2016 wrap up.

A late Merry Christmas to everyone!!!

We have been quite busy here as it is school holidays and we have youth at our house almost every day.

We have also begun building on the block of land, and a team has just arrived.
Not to mention we also had the Christmas season, so we were quite busy.

Christmas was spent going to church, eating lots of food, sleeping, then waking up and eating more food.

We also had our YSU Christmas break up, which is always a great time for our youth to celebrate, have a good meal and have their own Christmas party.

Since many of our youth may come from broken homes, this is a bit of treat for them, as they may not get to celebrate Christmas from where they come from.
All the tailoring girls dressed themselves up in some special dresses they had made for themselves.

During the celebrations I gave a Christmas message and also a run down of the year.

These were some of our reflections of 2016.

For Aggie and I the thing that stands out the most for us, and had the most impact in our lives, was the birth of Ethan.

We also had the birth of little Ibra one week after Ethan as well, adding onto the number in our house.

We started a new tailoring class, and were able to see young women begin to find confidence in themselves.

We have run Empower Trauma Rehabilitation two times this year, as well our Wise Choices for Life classes, seeing healing in the lives of our young people.

We have a dedicated group of young men, who use their skills like dancing, drama and music to do outreaches into the community. This group is continuously pushing themselves to learn what it is like to be a follower of Christ, especially in their communities and context.

We have seen some very close friends of ours finish their highschool education, and now begin looking at their career opportunities .. including one who is looking at theological training and one with the aim of becoming a doctor.

We have been blessed with a new car which has helped us tremendously here in Uganda.

At the start of the year Agnes was given a partner visa into Australia, and we were able to spend two months visiting Australia over the winter.

We have had many visitors, including friends, family and teams, come and visit us here at YSU.

We also have experienced lots of sickness. We saw the loss of a 3 day old baby who belonged to some friends of ours.

This really shook us, it taught us to sit in silence with those who are suffering. To realize the fragility of life, and to inspire us to pass on more simple knowledge around maternal health so something can be done about these types of situations.

Children in our own household got very sick, with little Ibra almost dying from septicemia when he was just a day old.
I truly believe his healing was a miracle, the little boy was on death's door when we got him to the hospital, and even the doctors told us they couldn't guarantee that the child would survive.
He is healthy now and a smart little boy, his development is on track and so far there does not look like there were any big side effects from the event.

Ethan spent a few days in hospital on a drip with a severe case of malaria and a bacterial infection.

Little Meshach was also raced to the hospital in the middle of the night, in the middle of convulsions due to a high temperature from Malaria.

But God has kept them and healed them, which we are very thankful for.

Agnes and I also copped a bit of sickness this year with compressed discs in the spine, malaria, pleurisy, tonsillitis and more.

But again, we are feeling good right now at the end of the year.

We are also very excited to see the youth center begin construction ... praying we may be able to move in next year!

God has been faithful this year, as He always is. We have seen him move in our lives, through the hard times and the good times. And we look forward to seeing what 2017 will hold.

So an eventful year with lots done. We continue to thank all of your who have stood with us, supported us, donated to us, prayed for us and more.
We could not do what we do here without your help, support and love.
May God bless you all.

Wise Choices For Life.

We are back from our training in Kampala, and we have gained so much from this training.
We spent one week at the African village resort in Mukono, where we did some intensive training on a program called Wise Choices for Life.

Basically the program wants to address the causes of the many maternal and infant deaths in Uganda, as well as the amount of orphanages and orphans in the country.
The program wants to give local people knowledge and life skills so that they can prevent themselves from falling into the poverty trap, and take care of their own family ... instead of being an aid organisation that comes in to help treat the symptoms of poverty.
You can watch a video here to get a bit of a taste of the program.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNiCJwm1kqQ

The program is very dense with a lot in it. It covers topics and issues like relationships, marriage, parenting, unfaithfulness, abuse, life skills, reproductive health, family planning, antenatal and postnatal care, abortion, STD's, causes of maternal and infant deaths, increasing population, environmental issues and so on.
The program is delivered from a Christian world view, and discusses what our loving Father God wants for His children in the areas of relationships and health.
So many of the issues we deal with here in our communities is touched upon in this program.

Although a lot of the medical information was not entirely new to me, I think the the main things I got away from this program was it's intended focus, and the way it gets the information across.

I have already said that the program aims to give local people knowledge and skills to prevent them from needed help from aid organisations or NGO's. I find this a great approach. So much of the work we do at YSU feels like patch up work .. or healing / restoration work.
This is vitally important, but sometimes we think 'How can we reach people so we don't have to help someone who has gone through hell and back and needs healing, and instead help them in preventing these traumatic things from happening to them in the first place"
We feel like Wise Choices for Life is that gap that we were missing, the thing we have been wondering about.

The way the program is set out and given to the local people is the other thing I got from it.
There are many different lessons in the three module's, but throughout all the lessons the information, problems and solutions are learnt through a combination of discussion, debate, drama, music and more.
The program is very interactive and helps local people feel like they have contributed to coming up with the solutions to a lot of their issues.

We are very excited to start using this as a tool for YSU, and we will begin this with our tailoring class starting next month.

We thank the WCFL team and Marg for running this conference! We also thank Emily who helped sponsor Aggie and I so we could attend the conference.
Oh and we should thank Douglas, who left his home at 6.30 am every morning to come and spend the day babysitting Ethan at the hotel, so Aggie and I could go through the conference undisturbed.

Thanks everyone.

Quick update

Just a short update!

We have enjoyed the last few weeks here in Uganda, with both Andrew my pastor coming to visit, and then my mother and my auntie coming for a week.

I know my Mum loved every moment with her little grandson, and we spent most of our time together and enjoying taking Ethan out.

