The Paech Family Singers!

The Ugandan portion of the Paech family (to varying degrees) are avid composers, singers and dancers! In this video, the family sings a worship song called "Mukama Yaminyi" which means "It's only God who knows". Apart from English, Luganda is the most widely spoken language in Uganda, and this native tounge is what the family sing this song in.

P.S. Aggie wrote this song!

Aggie Interviews Winfrey in Bbiina

Aggie interviews Winfrey, a recipient of Manna Ministry food, at IMFC's 1st food distribution in Bbiina (pronounced "Been-a", and yes, that's spelt right!) this afternoon - a community we will be ministering to during the next 6 months.



For more information about what we are doing here in Uganda, go to www.ugandajourney.com

1st Manna Distribution in Sebina

Hi everyone! Today we (the IMFC team) began a new work in an urban slum area of Kampala called "Sebina" where we will be ministering for the next 6 months.

Check out 2 videos we shot just a couple of hours ago!





For more information, go to http://www.ugandajourey.org/

Love in Him,
Aggie and Simon &:-)}

House Tour

Don't be scared off by what (below) appears to be a video of a ghost. This is actually a short video tour of the house we are renting here in Kampala. My personal favorite part is (are?) the chickens, *grin*

The Introduction

Photo: Misti (Aggie's Matron of honour to be) & Aggie,

Simon & Deo (Simon's best man to be).

Click here for more photos!

Ok, finally a blog post! We are doing well and 3 days ago we celebrated 5 months of marriage! We have been so continually busy here that it's hard to find time for such things as blog posts, but it is long overdue to catch-you-up on some of the big events of the past few (now long-gone) months (including our wedding!). But since I'm a bit of a perfectionist, I'll do things in order & start with the Introduction ("Okwanjula"), which was on November 9th, 2007.

It looks like a wedding (except for that pink dress and those robe things), but it's not. Or is it?? Even though Uganda is becoming increasingly westernized in a lot of ways, many traditions are still practiced. The "Introduction" is when the (potential) groom and his extended family are introduced to the (potential) bride and her extended family. Relatives travel from all over the place to come to Introductions: Aggie's father and Aunts came from far NE Uganda and her mother's relatives travelled from Tanzania - both about 10hr, uncomfortable bus trips. Close family friends are also invited, so it ends up being a big event!

I say "potential" groom & bride because this event also determines whether the woman's family approves of and receives the man and his family. This is firstly decided from a knowledge of the man's character, and secondly by the negotiation of a dowry ("bride price") and the giving of lavish gifts of food and supplies to the woman's side of the family, all furnished by the potential groom (!). If the woman's family is satisfied with the man, dowry and gifts, they will give him a letter of acceptance - approving of his marriage to the woman. If negotiations don't go well, the relationship of the man and woman cannot go forward (with family approval). I'm told his happens occasionally, but fortunately for me, Aggie paved the way by negotiating a dowry with her parents before the Introduction, and I guess they thought I was an OK guy! So I was "pre-approved", *grin*. No worries!

From that description the Introduction sounds like a serious & scary event (which it was in some ways for me), but it's actually mostly a big celebration. Both families have a representative master of ceremonies (MC) - paid professionals who speak on their behalves. The MCs banter back and forth with clever and HILARIOUS questions, comments and come-backs, involving and engaging the two families. An example, when they were discussing my history: "Paech is a wise man, as he has managed to read every book in the world. His family accomplishments are great - Paech's grandfather invented the first motor-car, which can now be seen in the Ugandan museum..." My favorite was: "Paech, it seems that your eyes are ever sliding 45 degrees!" (referring to me looking over at Aggie who was off to the side at that time, *laugh*). They also cleverly worked Australia into things. 90% of this was in Luganda, being translated to me by Deo.

