So after last weeks blog I fell ill! First proper illness whilst I've been over here which is pretty good going I reckon. It began on the Friday night (when I could only struggle to 2 slices of pizza I knew something was up). And then from that evening upto Sunday afternoon, everything I ate, I would see again a couple of hours later, in a different form, in the bog. This misery was doubled up when on the Saturday, we had no water in the house, including to flush the loo... grim. So I had to resort to filling it up every time with water from a Jerry can. I was improving on the Sunday, after managing to hold down some lovely dry bread.
I thought I'd got over it on Monday, so I went into work. Probably went too hard too fast. I had my usual rice and beans from Eldima for Lunch, then went for a Jungle Smoothie after work which filled me up, but then Robby came home with Fish & Chips, in hindsight I should have resisted this temptation. Let's just say my bum wasn't very happy with me on Tuesday morning.
Lost a bit of weight according to many of the staff, but by Saturday I was back to full fitness. And I needed to be, it was a full day. Went to football in the morning, after losing that weight and having had a few weeks off, it was pretty tough, and hot. Then we went on to hold a workshop for the guys. Kind of really odd. One of the older boys was the MC (they love MCs) and then whilst we were waiting got some guys do some miming (they also love miming) at which point this hammered woman entered and started dancing with them. Soon it was time to start. Mike had asked me to give a word, so I decided to give my testimony, trying in some way to get them to find it relevant to their lives. Whilst I was giving my talk, the drunk woman started to shout out and be generally lairy, drawing all attention in the room. It actually taught me a lot, in terms of humility and really helped me for my preach on the Sunday. So I spent the rest of the day in Namatala with Mike, I met his family and ate with him in his home, with his Madam and his two daughters. Really enjoyed being with them. Then I went to his Pastor's home to stay there for the night. I was already really knackered at 930, but then of course they wanted to chat, and when it came to 1130, Esther brought out food. It turns out they eat super late and go to bed late and then wake up at like 5. So I stayed with them and in the morning went to preach at their church!
Their church is called Prayer House, originally I wanted to talk about Heaven but as I was thinking more and more about it I felt God nudging me towards talking about prayer with a view to giving the church a fresh perspective. For the first time I didn't really prepare anything, I just had two passages that I'd been studying anyway and trusted in God for what to say. It went really well, God seemed to really speak. Also discovered a new good attention gaining tactic. I began to see them drifting, so I stuck in a Luganda word ('oolideh' which means 'have you heard') and then they were fixed again.
Saw Stephen on Saturday as well. Man he's working hard! Went into CRO at 3 and he was there with his head stuck in a book. He told me that he's getting up at 3am every morning to study before getting ready for school at 5. WOWOW! My new little bro is gonna SMASH this!
Only got 8 days left in Mbale. Felt really weird yesterday when it was brought up in the meeting that this was my last week so if they needed had any work to finish with me they'd better get it done. Just trying to have a bit of a normal (as normal as life gets around here) week, just trying to do things for the last time. Trying to finish well!
Feels a bit weird having to write this even though I'm gonna see most of the people who read this in about a week and a half, but hey.
God Bless you!!
Dan x
jengauganda.org
Tuesday, 21 February 2012
Thursday, 9 February 2012
Hope
All change this week. The big man is back.
So the remainder of last week was mostly concerned with sorting Stephen, getting him into a school. On Thursday after lunch time evangelism I had a chat with Janet about getting him into school. She suggested that he would go to a local government school and showed me the budget for that school, she also said that he'd be going into S1 (first year of secondary school). We chatted for a bit longer and talked about a sponsor partnership between CRO and JENGA, whereby we deal with the education and they deal with food/welfare, met with the boss and he liked the idea too. Went back again in the afternoon with Michael, but Janet had left, so we went to see the Pastor who Stephen had been staying with and discussed getting him into a better school than the government one. At which time he revealed that he had actually previously passed S1, 4th in his year, so should be on to S2.