Ethan has been enjoying swimming a lot, he loves the water so much. He is very active and is standing by himself now. We have to be careful and make sure certain things are out of his reach. He has broken a glass or two in the last few months.

Agnes and I are off to a full weeks seminar training in mukono tomorrow. We will be staying there for the week, while we learn how to be facilitators of the wise choices for life training seminor.
This looks at healthy families, issues around maternal health, problems encountered with child birth and child rearing etc.
This will be a great training for us, because Agnes and I often joke and say we feel we are becoming community health workers when it comes to women and their babies.

Even a few weeks ago I had a call in the middle of the night for one of our young tailoring girls who gave birth a month ago. She was worried because she thought the baby was sick.
It didn't sound too serious and I was almost ready to go back to bed, but I knew I would feel horrible if something happened.
Farouk and I went and checked the baby on the boda boda, she seemed fine, she had just fed and didn't have a temperate.
But since she was staying in a small room by herself, and she was a bit scared being this is her first child (she is quite young) she came and stayed in our spare room at our house for the rest of the night with the baby .. so she felt like people were close encase something was wrong.
She took the child to the hospital in the morning, and it seemed that the child had septicemia. Which is quite serious. Although the child never had any type of temperature.

We look forward to learning all that we can during this training.

Farouk and I also went for a one day camping trip up to sipi falls. The place is beautiful up there. I have also been enjoying my new DSLR camera as well and have had made a short little clip with it that can be seen here.

https://vimeo.com/189791644

If you could pray for rain in Uganda that would be appreciated as well. We have had one of the worst wet seasons in years, and many people have planted crops only to see them die. Often this is their only food and money source, so people are in very terrible conditions right now.
You can read more about this situation here.
http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/Millions-of-Ugandans-in-45-districts-starving--says-govt/688334-3440478-8uj0buz/index.html

Thank you again for all of you who support us rather financially or with prayers!

Hospital visits and the loss of a baby.

Hey everyone.

It has been an eventful week for us here in Uganda.
I guess we were not finished with dealing with sickness, this time Ethan was the one to get hit hard.

All day Saturday he was not himself, he was very grizzly and he refused to eat any food, and he was not breastfeeding. His temperature was going up through the day to around 37.8, but we managed to cool him down again by keeping him naked (it is very hot here anyway)
By night time he was still feeling hot so we tried to give him a dose of baby panadol that we keep here, only to have him throw it all up (along with his dinner of pumpkin which was his only food for the day)

We kept a watchful eye on him during the night, and again he started burning up to around 38.1 during the night. We managed to give him some panadol at around 1 am and he cooled down. But again by morning he was still hot, so we made the call to not mess around and take him to the hospital just to check if he was ok.

On Sunday's our hospital that we go to usually only has a small staff working, as most of the main doctors are away for the weekend.
When we took Ethan in and they measured Ethan's temperature there, he had gone right up to 39. The doctors didn't waste anytime, and we realized it was more serious then we thought when they put all the other patients on hold, and called another doctor to come to the hospital to deal with Ethan, who he said on the phone "was a very sick baby, and this is an emergency".
Straight away they put cool towels on him, and they put a suppository up his bum, of what I suspect was perhaps some sort of paracetamol to cool his temp down.

It took a long time to get the cannula into Ethan's veins (the tube that is placed into someones veins so that an IV drip, or medicine can be put into the body)
It took them four times before they finally got it in, because babies are a bit difficult when it comes to getting the needle directly into a vein.
During this time I had to hold Ethan down tightly while he screamed, and three doctors worked on him.
Agnes couldn't handle watching it so she had to leave the room. Some jobs are for daddy to do.

They got the blood tests back and Ethan had a strong dose of malaria. His body was also racked with quite a serious bacterial infection (which the doctor was actually more worried about then the malaria)
He was also anemic.

So that meant we were in the hospital for three full days and two nights. During this time Ethan was put on a drip and given lots of medicine.
It was exhausting for us, because Ethan is at that age where he wants to crawl everywhere and grab everything. And so trying to keep him from ripping the cannula out of his foot was quite tiring.

His fever peaked during Sunday night, and he was in a bad way again (even while being on the drip and on medication)
The doctor ordered another suppository, because they were worried about Ethan going into convulsions because of the high temperature.
We certainly didn't sleep much that night, about 2 hours or so. It was very helpful to have Agnes' sisters around who are great with Ethan, and who Ethan loves very much, so we could have a break during the day.

We were discharged on Tuesday evening, very tired and happy to go home and shower and rest.
Ethan is still on strong medication (all oral medicines) for at least a week. But he doesn't have to be in the hospital getting injections. We are just to watch him and make sure he keeps eating and his temperature doesn't go back up.

We know lots of people have been praying for us, and One Hope church sent out a prayer request, and we thank you all.
It was a bit of a scary thing, and rather serious from what the doctor told us. But Ethan responded very positively to all the medicine, and by God's providence his little body is well on its way to healing.

On his way up in this last picture (but still having heavy eyes)

Last Thursday morning we were woken up very early by our local pastor here (around 6 am) seeing this pastor calling this early in the morning I already knew something must have happened.

A young married couple that Agnes and I are friends with, and who are quite known in the HB community, had given birth to their first child on Tuesday morning.

Pastor George had called to let us know the baby had died during the night on Thursday.
Agnes and I had no idea the baby was sick, we were even planning to visit the baby that day.

It is devastating news that rocked the whole community.

From what it sounds like, the baby perhaps died of dehydration or overheating. He was not feeding, had dierreah and a high temperature.

I don't want to go too much into the cause of the death, and say too much out of respect for the people around here that we know (and that many of you reading this blog know)
But Agnes and I feel so heartbroken ... this is a death that could of been avoided. A mixture of terrible advice given to the parents, a lack of understanding on the seriousness of the situation, and a lack of money, or being able to borrow money from people, to take the baby to the hospital, are all thrown into the mix.

