Fundraising

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!!

August 2019 Update

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It is now school break in Uganda. I am thankful to God that our school has run successfully for seven months now! Our school term ended with 122 students. We have learned a lot and the kids are enjoying school. When one student was asked what he thinks about his school, he said, “It is like home!” I don’t remember feeling like that about school; in fact I hated school.Two students, JeanPeace and her friend, even asked to stay an extra week at school so that they can get extra help with math. We praise God that our students love to learn.

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We had a team of 8 interns from Biola that helped our kids catch up on their classes at the end of Term 2. They were able to provide one-on-one attention to the students who were struggling and needed extra help. Our kids have learned a lot and grown in their faith, and I even had the privilege of baptizing 17 of them this term. Praise God!

Molly and Jesse Furrow came last week and they will be staying with us for the next two and a half years. Molly is a teacher and will teach English and Math in P1 and P2. Jesse will be working as the Physical Education teacher and sports coach. We have started working on our soccer pitch and basketball court. Leveling the field has been more expensive than initially expected because of some unexpected difficulties with the water table and the ability to get dirt locally. We are praying the Lord provides the money to finish this project.

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Early this week, our church sent a team of missionaries to Mercy Church Palisa, which is located in the rural, east part of Uganda. Vena, Graham and I joined the rest of the team in the middle of the week. We stayed in huts, preached the gospel door to door during the day, and in the evening, held an outdoor meeting where I shared a word. Hundreds of people gave their life to Christ, and we had the privilege of baptizing 94 people!! Please pray for these new converts that they may grow in their faith and that God will use them for His glory.


On Monday evening, as the village church members were waiting to receive our team, it rained heavily and their grass thatched church fell. We are so grateful that in our time there, we were able to erect a new structure for them to use as a church that has a tin roof.


Thank you very much for your prayers and support. Please be in prayer over each of these names as they all gave their hearts to Jesus and were baptized. We praise God for each of these names.

 

Here is some more pictures from our Palisa Mission

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.

What Happened This November

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It has been a while since I last posted.

Lots of things have been going on, and I would love to keep you posted. My trip to the USA went well; Vena and I got to meet friends and supporters.

On my visits, I share about what we do and why we do what we do. I get to step out of the leadership of Mercy, and as I am away, my senior managers lead. I am always encouraged and energized seeing what God is doing and has done at Mercy in just a short time. Can you imagine that 7 years ago that was just a bush and we were caring for only 30 kids? Today, we have grown to over 200 kids, a Microfinance serving over 500 people, a medical center that saw 6,000 patients last year, and a church of close to 500 members growing in Christ. Only God can do such a thing. Thank you for all your support and prayers.

We had a tragedy here in Uganda when a fishing boat, turned into a boat cruise, capsized. Over 120 people were on board, but only 27 have were reported to have been rescued. Most lost their lives because they had no life jackets and did not know how to swim. Our nation is mourning over the loss of these young middle class business men and women that passed on. One of our church members lost a sister and her Fiancée in this incidence. As I have been thinking and mourning over that, I am so thankful that on my trip to the USA, through Market of Hope, an event organized by LBC church, we were able to raise enough money to give our kids swimming lessons through out the year as a life skill.

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We also raised enough money to start on the remodeling of our school and building more classrooms.

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This past Friday was Worship Night; this is an annual event we organize, where we invite the nation for a night of prayer and worship. Normally, we do it in a stadium, but this time we organized it at the Worship House, our main campus. We had a very big turn out, close to 20,000 people attended and our overflow section was filled, so many people stood around.

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Friday was declared a national mourning day for families of those that died in the boat tragedy; we spent time praying for them at our worship night. We had special musicians, from all over the world that performed. Jack Cassidy, from the United States, who was on the Voice TV show last year came and performed. He is staying with my family for the next two weeks.

On Saturday, we had our staff, Isaac and Tracy’s wedding. Isaac works as our accountant and Tracy is a physician assistant at our medical center. I had the honor of doing their wedding, and the reception was held at Mercy Church.

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Last week, we had a national MTN marathon, I missed running it because I was preaching. After my birthday, some of our staff that participated discovered that they could run, and three of our staff participated. Mujuni, our security guard, placed seventh in the half marathon race, out of the thousands of people that participated, including professional runners from Kenya. This was his first time to participate. We plan to start a running team at Mercy as running has become a part of our lives.

We held our first set of staff interviews for Mercy School. We want to employ 10 teachers, and we have already hired 7 out of close to 100 applicants. We are advertising again and have interviews scheduled for the end of the week, where we hope to get the remaining 3 and a head teacher. At the end of December and January, we shall start having teacher training.

