Camp

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!

Mercy Church 2

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.

Raising Special Needs Kids in Africa

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Welcome back from Easter holidays!! On Easter Sunday, we had the privilege of baptizing 8 new converts at Mercy Church. Please pray for them that they will grow in their faith and pursue God’s will for their life.

Since Good Friday, at our main Church, The Worship house, we have had a revival conference going on. We have invited the most respected men of God in our country to come and share. We are having over 3,000 people attend each day from 4 to 11 pm, and on some days, we have people outside in the overflow tents. Yesterday, we had the president’s daughter attend and share for a few minutes.

In African society, one of the benefits of having many kids is first for protection. The more kids you have, the safer you are. The second reason, is since most people don’t have a retirement program, when you grow older, your kids are expected to provide and take care of you in your old age. Having many kids, means you will not be lonely and destitute in your old age.

In such a society, when a parent gives birth to a child with special needs, they know that this child will not do any of the roles mentioned above and most see it as a huge disappointment. On top of that, most of these kids are born with health complications, and they need continuous treatment, therapy and assistive devices such as a wheel chair. Many of the families cannot afford these things since there is no government support available to help them. In society, there is also a stigma attached to having special needs children. People think that the mother or someone in the family did something wrong, and the gods are punishing them. As a child growing up, the way we knew that some families had a special needs child was when the child had died. Some people end up hiding their kids in the rooms.

One of the doctors told Vena that with the condition that led to the death of our daughter, birth asphyxia, that if she had been born, there was a high chance she would be with special needs. This changed how I see these kids because now I see my daughter in them. We try to make everything we do inclusive; we built ramps in the children’s village to allow easy access for special needs kids.

We now have over 20 special needs kids supported in our program. Six of them stay at our children’s village. For most of them, their fathers abandoned the homes for fear of being associated with a curse. These single mothers do the best to care for their kids. For some of them, their parents abandoned them, and we brought them to the village.

We are organizing a camp for children with special needs from April 9th to the 12th. We will be giving free Physical Therapy, Occupational Therapy and Speech Therapy to children in our neighborhood that cannot afford these services. We are looking at serving around 50 children.

We are mobilizing volunteer therapists to donate their time.

For $20 you can sponsor a child for this camp.

Ways to Pray:

  • Pray for financial provision
  • Pray for the therapists as this is going to be a very busy and intense time for them.
  • Pray that more people are encouraged and come to the Lord through this revival meeting.