All in all, it seems that this death could of been avoided.

The parents are so shattered, and I can't imagine the pain they are going through.

Agnes and I went up to their house at 6.30 in the morning (after the phone call)
I will never forgot that scene. Aggie and I were a part of a handful of the first people to arrive. About 6 of us just sat in their small house with the baby's body laid in the middle, and the mother wept while we all just sat quietly.

I remember the baby looking as if it was a very healthy baby. He didn't look dead, almost peaceful, like a sleeping baby, like he would stir or wake up any second.

The father, who I am friends with, was sitting behind his house by himself, with tears rolling down his cheeks and calmly looking into the horizon he was repeating to me that he knew that the baby was sick, and he had wanted to take the baby to the hospital.

I will never forget that scene. Over the next hour the front garden of this house swelled with local people from the community.
The way people deal with grief here is something that really touches me.
So many people come, and they just sit in silence. That is all. They don't talk or try and give advice or words of comfort.

They just come and sit with the people grieving. They sometimes sit for hours (and even days) in silence, often crying alongside the ones grieving. 

The local community here have a strong faith in the Lord, and the parents, although in incredible pain, have expressed how they put their trust in God.

It is hard to ask the question of 'why?' in such situations. Pain and suffering are real. You live long enough in this world .. your heart will bleed.

And yet taking God away from the equation, because of the 'why?' question, doesn't seem to give people any more comfort.

I find that people who can navigate through suffering very strongly, are people who stand on the foundation of a belief in a sovereign loving God.

As I once heard John Piper quote in a sermon 'Through the deepest possible pain, God is enough. God is enough. He is good. He will take care of us. He will satisfy us. He will get us through this. He is our treasure. Whom have I in heaven but you, and on earth there is nothing that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart and my little child may fail, but you are the strength of my heart and my portion forever '

I have seen this lived out in the lives of people grieving here. Who put all their trust in God, even through the storms of life.
I read a quote on the internet that very day that was moving. It was a quote by the early church. When an infant had died the early church used to say "He passed through this world, without ever being touched by sin, straight into the arms of the Lord"

We have hope that this life is not all that there is. That one day all things will be made new and all sad things made untrue, for those who have faith and belief in the Lord.

So we go through the pain and the storms of life, when people we know and love are taken away from us. But we are anchored in God, who cannot be taken away from us.

Once again we thank all of you who have been praying for us. We love all of you and we thank you for your support.

Empower

Hey everyone, sorry for the delay in writing an update.

Since I last wrote my previous blog we have all pretty much recovered from the sickness we were all feeling.
Except for Ethan getting a nasty rash that has lasted three weeks, we are all feeling on top of it.

If you read my last blog I talked about a few people with serious illnesses.
Thank God that Esther, the women with cancer in her arm, managed to get more medical help, and hopefully will make a recovery.

The young baby that was put on oxygen has also now been discharged from the hospital and is doing better.
Thank you for your prayers.

We recently ran an empower trauma rehabilitation program with our tailoring girls.
It was an interest time, and full of both joys and challenges.
All of the young women expressed how helpful it was for them to be able to share their stories. Many of them forgave people in their life that they had been holding anger towards.
We also had a few of them wanting to surrender their lives to Christ.

The challenging part about empower was the fact that it is very difficult to help someone heal from trauma, when the situation they are in right now is incredibly traumatic.
Without giving away their personal stories, we have some girls that are in rather dangerous, abusive living conditions.
It raises a bunch of questions for us, in what is our role, how do we best support these girls and do we take any action.
Please pray for the young women, for their home lives, for protection, and for wisdom for how we deal with them.

So just a short update for now! It feels like the rains have kicked in, thunder storms all morning and it has not stopped raining yet!
That usually mean lots of power outages as well though!

More sickness and observing suffering and death.

Hey everyone.

I guess we have still had a sick household here at YSU over the last few weeks.
Since I wrote my last blog I talked about how Aggie's back was in a bad shape, and how I had malaria and tonsillitis.

A few weeks back we ended up taking Ethan to the hospital at about 8 pm because he had a very high temperature and he was clearly distressed.
The nurses really struggled to find a vein to take blood from Ethan, so they actually got the Turkish manager of the hospital to come and get the blood (he seemed to be the one who knew how to get blood from a baby the best)
It was a bit of an uncomfortable experience, as it took about 10 minutes of getting enough blood from Ethan (they took it from his foot) and as he was screaming and kicking, I had to pin him down and hold him still .. Which Ethan hates.
Ethan ended up having the same infection in his throat that I had, and so he was put on lots of medicine in syrup form.

After a week or so of recovery I actually ended up getting an incredible amount of pain in my right chest and back.
I could tell the pain was deep inside, and it felt like my lung. So last Wednesday I ended up going back to the hospital (my second home by now ... all the doctors know us by name)
The lining of my lung was inflamed, and so whenever I breathed in or twisted my body, the lung was pushing against this inflammation and causing a lot of pain.
So back on strong med's and told to rest.

That night I was awoken around 2 am to banging on my door from Beatrice (Farouk and Beatrice live in the same house as us with their children).
I could hear her crying, and also Farouk asking for my help. In my medded up state I was quite confused and got dressed and ran to their room to find Meshach having a seizure in Farouk's arms.