The whole event typically goes for a long time (aside: after being to my own and a few others, I have to admit that I now try to avoid them, but Aggie makes me go). Ours went from 2-8pm, with all sorts of really special parts: Aggie choosing me out of the crowd of people (identifying me as her husband-to-be), me choosing Aggie out of 3 groups of girls who paraded by (identifying her as my wife-to-be); an exchange of rings, the cutting of a cake and feeding it (and drink) to eachother, all culminating in what everyone was REALLY there for - a huge meal! Beef, chicken, matooke (the Ugandan staple: cooked green bananas - it's good stuff!), rice, "irish" potatoes, sweet potatoes, peanut sauce, greens... As the guest of honour, my plate was the biggest of all (couldn't finish it)!

The Introduction is actually the traditional Ugandan wedding! By Ugandan law, the man and woman are married after the bride's family gives their approval, and the man is then free to take his wife. But Christian Ugandans also have the traditional wedding that we westerners are familiar with, which is what Aggie and I had 2 days later. So we waited the extra 48 hours, *grin*.

Some of you have already seen a few photos from our wedding, but stay tuned - I'm going to post an entry with a lot more, complete with written details. Hopefully it won't take me 4 months. Ok...

• If you would like a copy of our Easter newsletter, with details of what we've been doing with International Ministries for Christ and a recent family/life update, please email me: simon_paech@hotmail.com
• For more information about what Aggie and I are doing here in Uganda click here.
• And finally, click here for more photos from our Introduction!

Until next time!

Simon & Aggie &:-)}

Merry Christmas From the Paechs!

(Photo above - left to right: Abbey, Joshua, Brian, Sarah, Simon, Aggie, Sharon)

Merry Christmas from the new Paech family clan in Uganda! Finally a blog update! There's so much to tell you about! God has done it!: I (Simon) arrived in Kampala on October the 14th and Aggie and I were re-united. It was SO good to be back together again after more than seven months apart. During the following weeks, we were extremely busy planning for two major, back-to-back events: a “Kwanjula” on November the 9th (my formal introduction to Aggie's relatives), and our wedding on the 11th. It was as tiring and stressful as you hear from everyone who is organizing a wedding, but we continually saw God at work, and both events went beautifully! Aggie and I then headed off for our honeymoon to Kabale, a beautiful location in far SW Uganda, arriving back in Kampala at the end of November.

Before our wedding, and with amazingly minimal effort (God again), we found a place to rent within our budget that exceeded what we had imagined! A four bedroom house in a good area, complete with furniture and appliances, AND a backup power system and solar hot water heater! It has some issues that need to be worked on, but we are very happy with it and it is now starting to feel like home.

All the (now Paech!) kids are home for Christmas holidays (Dec-Feb), so we are getting to spend a lot of time with each other and are starting to settle in together as a family. Mealtimes have been excellent with everyone sitting around the table talking and laughing. Everyone has been working really hard around the house - Aggie has raised an amazing family – they all work together as a team (a big change for me after being single for so many years), one that is great to join. Brian built a multi-level house for our (seven I think) chickens and I can hear the roosters crowing as we speak. Sharon has taken over Aggie's cleaning job at IMFC for the holidays, and Abbey, Joshua have been heading out early almost every day to play soccer. Sarah (and everyone else) has been enjoying watching movies I brought from the U.S.

Aggie took a break from IMFC ministry work for the kwanjula and wedding, and for us to get settled in together. However we are really looking forward to getting to work with the IMFC team and doing what God has put in our hearts!

God is faithful – 100% of our first three months of financial support (Oct-Dec) was raised before we left! Our longer-term support (January 2008 onwards) is currently a lot slimmer at only 25%. But we are confident that God will provide for us and we look forward to telling you how He does this (more amazing stories)!

When we have better internet access we hope to update this blog with details & photos of all the events of the past few months but for the moment you can go to http://www.ugandajourney.org/ and click on "Wedding Photos".

Again, merry Christmas from all of us!

The Paechs.

Uganda Journey

Ok, I'm not even going to talk about how long it's been since my last post! But things have really been moving along! I am returning to Uganda on the 13th of October, so 6 weeks from today I'll be there!! Aggie and my wedding will be on November the 11th! Wow! We're both really excited! I can't wait until she runs into my arms again at the airport - it was amazing enough last time - this time we're about to be married!

