Baby

Merry Christmas!!!

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Greetings from Uganda.

On Tuesday this week, our youngest baby Lilly, turned 1, and Rille (our second youngest) is turning 5 on Christmas.

We were able to go for a short family vacation at Musana camps, a Christian campsite on lake Victoria with the kids. We were joined by Pastor Freddie and Sandra and their baby Irma. It was a relaxing time and a joy to be with family.

Our school year ended in November, and all kids that have extended family, were sent to them to spend time with family. Some church members have also taken some kids to their homes for Christmas break. We have only 22 people at the village, including the staff helping out.

We are using this time to do remodeling at the school. We are laying tiles in classrooms, painting, clearing the compound and laying pavers.

According to the police crime report of 2021, 17,000 sex abuse cases were reported and of these, 14,000 of them were aggravated defilement cases. (Childen under 13 years sexually abused by an adult.) 1 out of 3 girls have been sexually abused in Uganda, according to the US embassy in Kampala.

This year, we have been able to rescue 23 girls who were victims. Recently, we launched a community action team. We are working in partnership with the local district, police, state prosecutors and other stake holders to ensure that children are safe and that these offenders are taken away from society. We are also raising awareness about the whole issue of sexual abuse.

We launched the campaign last week and we hosted many of the local district officials and local press.

Your prayers will be appreciated as we continue to reach these girls.

Meet our newest kids at Mercy.

Namakula (English name not yet known) is 7 years old. She is extremely malnourished to the point where she cannot stand, she only squats. Maria, who is 3 years, can stand.

Namakula
Maria

We rescued them this week; the mother is a mentally sick person who has been living in a shack.

The mother would take food from the oldest and feed the youngest. They were referred by the district social worker who was informed by the community.

They don’t have any known relatives, but we will begin to search for them as we rehabilitate them. Your prayers are appreciated.

Like the kids above, we have 46 kids that are not yet sponsored but are already in our care.

We spend $40 to care for a non-residential child and $100 for a residential child or child with special needs.

You can make a one time gift or signup to become a child sponsor. You can also make a gift towards the ongoing construction and renovations. Your gift goes a long way.

https://childrentolove.givingfuel.com/sponsor-a-child

Merry Christmas!!

July Update

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We have been blessed that the Government is considering our Children’s home, together with another home, as model homes in the country. We are expecting to host the Minister of Gender Labor and Social Development soon, so this week we had several inspections at the home ahead of his visit.

Since our children’s home is under lockdown, the staff staying there have been missing life outside. We have started taking them for a city tour every weekend to help get them away from the village and to visit some places in the city. This week, they saw the Parliament building among other things.

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For our kids, every weekend, we take some of them to the school facility; they help in our farm and play games on our play ground. This has helped them not feel like they are locked in prison.

I was blessed to baptize 26 people, mostly teenagers who are staying with us. Many of them gave their lives to Jesus during this Covid season and we are holding a “Foundations Discipleship” class to help them grow in their faith. We were also able to give them new Bibles. Please pray for them to grow in their faith.

This month through Hearts for Mercy fundraiser, we received money and were able to to buy more new computers. We have now set up a computer lab at the village and our kids are blessed to have computer lessons. For some kids studying from home, we have been able to send some work to them on laptops, and it has helped on our remote learning program.

One of the abandoned babies at Mercy, baby Newton, has stayed here since he was a baby. While we were praying for a family to foster him, God answered our prayer and this month, he was fostered for adoption.

We have continued to distribute food to vulnerable people in our community, and now, we have served over 2500 families.

When the pandemic had just began, our numbers at the medical center hiked up and after a few weeks of lock down, the numbers dropped way low. At first, we were happy, thinking that our community is now healthy because of the lock down and hand-washing. We did further research and found out otherwise; people were very poor and could not afford our subsidized medical care.

With the gifts from Market of Hope for outreach, we started holding free outreaches at our medical center. Currently, every Sunday morning people come and are treated for free while also hearing the sermon played on the church megaphone.

We have had many heart-breaking cases at the Medical Center. We received a breast-feeding mother, who had a tumor on her breast, but stayed with the pain of continuing to breast feed until when we reached to her. Many men are abandoning their homes in such times.

Another case, is of a young man Donald Ashabe, a refugee from Rwanda who got knocked by his cow as he was trying to milk it. He had internal bleeding, but since he had no money, he stayed home and forced himself to work the next day. He became unconscious and by the time he was brought to our center, we put him on oxygen and rushed him to our national referral hospital for specialized surgery. We have no ambulance, so they used my car and it was all stained with blood.

This week, we received the sad news that he did not make it. He left behind a widow and two kids. Mercy is working with the community to help sell the two cows he owned in order to help get the family a small plot and house where they can stay. We are taking up the two kids on our sponsorship program.

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We want to do more work to be on the prevention side. If he was able to get medical care early, his chances of living would be high and he would be caring for his family.