So here is another reason why the new car, which people back in Australia bought for us, has come in handy.
We were able to race Meshach to the emergency section of the hospital in town in the middle of the night.
His temperature was at 40 which caused the seizure, and so he had a suppository put in him straight away to bring the temp down.
They tried many times to get blood from him, but the night duty nurse was really struggling and they could not get any blood from his veins.
He ended up getting pierced with a needle about five times ... and this is Meshach's worse nightmare.
In the car he had been completely out of it and his eyes had been rolling in the back of his head. But by the time they had brought the fever down and tried to take his blood, it took three of us men to pin him down to give him an injection of antibiotics in the bum! The boy certainly knows how to resist a needle.

Meshach ended up spending two nights in the hospital because he had a very strong infection. That infection caused the high fever which in turn caused the convulsions.
It was quite a scary ordeal, and if we had not taken him to the hospital during the night, the sickness could of killed him.
Meshach is such a small boy as well, only 12 kilos at 3 years, so he seems to really get knocked down when he gets sick.

Farouk and I were actually meditating on how God works. Before I got sick with my lung problem, Farouk and I had been organizing to go away camping for that Wednesday night (the night Meshach got sick)
But due to my sickness I had to cancel those plans. As a result Farouk and I were around to rush Meshach to the hospital.
It could of been a lot worse if we were not around when it had happened.
Some people may simply choose to see that as coincidence, or maybe luck. We choose to see it as God's hand.

There has actually been a number of stories and experiences I have had over the last few days that still bring the reality of death and suffering close to my mind.

While in the hospital the next day to check on Meshach, an old pastor was rushed into the hospital in a critical condition.
We were actually in the next room and we could hear the doctors frantically working on him, and the sound of the heart monitor.  We heard the heart beat stop on the monitor, and then the wailing of a woman in grief echoed down the hospital corridors.
It is interesting to note the difference in the culture here. While the sick man was being worked on, the hospital filled up with family, friends and people from the pastors church. They were all waiting around seeing what would be the result.
After the man passed away, the hospital was full of almost 100 people, wailing and grieving and praying.
It was a sombering experience to sit there and watch it all.
Farouk I discussed how there is no escaping death in the end.

In the end all of us will face death.
The only thing we can really do is prepare our soul to meet it's maker. Have you?

In church yesterday a poor young widow who is a member of the church, pleaded with the congregation for help.
She had recently had her arm amputated due to cancer, but the doctors were now saying they needed to take off more of the arm because the cancer had not been fully removed.
The government hospital here said they were refusing to work on her because she did not have the 50,000 that they were demanding (about $20)
The woman had absolutely no money, so she had sold her only bed for about 20,000 ($8) to try and raise some, but she was still 30,000 short.

What a desperate condition to be in.

I was then moved by this woman, when during the offering for the church she was the first one up to place a small amount of money in the offering basket.
It reminded me of the story in the bible of the poor widow who gives a small amount of money (all that she owns) in the form of a single coin.

Let that be a lesson to us in wealthy nations.

Of course, everything in me wanted to get up and reassure the woman and give her some money and help her out and let it be done.
But I actually felt moved to wait, I wanted to see the church body come around and support her. It could be easy for me to just give the money and let it be done with, but I may be stepping in the way of a God given chance for the church to be a blessing to this woman, and in turn be blessed back by God.

Sure enough our pastor got up and called for the church to do whatever they could for the woman. And so people got up and placed the small amounts of money that they had, in a basket to help her.
Aggie and I knew that we would help top the bill (we are in fact the wealthiest people in that church) but it was moving to see the people in the church, who are also very poor, coming together to help each other.
In the end the remaining 30,000 was collected by the members of the church, and this woman will now be able to get her operation.

Aggie and I did make a decision that we will get her a new bed, since she had to sell her old one.

It was a beautiful reminder that the poor do not always have to rely on the rich from wealthy nations. That they are not totally helpless, and that the body of Christ can always come together to help each other, even if that particular body is very poor.

The desperation that people feel, and the reality of their situation still hits you though.
And another reminder of the pain people go through was about to come.

Near the end of the service another woman from the church who we know, came rushing to talk to the pastor. She had left her baby, who is only a few months old, in the government children's hospital, to ask for help from the congregation.
The child is in a critical condition and needs to be placed on oxygen.
It can be so frustrating here in Uganda, in a government hospital were things are meant to be free, they were still refusing to treat the baby until some money had been paid.

When we inquired what was wrong with the baby, they couldn't say. Another aspect of government hospitals here is that they just treat you without giving you a diagnosis, or I should say the doctors know what is wrong with you, but they don't have the time to explain that to you ... only to treat you.
Often the dignity of the patient is not thought of, there is no thought to explain their condition to them, or to even explain the treatment they will be getting.

Aggie and I were able to contribute something to help the situation because everyone in the church had just used up their money to help the woman with the amputated arm. Our pastor told us this morning that as soon as they reached the hospital and were able to pay for treatment, the doctors started working on the child.
There is still a high chance that the baby will die.

All of these events and stories just help to remind me of the fragility of life. Suffering and death is real.
We may try to paint a picture of living happy adventurous lives on social media, but the reality is we will all go through suffering, we will all see people we love die, and we will all die ourselves. It is not just the poor in other countries, but all of us.
And so I reflect on my life and all that is given to me. Yes the Lord gives and he takes away, but through it all we can praise Him because of the great promises of hope He gives us. And because He Himself entered into our suffering and chose to identify with us.

