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Merry Christmas!!!

wilfredrugumba1 Comment

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.

Learning How to Love my Neighbor During this Pandemic.

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We are faced with a global situation no one has ever imagined and has changed how we live life.

First, a quick update about my family. Vena started having Chemo treatment this week. It will take about 4 to 6 months. It is hard being away from her. Your prayers are appreciated.

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Just like many counties, so far we have had 2 months of lock down; public transport and private transport are both banned, and we have a curfew of 7pm, where no one is allowed out. If any one breaks these presidential directives, you are tried for attempted murder.

As a pastor and social worker, it is hard not to meet with people in person. We are doing church differently on social media, and we are also playing sermons on local megaphones that play around the community. We have also installed some by the church, this way we are reaching more people with the gospel than we have always reached in the past.

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We have had the honor to distribute over 800 food packages to some church members and other vulnerable people in our community. One story that touched me, was an expectant mother who came to our place starving and having nothing to feed her kids. We were able to provide for her and pray for her. Men are abandoning their homes because they cannot afford to provide for them.

For the 2,000 children living on the streets in Kampala city who used to beg from people, now that the city is empty, their lives are at risk. Our city government, with the help of NGOs, put up a shelter for close to 200 street kids where they went for quarantine. They contacted us several days ago, asking us to look for a safe place for these kids. We have been able to admit 11 boys, after they were quarantined and all tested Negative.

They come from different backgrounds, and some have been on drugs. I intend to spend more time with them and share the gospel and help in their rehabilitation journey.

Please pray for me and my team.

We have had to opened up another house to house these extra kids. I am looking for $3,000 to help furnish their home, to buy beds, chairs and other household items. I ask you to pray and give towards that.

Second, we are looking for ongoing sponsorship for these boys, their sponsorship is $100 a month on this link https://childrentolove.givingfuel.com/sponsor-a-child

 

Thank you for your continued prayers and support!

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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Christmas Update

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In Uganda, a country with a fast growing population, most pastors do not have formal Bible training. Churches are growing, but at the same time, there is a rise in the amount of heretical teachings spreading throughout many Ugandan churches today.

It has been always my desire, that we get a way to help train pastors. So about 3 years ago, I contacted Corban University in Oregon to help train, but they had a lot going on then. However, God later opened a door, and they agreed to provide training to 50 pastors, free of charge. Corban University will be sending their ministry school professors for two weeks, twice a year, for 3 years.

At the beginning of this month, we had the opportunity to host 50 pastors from all over the country at Mercy Christian School. They came to learn about how to study and interpret the Bible. Mercy Church elders and pastors have been a part of this, and it has been such a joy to see how much they have learned.

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Mercy Church, in two years, has planted two churches, and I see more church plants arising in future.

For Christmas, with the help of gifts from Children to Love, our kids gave out gifts to some staff and needy people around the community. It has been a joy seeing our kids give.

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We have started working on construction at the school. We had to take off the roof on one of the original buildings since it was not up to code, and we are also remodeling the building by creating more windows and ventilation space. We are also in the process of building a house for long term interns.

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For our school break, we sent out most of our kids to their extended families. However, for those who don’t have extended family, they have been sent to be with our staff and church members. I currently have a total of 12 kids at my house.

Ways You Can Be Praying: 

  • Pray for safety of the kids this festive season.
  • Heavy rains have slowed down our building progress, please pray for good weather so that builders can build fast.
  • Pray for more finances to help finish upcoming building projects.
  • I am planning on taking a vacation with family to Jinja this Christmas season. Pray that we have a relaxing time.

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.