So things have been incredibly busy here, as you can imagine. A team of people here in Huntsville is forming who will be supporting Aggie & I in many different ways from back here in the U.S. This involves various sub support teams: a finance team, logistics team, accountability team, prayer team, and communications team. The leaders of these sub-teams will be from the church I'm part of, and the members can be anyone else who would like to be part of this adventure.

At this point, the team is not very large and there is a LOT to do, but we are trusting God! This is such a big thing and we are so small (as a team, and as humans) that only He can do it! Right now we're very focussed on finances (the money for Aggie & I and our family to live in Uganda and do the work God is putting in our hearts) and logistics (all the details like shipping stuff, insurances, etc). God has lead us to send me and trust Him to provide. I know He will - this is His thing!! We get to see how He does it and brings it all together, and He'll get the credit for it!

We are going to be raising funds through the support of individuals and also other creative ways, including selling beautiful necklaces, hand-made by Ugandan ladies from recycled magazine pages (advertisement there, *grin*).

We're calling all of this "Uganda Journey". Not just my journey in Uganda, but the journey of anyone and everyone who God leads to join us - whether on a support team, supporting us financially, or in any other way. You will be part of the journey. If you'd like to know more about this, click on this web page link: http://www.ugandajourney.org/ From this website you can also find out more about International Missionaries for Christ (the organization Agge & I will be working with in Uganda), as well as "Life's Journey" - the church I'm part of. At the top it also has a count-down of days, hours, and minutes until I fly out of the United States.

I have at least 2 more amazing stories to post - they've been sitting in the archives (of my mind, that is)! THE Amazing Story is continuing - having seen, and continuing to see God bring all of this together. All the other amazing stories are chapters in THE story.

Love in Him,

Simon &:-)}

Amazing Story #3

Well once again it's been too long since I last updated this blog! It hasn't been from a lack of things happening, that's for sure. The picture here is of a typical "boda-boda" (short for "border to border") - a small motorbike used a lot in Kampala for transport, especially as a taxi service. Imagine me & Aggie on this! That's what Amazing Story #3 is about.

In the living expenses budget for our family (to be) in Uganda, I estimated that Aggie & I would spend around US$1000/yr using local transport to get around. Every day we'll be going from place to place in Kampala - between our house & the IMFC ministry centre, house churches, discipling groups, as well as to go shopping etc. Most of these trips involve multiple routes, and although the individual routes are pretty cheap to travel, it all adds up over time. If you are going to have a car in Kampala, you really need a meadium-heavy duty 4WD vehicle because the roads are pretty bad. And when you have one of those, you're hit with US$4-5/gallon (AUS$1.50/litre - probably what you Australians pay now anyway) for fuel. A boda like this one (Indian made "Bajaj" brand, 100cc engine) costs about US$1400, and would get excellent fuel mileage. If we bought one ourselves, the money we'd spend on transport in just the first year would almost equal the motorbike cost.

When I came home from my 3 month trip to Uganda, I brought back lots of Ugandan hand-made bead necklaces - purchased from ladies in one of the house churches there - with the idea that we could sell them here in the U.S. and raise money to set aside for a boda. But God had other plans! Every year in Huntsville, a well-known suburb has a neighbourhood-wide garage sale, and people come to it from all over the place (even from other states!). Some wonderful ladies from my church decided to have a garage sale to raise money for a boda for me & Aggie! Two families from the church who live in that neighbourhood let us use their houses, and people from the church donated all sorts of (quality!) things to sell. Through the work of one wonderful lady, the Huntsville Coca-Cola factory donated 300 bottles of drink, and a local "Publix" supermarket gave us HEAPS of high-quality bakery goods (cakes, muffins...*mouth starts watering at the thought*)!