I am thankful and grateful of so many things. Things that I recognize are not my right! but purely grace.
I am thankful to have access to money and a support system in Australia who would always help my family and I if we were in need. I am grateful for educated human minds who create modern medicine to treat diseases that would of killed us a few hundred years ago.
If I was living a hundred years ago I am sure my family and I would be dead 10 x over.
What right of it was mine to be born into an era of sophisticated modern medicine?
I am grateful for access to that modern medicine and that my family and I are supported enough to get good medical treatment.
I am grateful for a car, so if there is an emergency late in the night I can easily rush to the hospital.
I am grateful for my life, for my health and for my families health.
I am grateful for the local church here, who can come around a sick woman and help raise money for her treatment.
I am grateful for getting sick, so that I was around to help drive Meshach to the hospital on Wednesday night.
I am grateful for the poor, who continue to inspire me with their tremendous acts of faith, courage and love.
I am grateful for a sovereign God, who works all things for the good of those who love Him, even if we cannot understand what He is exactly doing during our moments of pain.
And I am grateful for salvation, that purchases for us access to God and His kingdom. For the hope of the new heavens and a new earth, where every tear will be wiped away in the presence of God.




YSU:
I know I have not given much of an update on YSU, so here is a short one. We are doing well with our tailoring girls, they continue to be committed and love learning. Our house is always full of young men who we are discipling (especially with the holidays on) and we love sharing our lives with these young men.
We are preparing for an empower trauma rehabilitation program with the tailoring girls next week, so please pray for that.
Ethan will also be going for his dependent visa this month, so we also pray for smooth interactions with the immigration officers who will make the call.
Thanks everyone and God bless.

Sickness

So we are a month in to our time back in Uganda and our house hold has been whacked with a serious case of sickness.

Agnes has done some damage to her back, she has a compressed spine, where her vertebrae are compressed against each other pinching the nerves. This has caused her serious pain, often her back will lock up and then she is totally immobile.
The doctor is a bit concerned about it because if it gets any worse she may need surgery on her back.
So we have gotten a new orthopedic mattress for Aggie to sleep on, anything to try and help the situation.

Last Saturday night I started experiencing a strong fever and headache, so after a sleepless night I went to the hospital and got tested positive for malaria.
It has really knocked me around a lot, especially because I had a bad case of the flu to go along with it.

We have been pretty miserable actually, and it has been a struggle to take care of each other and also to take care of Ethan.

Aggie cannot lift Ethan up out of his bed to feed him during the night, so I have had to be doing it. But this is happening while I am shivering and sweating and almost passing out from an incredibly strong fever.

It has been a few days now, and although my fever has reduced and the headaches are gone, my throat has been so sore. It has gotten to the point where I can't eat or even drink water because it is too painful to swallow.
So back to the hospital this morning, and sure enough I have a strong infection in my tonsils/throat.
So more medication and more rest. But at least the malaria is gone.

Please pray for us as we are struggling to do our work here at the moment, we both feel totally immobile at times.
Thankfully Agnes' brother and our maid Zaina have been helping to take care of Ethan, which has relieved us a bit.

Otherwise we are just waiting for our strength to come back to us so we can continue our work.
We continue to run devotions and classes, as well as discipleship for the young people here.

We have started taking youth (mainly from the Village of Hope) in pairs of two's, to come and share dinner with us every week.
We often do all our work through programs and set classes, but I have always been convicted of the idea of bringing the young people into our house, to share a meal with us so they can see how Aggie, myself and Ethan operate as a family.
We feel like this is an important aspect of discipleship. And the Christian virtue of hospitality is something not to be missed and forgotten.
We hope we can also be an example to the young people on how a family can love each other and sit together around the dinner table and share a meal and pray together and read the scriptures together (you would be surprised how much this is lacking in families and marriages here)
I think inviting young people into our homes, to help them grow, and to try our best to be a good example for them, will hopefully have a positive impact on them.

We have also been enjoying our car, as I said in my last post, it certainly makes life much easier here (especially when we are sick and need so many doctors visits)

There is not too much more to write about for now, and I feel my medication kicking in which means I will need to lie down soon.

Please keep us in your prayers.

God bless

Back in Uganda

So we are back in Uganda, and settling in.

The flight over was pretty rough! Ethan was very restless, and so Agnes and I barely got any sleep (about two hours within 24 hours or so)
By the time we were in the car heading to Wairaka, we were all exhausted. Ethan had even stopped crying and was just whimpering.

The big trip was hard on Ethan, and for a few days after he was very unsettled. The change of environment and perhaps the jet lag had him very grumpy for the next few days.

But he has settled right in now, we have a routine going for him, and he is finally sleeping well through the night. All our friends and family have been very happy to see him as well.

Coming back here it was great to see things running smoothly. Our YSU team really worked well together in our absence, and there was nothing in particular that we had to address or fix.

The chicken project ran by Farouk has been making some small profit, and the tailoring class has been running well, with all girls participating and improving in their skills greatly.

We were also very blessed to start driving our new car. To be honest, I don’t think I have ever been to town so many times over the course of a week! This is because in the past, if we needed something from town, we would have to wait for our big shop at the start of the month (where we could pay for a personal taxi) or wait a few days for a list of needs to accumulate before we take public transport in (which can sometimes take over an hour to just get into town and back).

We also managed to purchase a small car seat for Ethan so he is nice and safe.

I do have to say, driving in Uganda can be stressful. Not only do you have to make sure you are always doing the right thing … your eyes need to be on everyone else (motorbikes, pedestrians, cars, trucks, busses) to make sure THEY are going to do the right thing.
Already I am sure, I could have killed a few people if I was distracted … largely because pedestrians are so lax and careless when crossing the road .. They just walk out in front of you, or take their time to stroll across the highway.

Pray for us, and pray for me, that I will always be alert on the road. To be honest, I am not worried about being hit by another car, but rather myself hitting a motor bike or a pedestrian who carelessly crosses in front of me.
I tend to drive rather slowly here, my thoughts are that I’d rather arrive safe with no accidents, then rush to get somewhere.

We have started organizing a bit of schedule to get back into things here. I will be doing lots of personal training stuff with the leaders, and with the young men.

Agnes will continue to work with the young women here as well. We were again reminded of the massive need here, a week upon arrival back home.

