At the beginning of September 2013 I had the opportunity to travel to Baja California, Mexico. At the time while I was in South Africa (August 2013) I was able to arrange the finances. I had a plan of flying back to Uganda and applying for the Mexican visa from there. However when I reached the Mexican consulate in Kampala, I was informed that I would have to travel to their embassy in Nairobi. When I consulted the YWAM base that would be hosting me, I was advised to apply for the American visa, as it is also valid for entry to Mexico. With less then 2 weeks to go, I applied and got an interview on Thursday before I was to fly. I made my way to Kampala on the Wednesday and the next day went for the visa interview. I found many people at the embassy and it took about 5 hours for my turn. The interview went well and I was told to come back the following day. Straight after the interview I made a booking for my flight. I found a ticket within my budget, 1 seat left! On Friday I found a 10 year American visa in my passport. After sorting out the ticket I returned to Jinja that same Friday. On Monday I traveled to the airport in Entebbe. The ground travel was slow, I reached the airport within 90 minutes of the departure time. While on the immigration line, the flight was being called and when I reached the gate I was sent directly to the plane. The first flight was a short hop to Ethiopia. After a few hours it was time for the long flight to America, with a brief stop in Rome. Tuesday morning American time I was in the immigration line at Washington, D.C., well actually Virginia. With about 9 hours to wait I had time for a few hours outside the airport, before another flight to California. Tuesday night I arrived in San Diego, California. At the airport I met with a number of YWAMers. After getting food, we drove across the border into Mexico.
Over 700 YWAMers gathered at San Antonio Del Mar. It was was wonderful to meet up again with people that many I had not seen for 10 years. The key speaker was Bruce Wilkerson who challenged us to expand our ministries 10 fold. There were different tracks offered during the week and I focused on the media topics. CREATE works mostly in Asia and gave ideas of using mobile technology as evangelism tools. The Film Institute produces Christian themed programs.
I was also able to see some of the work of Homes of Hope. They have been building houses in Mexico and at the end of this year a team will be coming to Uganda to build houses.
A key highlight of the workshop is the UofN graduation. One of my friends, Jonathan Mumbai was one of the graduates. He was receiving his Masters of Arts in Primary Health Care. I first met Jonathan in Zambia during my DTS outreach in 2002. I later visited his base again in Livingstone, Zambia in 2005 as part of my trip across Africa. Jonathan also came to Uganda to support a school that was hosted on Hope Land.
Loren Cunningham, the Founder of YWAM commissioned us on Saturday evening. Sunday we drove back to the US on a chartered bus. From San Diego it was an overnight flight to Washington. Then it was another flight to Ethiopia which arrived on Tuesday morning. On arrival in Addis Abba we found out the flight to Uganda was delaid and then we did get on the plane we were landing in Kigali first, so ended up arriving 5 hours late in Entebbe.
Though it was a short time I believe it was worthwhile and trust God will open doors to return to that part of the world.
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