Murchison Falls!

I made it back, and what an incredible weekend! It was amazing to be in God's creation and to see His artistry and beauty in everything. What an awesome CREATOR we have!!!

We left Kampala around 7 on Saturday morning (We = me, Jill (my roomie), Curtis, & Terry (2 guys from Jill's mission who are working up in northern Uganda) ). We made it up to Murchison in the early afternoon and had lunch at a place called the Red Chili. It was so much hotter up there! No breeze, no clouds, no rain... Our guide said that it was about a 7 degrees Celcius difference. (like going from 70 degrees F to 82 degrees!) Actually, Terry and Curtis work in hotter temps than we were in... crazy.

We were able to see lions, giraffes, elephants, antelope, warthogs, a jackal, hippos (SO many!), crocodiles, buffalos, lots of colorful birds, and probably some others that I'm forgetting... :)

We immediately went on our first game drive, with our guide, Emmanuel. He had a lot of great sayings, that I probably can't repeat here... Some were misunderstandings on our part, like "let's take a shade" I'll let you imagine what we thought he had said! We were able to see giraffes really close-up, see a whole herd of elephants, and get close to some hippos hanging out in a lake.

Aren't these animals cool?!?! I felt like all I could say the whole weekend was, "God, you are so CREATIVE and COOL! Thank you for these blessings!!"

I kept thinking of different songs, like "How can I keep from singing Your praise? I know I am loved by the King and it makes my heart want to SING!" and "O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder, consider all the worlds Thy hands have made..."

On Sunday afternoon, we took a river boat ride up the Nile! We went all the way to the actual Murchison Falls and saw the waterfalls from the river banks. Our boat driver even let me get out of the boat and climb onto some rocks so I could get a better picture...

Another early morning rolled around on Monday (did I mention we were getting up before 6 each day to go out and see all of the animals? Yikes, it was early!) and we packed up and headed out. On our way out of the park, we were blessed with a magnificent sunrise!

I know I keep using the same adjectives over and over, which I would NEVER let my kiddos do in their writing, but how AMAZING is this? Perfect sunrise. Perfect Son.

We packed up and headed out to see the top of the falls that morning, before heading back to Kampala. We were warned ahead of time about the flies that 'attack' you, but good-ness! These flies were not only persistent and vigilant in swarming our van and finding every inlet into our vehicle, but they also would not DIE. We tried to smack them with everything we had and finally conquered the battle.

(Sorry, no pics of the relentless flies!)

When we made it to the falls, we were able to see down the cliffs to where we had been on the river the day before. What power that water has as it rushes down the rocks! Our guide was a little nervous because we got pretty close to the edge, but we all survived :)

And that pretty much sums up the weekend! Obviously, I left out some of the random details, but I wanted to share the pictures so badly and I couldn't wait to find the time to write a huge, long blog entry about it!!!