One of our old tailoring girls, whose name is Rose, recently had a loss in her family with her auntie dying while giving birth from home. Uganda has a very high birth mortality rate, and a lot of people give birth from home without thought about how they would get to a hospital if something went wrong.

Fortunately the little baby survived, but no one in the family wanted to care for it. This new born child was abandoned by everyone, including the father of the child who said he had no way, or idea, to care for the baby.

Rose, who is a struggling single mother herself, offered to be this child’s mother there and then on the spot.
Rose has always had a kind heart for helping others, and we told her that God will greatly reward her for such a compassionate act.

In her ignorance though, she had been feeding the baby cow’s milk, mixed with sugar and glucose. Again this is because people just have no source of education in these matters, and she was doing the best she could with what she had.

It was the other day she came to us for advice, when the baby was one week old. We quickly rushed to town (again this is another reason why the car is so helpful) to buy baby formula and some other needs for the baby.

We told her we would help her and support her where we could, and she was very much relieved and thankful for the new advice. She really wants to do what she can to help this little baby.

Please pray for the baby his name is Eric, he is very small, but we were positive with the way he was responding. He was feeding from a bottle very well, and his eyes were quite active and looked a bit lively.

This is just the usual for us in Uganda, we hear stories like this all the time. It makes us particularly eager to join in some training in November based around a biblical understanding of marriage, sex, reproduction, family and health. This is health education in reproduction, with a holistic spiritual world view.

This training will help us greatly with dealing with such circumstances, and to help educate those effected.

Again, we thank everyone who has stood with us as we continue to work in this community in Uganda.

We look forward to the year ahead, as we continue to try and reach the youth here with the love of Christ.

God bless

Back to Uganda!

Hello everyone!

Sorry for the long break away from my blog. The last two months has been a refreshing time of catching up with friends and family here in Australia.
Agnes and I had a great time in Australia, especially visiting our church community and spending time with the people we love in Australia.

Although it has been getting cold, I have also enjoyed getting out in the water for a surf as well!!

My whole family has had a great time with Ethan in the house, but there may be a few broken hearts on Tuesday night when we leave to go back to Uganda.
We were also blessed to have Ethan baptized at our family church at One Hope while we have been here in Australia.

We have also had the chance to catch up with sponsors, supporters and donors, as well as evaluate our plans for the next year on the ground.

Agnes and I are very excited about returning to Uganda to get stuck into the work over there.

While we have been away, we have had a great leadership team running YSU. Agnes brother Dauglas has been so valuable to us, as he managed the project in Uganda.

When we return we look forward to investing more into the tailoring girls, including the running of an empower trauma rehabilitation program.
We also want to continue our relational discipleship and mentorship with the young men and women in Uganda.

This includes inviting young people into our house, so we can invest in them, and so they can also see a family dynamic that hopefully reflects what God desires for family to be.
We are well aware of the many broken homes and families that people come from, and the young people who have witnessed marriages full of brokenness and abuse.
And although Aggie and I never claim to be a perfect family, we recognize the level of stability and love that we can show to young people. We always pray that God will use our marriage and family to be a light for the world

We also are excited about doing some training with a group called Wise Choices For Life, which helps men and women learn about reproductive issues, family issues, pregnancy issues and more.
This is a great program that we are excited about. We look forward to being trained in the curriculum so we too can pass on this knowledge to our young men and women.

I would also like to start up a boys holiday camping program, which will take troubled young men away on a camping trip that involves a lot of self development and discipleship.

We have also been excited to see our chicken project making profit, and so we want to continue to develop this into a reliable source of income.

When we return we also have a car waiting for us!! Andrew recently purchased our new car while he has been over there. This is going to make life so much easier in Uganda. No longer will we have to rely on dangerous public transport, or expensive private taxis.
We want to thank all those people who contributed to make this a reality.

We request that you pray for us as we go back to Uganda. Pray for strength and motivation to get back into our work. Please pray for visa situations as well, as we start to organize Ethan's dependent visa.

We thank all of you who have been involved in supporting us and our work in Uganda.
We always say that we could not do this without you.

I will now try my best to get back into blog writing, so you can all be updated on our progress in Uganda.

Thank you and God bless.

Coming home

For those who don't know, Agnes, Ethan and myself will be travelling to Australia today!
So we will be back in Australia this week!

We plan to spend some time resting with family and friends, catching up with our church community and also touching base with our sponsors and supporters!
We look forward to this time of reflection and time of fellowship with our much beloved friends and family.

The last few weeks have included lots of preparing for our leaving! But we are confident with the team we are leaving behind to manage YSU.

We have also enjoyed Agnes birthday, and Farouk and I have almost completed our walk from Kampala to the Kenyan border.

Please pray for us as we travel! We are a bit nervous to see how it will be flying with a baby, and on top of that Ethan has just started to teeth and can get quite distressed.

If you would like to catch up with us when we are in Australia (We arrive this week, and leave at the start of July) then please send me a message on my facebook or and email to ooeeluke@hotmail.com

We would love to catch up with as many friends as we can.

Thank you and God bless.

March

It has been a long time since I last wrote a blog. Sometimes the time can slip by and before I know it, one month has passed before I have updated anyone. I apologize for the long delay.

Basically here at YSU we have been preparing for Agnes and myself to leave for two months.
Agnes and I will be coming to Australia (with Ethan of course) on the 25^th of April, and then returning back to Uganda on the 6^th of July.

We are very excited to come back for two months. We look forward to family and friends getting to meet Ethan! We also look forward to catching up with our sponsors and all of those who have supported us.

I’m particularly looking forward to seeing my church family at one hope again! I also look forward to some peace and quiet. It seems to be that after a year here on the ground I get a little bit weary of living in a full community house with all the issues that need to be dealt with.

