Medicine

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.

Lessons for the World from Corona Crisis

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The world has always trusted in Military Might; each day trying to invent a better weapon and testing nuclear weapons. The world has trusted in science, fame and money. Major sports games have been cancelled; bars locked down. This is a time when all these gods that our society has worshipped cannot help people. They cannot give people hope.

As believers,we have hope. In the midst of hard times, He is with us.

We know that God is above this situation and will get us through it.

The second lesson, we are learning is to live by faith. One day at a time. No one can tell what the future will be, but as believers we trust in a God that holds our future and we can trust in Him.

For parents, working at home, this has given us an opportunity to spend time with our kids. I enjoyed leading Sunday service with my family and preaching to them a message of hope.

This is a time for us to spend more time in prayer and the word, as we grow in the Lord.

I encourage you to limit the time you spend watching the news and spending time on social media; most information will create fear and anxiety in your heart, but rather listen to the Word of God and let God speak to you. The word of God gives us hope in the midst of storms of life. I slept listening to Psalms 91 on my phone, and I was encouraged.

God will protect and watch over us in this season.

Philippians 4:6-7 Tells us not to be anxious about anything but in every situation pray and give thanks.

Pray for the medical workers in Italy.

Pray for the hundreds of people that are dying, so that they know Jesus as their Lord and Savior.

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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!

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

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.

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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.

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.

 

My Birthday Wish

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It has been a while since I last updated this blog. A lot has been going on, busy with ministry as usual. We hosted our dear friends from Austin and Los Angeles. We did a medical outreach, and we were able to see 120 patients and give them free medical care. We were also able to take our kids to a park where they were able to swim, have fun and also visit a nearby Zoo. The kids loved it, my highlight was William, one of our special needs kids enjoyed playing in water and it was hard to get him out.

My boys are now on school break, and Vena is spending a lot of time home with them. We are focusing on teaching them house chores this break, and we have also talked about sending them for Music school. We are looking at different Christian schools around as we plan to switch them to a new school next school term.

This afternoon, my heart broke for Ritah (real name reserved for privacy,) a young lady 20 years old. She grew up as an orphan, as her parents sent her into the city to find work. She stayed with a male family friend in the city, who at first offered free housing. Later on, the guy took advantage of her and she conceived. He became very abusive and would beat her every night. One day the guy came, he took everything that was in the rented house and abandoned her there with the pregnancy and went to an unknown place.

I met her about one month ago at the Worship house when she came for prayer stranded. She had complications with her pregnancy and needed care.

I am so thankful for all your support towards Mercy Medical Center. We were able to take her in, and she was able to get the required medical care. With a lot of complications and by the grace of God, she gave birth to a baby girl via C-Section two days ago at the medical center.

The baby was first managed, but was later referred to our national referral hospital for more care. Yesterday evening, I received the sad news that the baby passed away.

My heart breaks for the mother. I ask that you would be in prayer for this young lady as she is still at Mercy Medical Center recovering. She does not know about the sad news yet because of her health condition. Her blood pressure is not stable, and according to tradition the baby was buried yesterday.

I am thankful for the staff at Mercy Medical Center who did their best. If she had been in a normal center the chances of the mother also losing her life would be high. I thank every one that gave towards the operating room when I celebrated my 31st birthday.

As I celebrate 33 years, I am challenging my self to run 33 kilometers. For $20,000 we can buy an X-ray machine and build an X-ray room at our hospital. This will be the only X-ray machine in our sub-county, Mende, with a population of 26,000. We are located along Hoima road, one of the major highways, and we receive so many accident cases. We have to drive them at least 5 kilometers away for an X-ray and bring them back which is painful for them. I am asking you to give a gift towards this cause. By the grace of God, we can put an end to this in our community.

There are two ways you can give:

1.) You can write a check to Children to Love, and in the memo write Mercy X-Ray.

Children to Love International

P.O. Box 9575

Bakersfield, CA 93389

2.) You can give online at this link: https://childrentolove.givingfuel.com/give-now

Thank you for your continued prayers and support.

Happy Easter!!

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Our kids are having school break. For those who have extended family, we send them to visit and build an attachment as we work towards reuniting them. Those who don’t, we send them to families of church members to visit. The village now has a few kids around.

Mercy Church celebrated one year last week. I can’t believe it’s already been one year and how fast we have grown. We now have a permanent sanctuary built in the community where people have lived in fear of witchcraft. The building is a sign of assurance that the church is here to stay.

What excites me the most is story after story of lives that God has transformed by the power of the gospel this year. Ashlaf, a young man from a Muslim family, is a testimony of the gospel changing lives. It all started when his sister joined the church, and later on, when the rest of her family started attending. They joined a life group and started praying for their family and salvation of their brother. Before Christmas, last year, he gave his life to Christ at Church and is now a committed follower of Christ. I had the honor of baptizing him, and he is now serving in our sound department. He had dropped out of school because his mother could not afford to pay for him, but this year, through prayer, God provided. His uncle committed to pay for his school fees, and he is now back in school. His dream is to become a mechanic.

We had a huge celebration for our one year, and we had over 1,000 people in attendance. We rented 700 more chairs on top of our 450 chairs, and the church was packed. We invited people in the neighborhood and our sister church, the Worship House. Pastor Wilson preached and several musicians and choirs gave special music.

We organized a medical outreach to people in the community. We were able to treat 100 people for free at our medical center in 6 hours.

Pray for us tomorrow as we will be having baptisms. We have also invited many non-believers to come to church.

Pray for safety for our kids as they are out for school break.

Happy Easter!!