I turned 35 yesterday on August 1, and ran a half marathon with 3 friends; unfortunately I couldn’t run with a big group because of Covid restrictions. For my birthday gift, please consider donating towards free medical care for at least one person. During our outreach the average bill is $9. I am asking friends all over, to treat at least one person during this Covid season.

You may give online on this link below or contact children to love on (661) 588-9000

Thank you and God bless

https://childrentolove.givingfuel.com/give-now

Select Mercy Medical Center.

April Update

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It has been a while since I last blogged. A lot has been going on and am excited to share with you all.

Finally, Mercy Christian schools started. We now have 120 kids attending our school, most of them are the kids Mercy has been sponsoring in others schools. The kids are so happy. We are providing them a Christ centered education, but at the same time, teaching them practical life skills like computer, sewing, and music.

Mercy Church made two years. I am so thankful to God for how He has grown this church in such a small time. We had a big celebration and invited Pastor Wilson and the choir from the Worship House; they joined and encouraged us. We are now praying about planting another church plant in Bakka village.

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I had an opportunity to visit the United States with my wife to speak at the Children to Love International Banquet (our US Patner 501 c 3) in Bakersfield, California.

This was a good time to connect with some of our friends and supporters as we also visited Oregon, Los Angeles, Denver, Dallas and Orlando. We were away for one month. It was a great time visiting friends and making connections with churches. We took some days and went to the beach which was relaxing, but we missed our kids so much. WhatsApp Image 2019-04-04 at 10.10.59 PM(1)

I was also able to see Ruby, Josephine and Jonah, these are some of our kids that were adopted but now live in Oregon, California and Denver. They have grown so much adjusted well in their families and they are deeply loved.

Jonah

Since the beginning of this year, we have rescued the most number of kids, we are now at 20 kids. I will share with you Adam’s story; he is the newest child at Mercy.

Adam was found abandoned in a swamp by himself; he was rescued and later brought to Mercy where he is now thriving. He is just about 2 months old, and I can’t wait to see how his life will unfold. We have began to search for his family, but for such cases like this, there is a high chance of failing to find his relatives. If are unable to find them, our next step would be to find a local family to adopt him.

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Please pray for the following.

  • Pray for social workers as they look for these kids families.
  • Pray for more local families to step up and adopt these kids.
  • Pray for more child sponsors. Just like Adam, we have many kids that are not sponsored and for $40 and $100 a month you can sponsor a child.
  • Pray for more financial provision, we still have some pending construction projects at the school like paving the compounds, leveling and construction of the play grounds and we still need financial support.

Happy New Year!

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Happy New year!!

The last few weeks have been the busiest weeks I have ever experienced. Our school is set to start at the beginning of February, and our HR was tasked to hire staff. The first set of interviews did not go well as we had many applicants, but few met our standards, and I began to panic as time was running out. Thank God, we were able to do massive advertisement again, and we had another set of interviews which helped us get the teachers we need.

It has been stressful and sometimes I felt lonely, but I got encouraged each time I prayed and let God take charge.

My parents and sisters came to my home, and we celebrated Christmas together. We shared the day with our staff that was working such as our medical staff, Baby Home Mothers, and Security Guards, and we also shared it with our patients that were admitted to the Medical Center.

I took a few days and vacationed with my family after Christmas and that was energizing. In times when I am done, I just imagine the thousands of kids that will walk through this school, know Christ and be nurtured to become Godly leaders that will impact our country, and I am so humbled that God has called me to be a part of it.

A few weeks ago, nothing was up at our school, but I am thankful to God that we have built six classrooms, and they are now on the roofing stage. It is not just about the buildings, each day over 20 men come and work on our site, and I see 20 families that are cared for because of this building project. We have bought bricks from local villagers, and they are thankful to earn money so that they can feed and educate their families; our local businesses have also been boosted because of the cement and supplies we continue buying from them. Thank you for your prayers and support. Our goal is that the school will be done in 3 weeks pray for me.

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Our annual camp starts today; we invited all the kids that we sponsor to come to the Village for 3 nights. We will be sharing with them from Romans 12. We are blessed to host a team from Chicago that will be helping us in the camp, and will also be doing a medical outreach as the team has two nurses and a doctor.

We continue welcoming in new babies at the village, and each day we receive referrals for babies that need to be rescued. This breaks my heart knowing what these kids go through, but I am thankful we have a safe place where they can be. Our last set of kids that we rescued are twins, Kato and Wasswa. They are currently at the national referral hospital to receive treatment for malnourishment.

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Please Pray:

  • Pray for Kato and Wasswa that they will be fine soon.
  • Pray for good weather that our builders are not delayed.
  • Pray for me and my fellow staff that God will give us strength in this time.
  • Pray for the Camp that our kids will be transformed by the power of the gospel.

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The Rugumba Family on Family Vacation!