I am also looking forward to some soul filling, spirit refreshing times in the Australian bush and by the ocean side. I would be lying if I said that I don’t miss the ocean. These will all be times of rest for my soul! What great peace I find in God’s good creation! No wonder the Psalms describes God’s rest as Him ‘laying us down by green pastures’. 

And as last time, I also look forward to coming back to Uganda, refreshed and with some new perspective.

There is always something valuable about taking yourself totally out of the ministry environment to be able to have some reflecting and introspection on all that you are doing.

So for those who would love to catch up with us! Be known that we will be around for two months from the 24^th of April!

In regards to YSU running on the ground while we are gone, we feel confident about the team we are leaving behind.
We have a new team at YSU at the moment, with two extra teachers. Agnes’ brother Douglous, who has studied community development and is a very faithful friend, will be taking on a management role while we are gone.

We are confident with Douglous management skills, faithfulness in handling money and ability to sort out issues and conflicts.

We also have a new older woman teaching our tailoring girls alongside Beatrice. Christine is a tailoring teacher, but has also studied social work, so she is very capable of running classes while we are gone.

The next month will involve sitting down with Farouk and Douglous and training them up to be able to take control over the months that Agnes and I are in Australia.

The tailoring girls are also doing very well! They are very committed, and because of the structures and policies we have put in place this time around, we feel that this tailoring class is going to be our best yet.

With new teachers, new contributions, new policies, new areas of learning, we see this class as a very holistic way to help break the cycle of poverty in these young women’s lives.

Even simple little things that we are doing differently will make a big difference.

Previously we had supplied everything for the girls in the old tailoring classes. This was due to the fact that the girls were extremely poor and so we thought we should just provide all the resources.
A negative result of this was that we created an environment where none of the materials we provided were treated with respect.

Materials and tools would go missing, and girls would just expect new things to be provided for them.

This time around we are making the girls provide simple materials (books, rulers, pens) for the course.
It may be a bit of an effort for the girls to search for the money to provide this simple things … but it is certainly not in the realm of impossible.

As a result, on the first day of class, every single girl came with a new book and new ruler and a new pen.

They will treat their materials with much more respect now.

They also know that if any of the materials that YSU provides get broken or lost, the girls will have to replace it themselves.

These are the just some of the small and simple changes we have implemented.

The whole idea is that instead of creating a class where we are doing everything for them, we want to create a class where we partner with the girls and work together for a new future for them.

The last few months have included lots of paper work as well, as I have been organizing Ethan’s Australian certificate of citizenship and his passport!

I am happy to announce that Ethan is officially now a citizen of Australia, and his passport is about one week away from coming.

Agnes has also been granted her partner visa which has been a great blessing!

At the property we have also started a new lot of chickens! We have changed breeders and are getting our chickens from Kenya now.
So far so good, these chickens look much healthier than our lost batch (which had a lot of stunted sickly chickens)

God has been very good to us, from all our legal documents being taken care of and approved, to seeing young people being changed and healed through YSU.

We continue to see young men growing passionately in their faith! I have one particular young man I am discipling who finishes his high school education at the end of his year.
He’s hope and dream is to go to bible/theological school next year. He has such a passion for the word of God and I see this young man as a very strong leader, with a very humble character, who God has a strong calling on his life.
It would be very difficult for him to afford bible school, but perhaps if anyone ever feels the heart to help him, he will be able to pursue his dream.

We also continue Wednesday fellowships here, and more and more people come for simple worship and bible readings.

Ethan is also doing well! The boy keeps growing and is getting very fat!
The other day he got his vaccine for TB, and we were at the local medical clinic. A little 16 month girl was also there getting her injections, she was walking around and talking and quite developed. When they asked to weigh her she was 8.5 kg’s (quite small for her age) then when they asked us to weigh Ethan (who is 2 and a half months) he weighed in at 7.1 kg’s. We all had a laugh in the hospital room, and the nurses joked that Agnes must be providing good milk.

It does get a little bit heavy to carry him around everywhere though! He certainly is a big boy.

All in all, we are a bit busy as we prepare to come back to Australia. We ask for your prayers as we continue to prepare, and that we have a safe trip back to Australia.

We do look forward to seeing you all when we come back.

Empower, Elections and Ethan.

It is now Febuary so we have really started to get into the flow of the year! We have been organizing our tailoring class, and also looking at all we will plan out the next year here at YSU.

I recently ran an Empower program with my four boys from my small bible study group.

This is a group of guys that I have grown very close to and love dearly! I have invested a lot into them, mentoring and discipling them over the last year.

Instead of doing one big Empower, I wanted to try and see how it would work in a small group setting.

I think it went well and the guys got a lot from the program. All of them had never shared their life story before to someone in detail! The fact that I have earnt their trust over the year helped them to open up.
They were a bit more hesitant in opening up with each other, but in the end they did and I was very proud of them.

Many of their deep traumas are private, which I will not share. But what I will say is that the common theme which seems to be the root of so much pain is "Father hunger".

Meaning, a hunger for a father figure in life. This is also a huge problem in Uganda (and the whole world really) with fathers rather dying while these young men were babies, and so they never knew them.
For others it is case of the father abandoning his family, or if the father is still around, he is not invested into his children or even abusive.

So much of the problems that I deal with in youth here, stems from this epidemic of a lack of fathers.

As a new father it does push me and motivate me to want to be a father who loves his child and invests in his child to the best of my abilities.

It is always rewarding to see the people who go through the empower find healing at the end of it. All of the boys felt a burden taken off their hearts, and they were able to forgive people who had caused past hurts that had traumatized them.

In regards to the elections that took place recently in Uganda, there is a lot that I could say.

Elections are always a tense time in Uganda, since the president has been in power for 30 years. 

