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November Update

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Thank you for your continued prayers and support.

With your support, we were recently able to distribute food to 300 families in the Karamoja region. We identified a local church there that we have partnered with to process the food distribution. We sent one of our church elders and some church members to represent us.

So far, we have made two food distribution rounds to people in Karamoja. It has been a joy seeing the smiles on their faces, as this has been an answer to their prayers.

Recently, Vena and I recently had the privilege to visit Manchester, United Kingdom for a 10 day visit. We had a wonderful time there. I spoke at several churches, and we had 8 children that were sponsored. Thank you, God. It was also a good time for us to be away and reflect on why we do what we do.

Upon coming back, we found our daughter Rille sick with Malaria. She is now on medication and is getting better, but she has lost a lot of weight. Your prayers are appreciated.

Around 16 years ago. We rescued this little girl Hope and her brother who were living on the streets of Kampala. After years of rehabilitation, she was able to find a job and started life as a decorator.

Last week, we had the privilege of hosting her introduction ceremony (this is the African wedding) at our place as we were her parents. Her husband is a pastor; they have been doing ministry together, leading a church of Ugandans in Dubai. They’ll be wed soon, we continue to pray for them.

Over the years, we have reached over 700 children. Some of them were invited for her function. It was a good reunion, and it is always a joy to see these kids grown up, as good citizens, making a difference for Jesus.

This past month, we had the privilege of visiting with the Minister of Gender Labor and Social Development as we picked up our home approval renewal certificate. Homes that do not meet standards are de-registered, but we thank God for His continued favor. Our home ranked best in the last assessments.

After 3 years of hard-work and inspections, our primary school was finally registered with the Ministry of Education and Sports. We are continuing to finish the school and create more rooms for the boys housing area. Our goal is to grow the school capacity to 500 children by end of next year.

Uganda is currently having an Ebola outbreak; four districts are under lockdown. We have not had any cases close to us, but please pray with us that this epidemic ends.

Thank you all for your continued prayers and support.

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.

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