Prayer requests:

  • Pray that we get the right teachers to be selected on our team.
  • Building has started, so pray that our builders get work done fast and nice before February when our school year begins.
  • Pray for more money to come in to enable us finish building and furnish the school.

Our new school’s blueprint
Our new school’s blueprint

Preparing for Fall Trip to USA

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This coming week, my wife and I will be traveling to USA. The purpose of this trip is to visit our supporters, share updates and raise money for renovating Mercy school so that we can meet building code and build 4 more class rooms.

The school will start running by February next year, and around 150 of our kids will join this school where they will have quality Christ-centered education. We have already started recruiting good teachers.

I will be traveling to Michigan, Bakersfield, Los Angeles, Austin, Baton Rouge, Washington D.C., Iowa and Chicago in the next 3 weeks. If you are available to meet me or you have some one you know who you could introduce me to, please reply me back and we can make plans.

A few weeks ago, after waiting for over a year, our tractor arrived from England. We are so excited, and our staff is learning how to use it. We plan to use it on our farm, and people in the community have already started contacting us about hiring it. We intend to hire it out the community and raise extra money to support the ministry and care for the tractor when it breaks.

Tractor

We are always looking for new opportunities to reach the youth in our community. Last Sunday, we had a free dance concert, and we hosted over 500 youths from the community at Mercy Church. The gospel was presented to them in a music dance performance.

Please pray that the seeds that were sown into their hearts will bear fruit.

 

Friday night, I visited Mohammed; he was our neighbor about 16 years ago, when we planted the Nansana Church under a mango tree. We would witness to him, but he was negative to the gospel. The church later moved to the main road, and he moved to Bukasa, near Mercy Church. Three weeks ago, I met him and told him that we had planted a church near by, and he promised to visit. Since then, he has been coming to church. We went and prayed with him at his house, and at the end, he and his entire family gave their lives to Jesus. I feel so encouraged to never to stop sharing my faith; God is able to save anyone.

Pray for him and his family that they are able to grow in the Lord.

Mohammed and Fam

Birthday Run Update

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Last week on Tuesday, I went with my whole family to meet Jajja Rille and the team visiting from Laurenglen Bible Church in Bukwo, Eastern Uganda. We drove for 8 hours to Kapchorwa where we had to leave the car and take a motor cycle(boda boda.) We took it for 4 hours climbing Mount Elgon on the worst roads I have ever experienced.

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I sat on a boda with baby Rille and Graham, and it fell on our way back. Thankfully,  no one was hurt because it was riding very slow on the bad roads. The ride was worth it, meeting jaja Rille and the LBC team, and the kids thought the boda ride was adventurous. Bukwo is where our gold medal runners come from, and it is 6,000 feet above sea level on the slopes of mount Elgon. I trained on the same road they did and kids kept calling me Kipsiro (one of our goal medalists.) The amazing views are spectacular there.

On the way home, we passed by Palisa which is a little town .  Last year, we spent a month teaching Evangelism, and one of our church members went back to his village and shared the gospel; around 20 people came to know the Lord. In his village, there wasn’t a church nearby, so they started a Mercy Church plant praying under a tree. I was able to see them and talk with them, they had over 50 people there. They made up a structure out of corn husks and they were excited for it. I shared the story to Mercy Church on Sunday, and they are excited about going there and encouraging our brothers and sisters.

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This past Wednesday, was my birthday and my run. That morning I started out scared, I had never run 33 kilometers and friends were waiting and some sponsored me to run. I feared disappointing them, but I was confident in the fact that I had trained enough. I was joined with over 50 friends, and we started off by praying. Some of those who attended were non believers but they just loved running. Most of my friends ran 10k, and 20k with me. The speaker of our sub-county joined the run, along with Pastor Wilson, Vena and even my boys who joined in the last 5 kilometers. We had a dance work out class for about a hour and a half hours after running. I ran through a 10 k loop 3 times and on the first time we had to take a different root to make up for the 3 extra kilometers. My biggest encouragement was meeting my friends walking and running along side the while share funny stories with them.

 

 


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I am thankful to God I finally made it to the finished line.

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We have so far raised about $2,5

00 in pledges and cash, and I am asking you to give towards this cause. Our goal is $20,000 to buy an X-ray and build a room on code that will keep radiations in. To give, you can use the link below.

https://www.childrentolove.org/give

Please feel free to share this blog to friends and encourage them to give.

Thank you for your support.