On Monday we continued, we met the Director of Studies to sort out the formalities then went to the Bursar buy his uniform! It was so great seeing his face light up as he tried to put on what they gave him - he's a tall lad so only the biggest sizes they had could fit him.
I learnt a little bit more about him: He comes from a village near Jinja and after he'd finished S1 there, both his parents died of TB simultaneously and his elder sister got married and moved to Mbale. In Ugandan culture it's not OK for two men of different families to live in the same house and because Stephen is 17, he had to live on the streets, picking up scrap metal to sell so he could buy food. He was picked up by a Pastor from Namatala, and slept at his house, he was picked up by CRO last year, which is how I met him. I think it's really fun that I'm only a year older than him; makes it kind of like a big brother sponsorship. Really excited and privileged to be able to see this amazing guy run with God and reach a greater level of potential than he could have before. God has given him a new hope.
Over the weekend I went to Jinja with Paul, Natalie, Tiff, Ruth and Melanie to send Paul off. Paul's been such a quality bloke to have around, really fun but also a guy I feel comfortable sharing with. Miss Paul a lot already. Had a really fun send-off for him though, which included, post-goodbyes, Tiff peer-pressuring me to go back to Jinja when we reached Kakira, to surprise him with a final few hours of banter.
The big boss came back today! Robby has been on sabbatical for 8 months but came back to find all the work that Tiff had done on his house, making it look nice for him. Sure to be a banterous yet challenging (in a good way) last few weeks with him around.
3 weeks today I'm on a plane. Can't believe it.
BIG LOVE
Dan x
jengauganda.org
So the remainder of last week was mostly concerned with sorting Stephen, getting him into a school. On Thursday after lunch time evangelism I had a chat with Janet about getting him into school. She suggested that he would go to a local government school and showed me the budget for that school, she also said that he'd be going into S1 (first year of secondary school). We chatted for a bit longer and talked about a sponsor partnership between CRO and JENGA, whereby we deal with the education and they deal with food/welfare, met with the boss and he liked the idea too. Went back again in the afternoon with Michael, but Janet had left, so we went to see the Pastor who Stephen had been staying with and discussed getting him into a better school than the government one. At which time he revealed that he had actually previously passed S1, 4th in his year, so should be on to S2.
On Monday we continued, we met the Director of Studies to sort out the formalities then went to the Bursar buy his uniform! It was so great seeing his face light up as he tried to put on what they gave him - he's a tall lad so only the biggest sizes they had could fit him.
I learnt a little bit more about him: He comes from a village near Jinja and after he'd finished S1 there, both his parents died of TB simultaneously and his elder sister got married and moved to Mbale. In Ugandan culture it's not OK for two men of different families to live in the same house and because Stephen is 17, he had to live on the streets, picking up scrap metal to sell so he could buy food. He was picked up by a Pastor from Namatala, and slept at his house, he was picked up by CRO last year, which is how I met him. I think it's really fun that I'm only a year older than him; makes it kind of like a big brother sponsorship. Really excited and privileged to be able to see this amazing guy run with God and reach a greater level of potential than he could have before. God has given him a new hope.
Over the weekend I went to Jinja with Paul, Natalie, Tiff, Ruth and Melanie to send Paul off. Paul's been such a quality bloke to have around, really fun but also a guy I feel comfortable sharing with. Miss Paul a lot already. Had a really fun send-off for him though, which included, post-goodbyes, Tiff peer-pressuring me to go back to Jinja when we reached Kakira, to surprise him with a final few hours of banter.
The big boss came back today! Robby has been on sabbatical for 8 months but came back to find all the work that Tiff had done on his house, making it look nice for him. Sure to be a banterous yet challenging (in a good way) last few weeks with him around.
3 weeks today I'm on a plane. Can't believe it.
