Where in the World is Emily Bean?

A friend from home recently asked me, “Where exactly are you, and what are you doing?” In case you’ve just tuned in our have forgotten, for the past year I’ve been in south western Uganda working for a small organization (ACTS) that brings safe water to rural communities. My role has primarily been to coordinate the health and environmental education programs that run concurrently with the water project.

Bwesumbu Football (Soccer) Club, the team I played with near the ACTS camp.

I speak in the past tense because this is all about to change. Yes, it is not what I had planned, but through various circumstances, prayer and wisdom from those I respect, it has become apparent that it would not be beneficial for me to continue with ACTS for another year.

So what’s next? Well, if I could answer that, where would the excitement of life be? If you read the previous post you’ll see that living here requires extreme flexibility, and I’ve become almost comfortable with the unknown (note, almost). What I do know is this:

• I am still sensing a call and desire to work amongst the poor in Africa. As hard as it’s been, this place lodges itself deeper and deeper into my heart.
• I am becoming increasingly interested in agriculture work amongst subsistence farmers (there’s an awesome conservation farming program called Farming God’s Way and I’d love to learn and teach it).
• I need more knowledge/training in agricultural and community development. Grad school perhaps?
• I am torn between the wonderful family, friends, church and life that I left at home and the opportunities I see before me here.

As the days pass, plans slowly fall into place, with many questions still remaining. In the next three weeks I am planning to visit friends in Kenya and Iris Ministries in Mozambique. After that I’m heading to Lesotho (a small south African country) for 6 weeks of training in Farming God’s Way. Then I’ll be returning to “home” here in Mbarara, Uganda for a week-long conference on transformational development. Then the plan is to return to good ol’ PA in November.

Emily's travel map for the next two months

Although most of my plane tickets have been purchased, I hesitate to put this “itinerary” into writing because a wise person once said, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.” Hopefully God’s not laughing too much right now.

I will do my best to keep you posted as I travel over the next few months. I may have to resort to more emails and less posting/photos, as I don’t know what internet access will be like. Until later…