Although he did bring the country out of war, and has since done a lot for the economy and development of Uganda, many people feel he has overstayed and that his regime is incredibly corrupt and authoritarian.

What was interesting about the lead up to the elections was the amount of conversations I had with Ugandans who were tired of the current president and were voting for change.

The opposition leader here, who has challenged the presidency and lost over the last three elections (although many people say that previous elections had been rigged and were not fair) is very popular among many of the more educated Ugandans (although not all) in urban areas like the capital city Kampala.

Many of the uneducated villagers in Uganda are in support of Museveni (the current president) a big part of this (although not the only reason) is because they fear violence and war may break out if Museveni losses power.

With all of this in play, elections came to pass with a few skirmishes and riot police firing tear gas into crowds in the days leading up to it.

I was frustrated at seeing a number of concerning things like the nationwide shutdown of all social media platforms, police intimidation and arrests of opposition members and supporters, heavy handed police tactics and a show of force and weapons, inexcusable disorganized voting in areas that showed more support towards the opposition and also allegations of vote rigging and corruption.

Even John Kerry of the U.S called the president to urge him to stop some of these concerning undemocratic actions.

The current president still actually has a lot of support though, and perhaps, might not actually need to do these things to even get a fair win.

What is more frustrating for me though is seeing fellow Ugandans here feeling rather dejected after it all. Many of my friends here feel like they want change and want to have their vote and voice count, but that in reality the people don't have much power if they don't support the current regime.

Sometimes I feel like this show of democracy is a bit of a charade and an act. It is not that I am particularly 'for' any presidential candidate (whether the current president or the opposition leader) but that I really wish the voice of the people could be heard. It can feel like there is such a strong and unfair imbalance between the current regime, and any other party or candidate that a large majority of Ugandans may support.

I am actually quite politically opinionated among my close family and friends. And they have heard my views in detail over the last few days. But I am a bit more cautious about stating my strong views on public forums.

I was going to post quite a long piece of opinion on my blog, or on facebook. But after reading through it, I decided not too.

It was quite cynical and had heavy criticism and perhaps was not the wisest thing to post.

There are really three main reasons why I feel I should not be too politically outspoken.

The first reason is that, although I do live here, I am still a guest in this country and there are many Ugandans I love and respect who would hold strong opinions different to my own.

Another reason is that I often have this inner conflict within myself to be, on the one hand, drawn towards an outspoken rebellious type revolution, and on the other hand, wanting to honor, submit and respect the authorities, as my faith calls me to do.

I find this a bit of a balancing act, where sometimes I can be too hot and heavy and outspoken politically that I start demonizing governments or leaders while getting carried away, and I realize I am not being respectful and forgetting that we are all fallen sinful people who need grace.

I know I could easily refer to certain leaders as tyrants, but I need to also remind myself of the tyrant in my own heat ... the great tyrant, that is self.

On the other hand, we do need to be careful of being so respectful towards governments and authorities that we never speak out against injustice's that are clearly and plainly seen.

The last reason why I want to leave it here and not say too much, is basically because it is not wise for me to do so on public forums.
I am still a guest in this country, and I have influence (especially over the youth) in my community and I am on a government visa. Already I have seen how much the government takes notice of foreign nationals (even in my own case when applying for my own visa, and seeing how much info they already had on me) and so it would not be in my best interest to have too much of a loud voice in the matter.

In the end God is sovereign. We must all stand before Him and give an account for our life! Whether we are a poor laborer or the president of a nation, we must all face God who will see into our hearts.

As an old African American slave hymn goes "What is done in the dark, will be brought to the light"

In other news, more close to family life, we recently took Ethan to our doctor for an unfortunate and unusual medical condition that had to be dealt with.

Ethan has had a small pimple on his chest for quite some time now, and we always just assumed that it was a milk pimple as he has many on his face.
But the last few days the pimple grew and grew into what looked like a boil! It had a lot of pus and looked very red and infected.

We tried using some antibiotic cream, but it got worse. The other morning we had a closer look and saw a small hole going deep into the boil type wound.
Whenever Ethan would breath, a small yellow thing would come to the top of the hole, and then go back down into the wound.

We took Ethan to the hospital, already suspecting what the problem was.

When we go to the hospital the doctor had one look and our suspicions were confirmed.

Ethan had a mango fly maggot burrowed in his chest. The doctor told us that this dry season is mango fly season, and when we hang Ethan's clothes out to dry, the fly can lay it's eggs in the clothes. When the eggs hatch a little worm comes out, and if babies are wearing the cloths the worm burrows itself into the skin until it grows bigger and bigger (eventually turning into another mango fly)

We were told this is actually common for babies here as they have such soft skin.

We were also told the best way to avoid this is to make sure the clothes are out in the sun drying for at least 8 hours, and that we iron the clothes very well before using them.

Poor Ethan cried a lot when the doctor tried to squeeze the maggot out. The maggot was so deep that the doctor had to go to work with a small scalpel and a pair of tweezers! I was impressed with the size of the maggot that came out, it was quite large.

Aggie couldn't handle seeing Ethan in pain and crying, so she had to leave the doctors room!

Ethan's large pimple that ended up being a small maggot.

Ethan is doing fine now, and we will do our best to avoid this in the future! Otherwise he is very healthy and weighing in at 5.7 kg at 1 month.

He has a lot of rolls on his body and is quite the chubby baby. We still struggle at night with him and try to work out a system where we take it in turns to care for him (he seems to only be able to fall asleep at night when he is lying on my chest)

Otherwise we are well, and just sticking put in Wairaka until election season finishes. We will avoid the towns in case there is any political unrest in the next few days.

Our tailoring class is about to start next week as well, so your prayers are always appreciated.