BIG LOVE
Dan x
jengauganda.org
Wednesday, 1 February 2012
Challenging and rewarding
Evenin'
Been a bit of a week of 'acceleration' in many ways, God's doing some cool stuff :)
On Friday JENGA had a day of prayer and fasting, like we usually do on the last Friday of a month. We all gathered at Bethel just to seek God for a day. Really cool. I got to lead a bit of Mzungu style worship, really felt free to do as I would usually do and it was just a really cool time of spirit led singing, for me anyway, I think the Ugandans generally think that when I pick up my guitar it's time to sit and be quiet, which is cool in some ways because I can just sing as I like, but I like it when people join in. As an aside to this God is really stepping up my song-writing - or perhaps I'm being more receiving of it - but super excited to show this stuff to the LADS back home. The best bit of the day though was Andrew... and his accordion.
Preached again on Sunday, had to get a boda down to the church at the unkind hour of 8am (ish...) so asked one of the dodgy guys at the end of our road if he knew where the church was, at first he thought I said Malaba instead of Namatala, didn't give me great confidence as Malaba is 2 1/2 hours away on the Kenyan border. But I got on confident in his abilities. We set off towards Namatala, I'm not really paying attention because I didn't have morning coffee, after about 10 minutes I look up to see a sign saying 'Have a safe journey out of Mbale', the guy was off to Malaba. So we turned and asked a lady where it was and she directed us. So I was pretty late, but I gave him a lecture when I got off the bike to show my discontentment. It was a really challenging topic in many ways, but it was a good time of stretching for me as well. I preached on giving (tithing) at probably the poorest church in Namatala. Initially when I got given the topic (which usually never happens) I thought it was pretty inappropriate - a (rich) Mzungu going to speak to a really poor church about money - but I got over my own insecurities and just trusted God for it. I spoke mostly on Deut 26, the offering of the Firstfruits, and just talked about how giving is as much a part of our worship as sung worship is, if we put as much thought and effort into our giving as our singing, perhaps our giving would look a lot different. Felt really challenged as well about my own giving whilst I'm here as well, part of that response will come later!
Got a bit ribbed by the JENGA staff on Monday. Woke up at 8.20 and work is at 8.30 so I had some beautiful bed-head, just left it messy, Vinnie was relentless in his banter, but that's why the office is such good fun! Been working on an internal newsletter this week, just serving as an encouragement for the staff, so they can see what they've achieved over the last 6 months.
Tuesday was a challenging, yet rewarding day. Went to CRO on Tuesday and happily wasn't the only Mzungu there this time as the two Norwegians who work for CRO came to see what we did, along with Lukas, a German guy who also volunteers at CRO and Hannah's parents. My personal highlight was scoring a spectacular over-head-kick. But I also had to split up three fights, very unusual. The last of the three was particularly distressing, after we'd finished playing I went back up to where everyone was sat down and found one of my little mates lying on the ground crying. It turns out that one of the other kids had called his mother a 'bitch' (probably the most horrific thing you could say to a child orphan) and then my buddy went crazy at him so loads of other kids came and beat him up. The whole way back I was basically just holding him back from going mental. So I finished with him when we got back to CRO and then spotted Stefan, another amazing street kid who I'd actually had a theological debate with about Mormonism a few weeks ago, just loved him since, great yearning for God. He'd been struggling for school fees so I asked him how it was going and he wasn't sure what was happening. I was about to leave and then just felt God give me a little tug back. I saw Mama Janet (part of CRO leadership) and just felt I had to talk to her about sponsoring him through this year of school. He's going in to S1, the first year of High School, which is the most expensive year for fees as tuition fees rise, and they also have to pay a large registration fee. CRO sponsors half of the child's tuition fee for the year and then any family that they find of the child pays the other half, plus registration, plus requirements (books, pens etc). CRO haven't found any of Stefan's family, so he has depended completely on donors so far, but their money isn't coming in. I'm having a meeting with CRO tomorrow about him.
Sorry it's a bit of a long one, thanks for reading it all! No preaching this Sunday as I'm going to Jinja for Paul's leaving :( But please pray that as I enter my last month (!) that I'd keep my eyes fixed on the prize and finish well!!