At the time of all this, it was early spring here, so the weather was oscillating between cold & warm, rainy and dry, so we weren't sure what the weather would hold for the Saturday of the garage sale. As the day drew neigh, things weren't looking good - a cold front was forecast to move through that very morning, with rain & thunderstorms, and the heaviest rain in the middle of the sale! God was sitting by wringing His hands saying "Oh no....this is a disaster" - not! Everything works out according to His plan, even if things don't LOOK good. The morning of the garage sale came and it was overcast and looked a lot like rain. A few light showers went through, but the people came - and bought! Bought garage sale stuff, drinks, and ALL the bakery stuff. At about 11am, close to when most garage sales have usually seen their greatest flow of people, the heavens opened and it poured & thundered & lightninged (learnt that term during my Master's degree work) and we packed things up. The money was counted at both houses, and put together it came to ONE THOUSAND AND EIGHTEEN DOLLARS!!!! wOw! I knew that was a lot of money, but I (an inexperienced garage sale person) was also told that this is amazing and pretty atypical for a garage sale. And put together with money my church has given towards support for Aggie & I, the total came to right around $1400! So this amount is set aside for Aggie & I to buy a boda when I get to Uganda! Amazing story #3!!

Again God has done exceedingly abundantly more than we could ask or imagine. And I've felt so loved by the people who have come around me (and Aggie) supporting us and being excited for us and enthusiastic about all of this. Honestly, I don't think Aggie & I can do this (or could have come to this point even) on our own, so thankyou to all of you who have been and are there for us. We love you and cherish you!

Our projected (and hopeful (and prayerful!)) date for me to return to Uganda is October. This has started to look more likely in the last few weeks. We're currently focussing on logistics (lots to sort through!), and the financial means. It looks highly possible that I may be able to work 1-2 days a week in my current field of work from Uganda (via the internet)! If this works out, it will go a long way to providing what we'll need financially there. If I do arrive back there in October, Aggie & I will likely be married in December, so anyone who has even vaguely considered coming to our wedding, start thinking more seriously about it! December is one of the cheapest times to fly to Uganda (at least from the U.S. anyway), which may just be great timing for anyone who might come.

By the way, Aggie now has electricity in her house, complete with a small colour TV! This is awesome for her! She also has the glass in the windows, so the place is almost complete. God is good - He provided this for her (and not through me!).

Well until Amazing Story #4 (which took place in the last couple of weeks), siiba bulungi (good-day!).

Simon &:-)}

Amazing Story #2

I'm going to have to update this blog more often if I'm going to keep up with all the Amazing Stories! I can't believe it's been almost a month since my last post. This amazing story is about a couple from another church in Alabama who went on a short-term mission trip with IMFC earlier last year, just like the one I went on with my church in July. Actually, only the husband went on the trip, but this story is about both him and his wife. He met Aggie in Uganda as the team from his church worked with the team there, and his heart went out to her and her kids. He decided to sponsor all 5 of them so that they could go to school! I think that they had been in and out of school over the years as Aggie could afford to send them.

When I was there over Christmas, Aggie was telling me that she was a bit worried that when she told this couple that we were engaged, they might stop supporting her. I said that I doubted that (having a glimpse of their heart through what they was doing for Aggie and her family), although I thought they would probably stop when we got married. Aggie emailed them and told them the news, trusting it all with God. They emailed back and said that they wanted to keep supporting Aggie in this way even WHEN we get married, and that they would only stop when we asked them to! Wow, how's that for trust and generosity! That blew me away, and we both saw this as part of God's provision for us as a family when I returned to Uganda.

You'll probably remember in my post of Feb 16 that Aggie and her kids and I travelled up to Kotido in the Karamojong region of NE Uganda. The reason we went was to take the kids to a boarding school up there, which is what Aggie (and most Ugandan parents) has really wanted for her kids. She did this in faith, believing that God was giving her the go-ahead, and that He was going to provide for her to keep them there.

Back in the US, I called the couple who were supporting Aggie's kids - to meet them, and also to update them on Aggie's situation. They had sponsored the kids for schooling in Kampala, which was about half the cost of their school fees at boarding school. I talked to the husband and he was awesome - he was so excited about me and Aggie being engaged and when I told him about the schooling changes, he thought about it, and then said that they wanted DOUBLE the support they were sending Aggie and pay for all their boarding school fees! Holy Shnikeys!! And he said again that they would do this even when we get married and would only stop if we asked them to. Amazing story #2! God's provision for me and Aggie! Katonda mulungi nnyo (God is very good)!

