California Sun.

Hello dear friends!

Greetings from California!

As you may or may not know, I have returned to America. After spending two months in Uganda, I took a grueling 56 hour long trip to return to the States. It is difficult for me to believe that my time in Uganda is over, but I am excited to tell you what has been going on with this creative storytelling project.

Upon my return, I brought back about 150 stories from both primary and secondary students in Uganda. And they are simply beautiful. While I was still in Uganda, I got to travel to several primary schools in Gulu, and there I got to see the faces and greet the voices behind many of these stories. I discovered that these children were not only delighted and eager to tell these stories, but this was perhaps one of the first opportunities for them to dabble in creativity, and it's been quite an unexpected pleasure to witness that.

As my time in Uganda was coming to a close, I discovered that the project would not yet be completed once I left. A friend, Denis Ocitti, is running the project in Uganda. He is a primary school teacher based in Gulu, and is literally one of the best teachers in Uganda. And I can think of no one else I would rather have helping us out on the ground there. He is still getting the project out to secondary schools in the Gulu vicinity, and will be in charge of collecting the remaining stories and shipping them to me in California.

Although this project is coming to a close for now, at least on the ground in Uganda, it is still continuing in different ways. The stories, after being organized and sent to America, will be read and narrowed down to a top twenty to fifty stories. This round of stories will be then passed on to four judges: two based in America and two in Uganda. I am very excited to be working with these judges and hearing their thoughts on these written works, as well as to see their picks for the winners. I just met with one of our judges a couple of days ago, and am working on securing the others.

In that light, I invite you to continue being updated on this project, as there are still final steps that are being taken. I will most likely only be sending out a couple of more emails, as this process will be slightly slower than the past few weeks and also slightly less exciting. I would love to keep you all updated, as it is your faith, support, prayers, and encouragement that have fed this project from the beginning. And for that, I cannot thank you enough.

I hope you are all doing well and keeping warm as we enter this winter season. I will be updating you all soon, but until then, stay well and be blessed. And thank you again for everything.

in love and for peace,
Kristin Lorey

p.s. If you are interested, you can check out a summary of our project as posted on one of Dave Eggers' sites. You can read more about his own project(s) there, and how we became a part of it ... http://onceuponaschool.org/?p=657