God Bless
Dan x
jengauganda.org
Been a bit of a week of 'acceleration' in many ways, God's doing some cool stuff :)
On Friday JENGA had a day of prayer and fasting, like we usually do on the last Friday of a month. We all gathered at Bethel just to seek God for a day. Really cool. I got to lead a bit of Mzungu style worship, really felt free to do as I would usually do and it was just a really cool time of spirit led singing, for me anyway, I think the Ugandans generally think that when I pick up my guitar it's time to sit and be quiet, which is cool in some ways because I can just sing as I like, but I like it when people join in. As an aside to this God is really stepping up my song-writing - or perhaps I'm being more receiving of it - but super excited to show this stuff to the LADS back home. The best bit of the day though was Andrew... and his accordion.
Preached again on Sunday, had to get a boda down to the church at the unkind hour of 8am (ish...) so asked one of the dodgy guys at the end of our road if he knew where the church was, at first he thought I said Malaba instead of Namatala, didn't give me great confidence as Malaba is 2 1/2 hours away on the Kenyan border. But I got on confident in his abilities. We set off towards Namatala, I'm not really paying attention because I didn't have morning coffee, after about 10 minutes I look up to see a sign saying 'Have a safe journey out of Mbale', the guy was off to Malaba. So we turned and asked a lady where it was and she directed us. So I was pretty late, but I gave him a lecture when I got off the bike to show my discontentment. It was a really challenging topic in many ways, but it was a good time of stretching for me as well. I preached on giving (tithing) at probably the poorest church in Namatala. Initially when I got given the topic (which usually never happens) I thought it was pretty inappropriate - a (rich) Mzungu going to speak to a really poor church about money - but I got over my own insecurities and just trusted God for it. I spoke mostly on Deut 26, the offering of the Firstfruits, and just talked about how giving is as much a part of our worship as sung worship is, if we put as much thought and effort into our giving as our singing, perhaps our giving would look a lot different. Felt really challenged as well about my own giving whilst I'm here as well, part of that response will come later!
Got a bit ribbed by the JENGA staff on Monday. Woke up at 8.20 and work is at 8.30 so I had some beautiful bed-head, just left it messy, Vinnie was relentless in his banter, but that's why the office is such good fun! Been working on an internal newsletter this week, just serving as an encouragement for the staff, so they can see what they've achieved over the last 6 months.
Tuesday was a challenging, yet rewarding day. Went to CRO on Tuesday and happily wasn't the only Mzungu there this time as the two Norwegians who work for CRO came to see what we did, along with Lukas, a German guy who also volunteers at CRO and Hannah's parents. My personal highlight was scoring a spectacular over-head-kick. But I also had to split up three fights, very unusual. The last of the three was particularly distressing, after we'd finished playing I went back up to where everyone was sat down and found one of my little mates lying on the ground crying. It turns out that one of the other kids had called his mother a 'bitch' (probably the most horrific thing you could say to a child orphan) and then my buddy went crazy at him so loads of other kids came and beat him up. The whole way back I was basically just holding him back from going mental. So I finished with him when we got back to CRO and then spotted Stefan, another amazing street kid who I'd actually had a theological debate with about Mormonism a few weeks ago, just loved him since, great yearning for God. He'd been struggling for school fees so I asked him how it was going and he wasn't sure what was happening. I was about to leave and then just felt God give me a little tug back. I saw Mama Janet (part of CRO leadership) and just felt I had to talk to her about sponsoring him through this year of school. He's going in to S1, the first year of High School, which is the most expensive year for fees as tuition fees rise, and they also have to pay a large registration fee. CRO sponsors half of the child's tuition fee for the year and then any family that they find of the child pays the other half, plus registration, plus requirements (books, pens etc). CRO haven't found any of Stefan's family, so he has depended completely on donors so far, but their money isn't coming in. I'm having a meeting with CRO tomorrow about him.
Sorry it's a bit of a long one, thanks for reading it all! No preaching this Sunday as I'm going to Jinja for Paul's leaving :( But please pray that as I enter my last month (!) that I'd keep my eyes fixed on the prize and finish well!!
God Bless
Dan x
jengauganda.org
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