Hello Family and Friends!
I’m so sorry it has been so long since I have posted anything. It has been a combination of no wifi/bad network, or just being very busy. We have been in Kenya for almost 2 weeks now. But I wanted to wrap up Uganda before getting into Kenya. My teammate Fabienne Boss wrote a nice summary of our time in Uganda and all the things we did. I have copied it below and I added in a few of my own thoughts (which are in italics). Enjoy!
Jinja – a city at the source of the Nile River
James Place
We started the first 5 days of our ATL month at James Place. I wrote about it in my first blog about Uganda.
Bridge Calvary Chapel
Because of the Christmas break James Place takes, we had to search for another place to stay and work with. We had troubles finding a place to stay in our budget…but God is faithful and provided within time on our last full day being at James Place, a simple but good apartment under budget! Our apartment was part of the compound of the Bridge Calvary Chapel where other Ugandan families and missionaries lived. So we ended up staying there for 11 days and started building different relationships with people from the compound and with people from the town while visiting their stores. Because the Church was inside the compound a lot of people came there day by day. That was an awesome opportunity for us to connect with different people. We made some sweet friendships.
Since we stayed at Bridge Calvary Chapel, we had the opportunity to join a choir from the Bridge Calvary Chapel to prisons in Uganda, they call it Prison Ministry. They were singing Christmas songs to them, playing a skit and preaching about the reason of Christmas. For most prisoners, this is the only Christmas they get to experience every year. The choir travels every year for a whole week to around 10 different prisons in Uganda. I couldn’t take any valuables with me inside the prisons but this is a picture from years past.
We also had the time to kept investing into the relationships we had made at James Place. We were able to visit the village, Masese, which is where a lot of the women lived. They were so excited to show us their home and their community. They introduced us to their families and it was so fun to see a little picture of their lives. Along with that we visited our friends who are still at James Place over the holidays and we played cards with them!
One day we helped an organization called Soul Hope. They do awesome sustainable work in fighting against jiggers. Jiggers are a parasite which multiply themselves fast in unclean conditions. They enter people’s feet, breed and cause pain to the people. In worst case they hinder people from walking because of the pain it would cause. Every Thursday, the organization visits villages who are harmed by jiggers. They set up a clinic under tents where the medical trained staff removes the jiggers from people’s feet. We volunteered there by washing feet before the treatment and by taking notes for the staff where the jiggers are. Beside the treatment the organization educates people regarding prevention. Part of the prevention is to wear shoes because a lot of Africans living in remote villages walk barefoot. That’s why the organization gives out self-made shoes to every person they treat. Getting the opportunity to serve with this organization really impacted me. I really appreciate what they do, how they do it, and the way they so intentionally run their organization well. If you are interested in learning more, visit their website at Sole Hope.
CHRISTMAS
We spent our Christmas this year in Jinja, Uganda. This was my second Christmas in Africa. We went to church in the morning and then spent the afternoon preparing for Christmas dinner with our friends. A lot of them were not able to go home for Christmas so we invited them to our little home. We ate dinner together, played games, and fellowshipped. It was a wonderful time with our friends and a sweet way to end our time in Jinja.
Mukono, Kyampisi – one of the top three cities in Uganda where child sacrifice happens
One of my teammates had child sacrifice on her heart for a long time. After praying individually about it, our whole team supported her in pursuing that as a ministry. We contacted different organizations and ended up working together with KCM (Kyampisi Childcare Ministries) for one week, our last week in Uganda. Peter, the founder of KCM is an impressive person who fights for the rights of trafficked and abused children who would not have any voice. Last summer, he got a Human Right Award for his work and despite that stays so humble and gives all the glory to God in what he is achieving. He told us a lot of astounding stories in what ways God worked miracles in and through this ministry. For example, there are two airlines who have calculated in their yearly budget the costs for travels of children who survived the harm of witch doctors as child sacrifices but are in need of surgery in Australia. Why Australia? Because God worked the miracle that surgeons there provide the operations needed free of charge. There is so much more to tell about this week in Mukono…
…there is the “prayer mountain” which was an earlier place where children got mutilated by witch doctors for sacrifices. Now because KCM bought the land, it’s a prayer mountain where people come to pray. It’s a wonderful place to be silent and praise God who fights with the ministry for restoration, for an end to the dreadful practice of child sacrifice.
…there are trafficked and abused children in a home. It’s the first rehabilitation center in whole Uganda!! Some of them will never walk normally because their spine got damaged through the machete. Some of them are never able to speak due to the fact that their brain is injured because most their blood was drained out of them. They are so many stories and I hope to tell them in a later blog. They are stories that matter! Stories that fight for justice!
KCM fights against child sacrifice, runs a rehabilitation center for the harmed children, manages sponsorships for children and provides education at their own school. Part of our ministry there was to help with paperwork, to spend time with women (we organized a beauty day for them), to spend time with the children from the rehabilitation center, to visit and pray for people at the village, and to help with Sunday school at the church service.
At last, Peter took us for New Year’s Eve to the Nelson Mandela stadium in Kampala for an overnight prayer event with 50’000 people…and fireworks! This is an event with international speakers and good music. Peter’s wife’s parents host it every year.
Then came New Years Day…MY BIRTHDAY! I love my birthday, and my team and our friends in Uganda worked very hard to make it such a special day for me. In East Africa, when it is your birthday you get a bucket of water dumped on you. But they dumped six buckets on me and then threw me in the pool. It was so much fun though. All our friends from KCM came to celebrate with me and I felt so loved! Our time with KCM and the people there really hit deep in my heart.
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It was really hard to leave Uganda. But I’m so thankful for our time here. Thank you Uganda for being another place that I’m leaving a piece of my heart.
I will update on Kenya soon!
Love,
Rachel
Below is my one (or two) seconds a day from Uganda!