Answering the Need with the Church

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There is always a need. A need for Christ and a need for hope and love. A need for emotion, spiritual and physical healing, and the truth is, there will always be a need. We saw this need in our community, and we decided to do something about it.

About three years ago, we started our medical center to help prevent people from dying, but we saw the need was greater than just physical healing. We saw people needed spiritual healing as well; they needed prayer, and they needed hope, so we decided to plant a church.

Mercy Church 4

On March 5th, 2017, we had our very first church service, and today, almost a year and a half later, we are reaching almost four hundred people and one hundred kids every Sunday.

Before we even had our first service, the witch doctors in our area heard we were planting a church and came and cursed our land and us, but the Lord is the Victorious King and their curses held no power against the King of Kings.

Through Mercy Church, we have seen how the Lord has worked and moved in people’s hearts. We have seen healing, we have seen growth, and we have seen at least 400 people give their lives to Christ. To God be the Glory!! No curse can withstand what the Lord can do!

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Our vision for the church doesn’t just stop with this church plant, we have plans to grow bigger and to plant more churches throughout Uganda for the Kingdom of God. There is much darkness throughout the surrounding areas near Mercy Child Care Ministry, and our goal is to bring light to such darkness through the church. We want to see people healed physically, emotionally and spiritually, and so our goal is to continue answering the need in the communities by planting more churches and medical centers.

Right now, with our goal to plant more churches, our plan is to raise up spiritual leaders. We currently have several different ministries that are dedicated to discipling people. We currently have a children’s ministry, youth ministry, Evangelism, women’s ministry, music ministry, an usher’s ministry, the marrieds ministry and life groups. Along with the several different ministries within the church, we also have classes where we are teaching people business, sewing and English. We have plans for a parent class and an elderly group.

Our intention with these ministries and classes is to raise up leaders and to give them more opportunities to serve God; not only that, but with these ministries, people are building life-long relationships and growing together and that is our hope through them.

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Every day our church grows more and more, but there is still so much darkness in our area. We want to see even more people surrender their lives to Christ. Through our different classes and our bank, we are reaching people who are unsaved by allowing them to join and to receive help.

We also are doing many outreaches throughout the community. This week we had a Hernia Camp at our Medical Center; we hosted 3 retired surgeons from UK who joined 20 Surgeons from Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda and Burundi. They taught them modern techniques of Hernia operation, and we were able to offer over 80 patients free Hernia surgery. Most of them were dying from pain and were not able to afford surgery.

Hernia Surgeon Pic

We also held outdoor gospel meetings in the surrounding villages and over 200 people gave their lives to Christ. We baptized around 50 people last Sunday. One of the kids we baptized was Hawali, a little Muslim boy we found abandoned, and we rescued and brought to Mercy. He came to me and asked me to baptize him, that he had decided to follow Jesus for the rest of his life.

People need Christ, they need love, and they need hope, and we believe we are answering their need through Mercy Church. God has moved in so many lives, and it is so incredible to watch these lives be forever altered. We pray that Mercy Church continues to share the Light, to share hope, to share love, and to share Christ with the people of Uganda.

Please continue you praying for the new believers to grow in their faith.

August Update

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Today, I want to share with you a story of Baby Blessing. A few months ago, the police called and notified me of newborn baby, born by a mother with mental sickness. After the mother had her, she took her and threw her in a 30 feet toilet hole. At this time, the baby had just been rescued with maggots coming from every hole of her body. Racheal, our social worker rushed to pick her, and we took her to the hospital where she stayed for 2 weeks. I want to thank God she survived and is now thriving at our babies home.
We have had several cases of abandoned babies that by God’s grace, we have managed to rescue, and every single time I visit the babies home, I can’t thank God enough for their lives.

A few weeks ago we witnessed Fatina’s Wedding. Fatina, is one of our girls who came from a Muslim family that could not afford to educate her, so we sponsored her. She gave her life to Jesus and is now working for a Non-Profit Organization as a secretary.

Sunday was Mercy Sunday at our main church, the Worship House. This is a day when our kids and staff lead church. The kids put in a lot of hours rehearsing to lead worship; they made a special presentation of our story and we showed videos of Mercy.  I challenged church members to adopt, and after church, we had over 30 families that are interested in adopting kids, this has been a big answer to prayer.

Please pray for these families as we are planning to meet them again on Sunday and that God would prepare them.

Mid September, we will host a team of surgeons from U.K. They will be joined by our doctors  and by surgeons from Nsambya Hospital, one of the referral hospitals in Uganda. We will be hosting a Hernia camp at our Medical Center. We are looking at giving free Hernia surgery to over 100 patients, and we have already registered over 50 patients. U.K. Surgeons will use this opportunity to share their knowledge with our Surgeons and doctors.

Please remember to pray for patients attending this camp.

Kids are now on school break. For the kids we sponsor that have extended family, they have gone to visit their extended family.  Pray for our kids that their light will shine.