Aggie's youngest son, Joshua, topped his class at school in Kampala in the term before they went to boarding school. He wants to study to be a medical doctor. Brian wants to be an engineer. Sarah's favorite subject is English. Later, Aggie told me that when we were up in Kotido, she heard Brian, the oldest, saying to his brothers and sisters something like "We've been given this opportunity, let's not mess this up!". These are amazing kids and it's so good to see them have this opportunity to get an education and pursue their passions, and to think that this will enable them to be lifted out of a future of poverty. Katonda mulungi!

Ok, this is a pretty long post, but one more thing! It looks like God has opened up the immigration door for me to go back to Uganda! IMFC has talked to their lawyers over there and have said that getting a work permit for me through them in Uganda is not going to be an issue. Excellent! That's one big hurdle down! Now I'm focussing my efforts on the financial side of things, trusting God to guide and provide and bring everything together in His time.

Tujaka laba gana! (we shall meet again! - not sure if I spelt it right though, *grin*)

P.S. The picture with this blog entry is outside the gates to the new school that Aggie's kids are now at in Kotido.

Amazing Story #1

Not that there hasn't already been a string of these and that the whole thing isn't one in itself, but THIS is an amazing story! When I landed back in the U.S. on March the 3rd, I caught a shuttle van service from Atlanta to Birmingham (about a 2hr trip) before being picked up by a friend in Birmingham and driven to Huntsville. A guy called Jess was driving the shuttle van, and his wife, Denise, was keeping him company. They asked me where I'd been etc, and I told them. They were REALLY excited about it all, and we talked for the whole trip. At one point Denise asked me "What kind of dresses do they wear for weddings in Uganda?" and I told them that for a lot of weddings there, they wear the same sort of wedding dresses as we're used to. She said that she had a beautiful wedding dress that they had bought a year or so ago for their son's fiancee, but the engagement was called off and they'd been wondering what to do with it since. They said to find out what Aggie's size would be, and if it was a match, they may be able to help us out in some way. In addition to that, they asked how they can go about supporting us financially! WoW!!! My feet had barely touched the ground in the U.S. and God was already showing me that He was at work! If nothing else came of it, I thought, I'd made 2 new friends.

Back in Huntsville, over the course of a few weeks, I gathered some information, called a bridal dress alterations place, and emailed back & forth with Denise. It "turned out" that the size that was estimated Aggie would wear was the same size as the dress!! Wow! I emailed Aggie some photos and she loved it! It also just so happened that it was very much like a dress we saw in Uganda that she really liked, only way nicer! So what was left to find out was how much Denise & Jess were prepared to part with it for. I wasn't sure what they'd meant by "we may be able to help you out in some way" - it ocurred to me that they might even give it to us, but I didn't want to assume or expect. They came up to Huntsville this past Saturday so we could catch up and spend some time together, and they asked if they could bring the dress to show me (even though I'd seen it in the photos - being a guy, that was enough for me). The 1st thing they did when they got here was to get it out. It was phenomenal! Not overdone, yet ornate & amazingly beautiful. I could picture Aggie in it - she would look incredible. "So..." I said, after exclaiming how beautiful it was, "I have to ask...how much are you guys willing to part with it for?". They said "Well we've prayed about it and we'd like to GIVE it to you and Aggie". Maaaaaaaaaaaaaan! How amazing!! I called Aggie and she was over the moon and got to thank Denise & Jess in person over the phone. Jess & Denise left the dress with me - it's now hanging up in a massive bag in my room (it looks like I'm marrying a giant!).

Aggie and I both agree that this is 100% a God-thing. One thing we had planned was for me to try and find a dress for her here, since they're even more expensive in Uganda. My feet had literally barely touched the ground back in the USA, and there it was! Wow! Thankyou Denise & Jess, and thankyou Lord! The photo for this blog post is of Jess, Denise, and the dress. I have more photos but we'll save the full glory for the wedding day!

Stay tuned for Amazing Story #2!