mukono, Uganda...where Judi & I will be going on our mission trip!!!!!
HUMBLE School slide show

The children of HUMBLE

Kampala

SHOT SHOT SHOT SHOT SHOTS EVERYBODY

So, in all of the fun and excitiment preparing for our journey to Uganda we must not forget to keep ourselves safe. So today I got the information on what boosters I need and what shots lindsay needs....so here is the BRUTAL list of what an African newbie (lindsay) needs to come home as healthy as we were when we left! so here goes -Hepatitis A -Hepatitis B -Typhoid -Polio -Meningococcus -Rabies -Tetanus-diphtheria booster -Yellow Fever We will also be traveling with malaria pills and to take once a day for me :-) and either once a day for Lindsay or 3 times a day depending on what she picks. As well as Prophylaxis just in case :-S

Its time for bed! Its been a little more than 24 hours since we started this blog! We have raised $80 and we are stoked!!! Thank you to all who have contributed! We still would like to share our journey with as many people as we can so please still keep up with us, donate if you can, and share our blog with anyone you know! We cannot wait to make a difference in the life of so many young children! 31 hours down....49 days 17 hours to go! Goodnight!

A little about Mukono

The HUMBLE United school is located in the Mukono district in central Uganda. Mukono is located about 17 miles east of the capital city Kampala. Mukono is located near lake victoria, the world's second largest fresh water lake and is home to approximately 500,000 Ugandans. As of Septemeber 27th 2011 the Kabale Kisoro Road (which connects the district to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda) opened to the public. Mukono town is one of the fastest growing urban areas in the region and has become a center for youth development initiatives and commerce. Mukono is 8 hours ahead Martinsburg WV and Rome GA.

PLEASE DONATE