WOW!  This trip is shaping up to be great!

We have booked our travel from Kilimanjaro Airport in Tanzania to Entebbe Airport in Uganda.  Uganda is where our basket weavers live; it has been several years since I have had the opportunity to return to visit them.  Last visit, they gave Mary Ann and me a goat!  We regretfully left it behind in Uganda, and asked the women to hold a feast in our honor after we left.  It is fairly difficult to bring a goat back from Uganda to the US!

And, talk about a God thing:  Kathy (my travel companion, along with her husband, Stan; as well an Asante volunteer extraordinaire!) and I have been talking about the difficulty of communication with our woman in TZ who coordinates and reports on all of Asante's micro-loans.  She has an ancient computer without excel, so all her calculations have to be done by hand.  Kathy and I, independently of each other, have been thinking about how to get Julie a new computer with excel, so we could set up some spreadsheets for her micro-loan reporting.

Kathy and I were visiting on the phone the other day, and when we realized both of us were thinking along the same computer lines, we agreed that it was best to simply purchase a new laptop for Julie.  We both checked out the ads and found a good HP at BestBuy for a decent price.  I agreed to drive into Anchorage to check it out. 

As I was hanging up the phone with Kathy, another friend from up here knocked on my door.  We visited, had a cup of tea, and talked about my upcoming trip.  I happened to mention the discussion about the computer and  . . . as she was walking out the door, she handed me a donation to Asante, to cover the cost of the computer!  Talk about God working in this trip.

So, Julie will have a wonderful new computer, and we have the excitement of being the ones to deliver it to her. Can't wait!

More tomorrow . . .