Friday 30 December 2016

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.