Jesus Cares For All

Yesterday I headed out to a street kids project called “Jesus Cares For All” with the Australian team. The project comprises of a orphanage, a nursery & primary school, and a church, and is run by a woman called Mamma Flavia (hope I spelt that right!).

Mamma Flavia

Mamma Flavia & Rachel

She was a successful business woman before she met Jesus, and he gave her a vision of looking after his orphaned children. It was beautiful to listen to her story, hearing how she started with one, and now has 180 kids at the school. Unfortunately I didn’t catch how many are living with her currently. They have 50 acres of land, purchased with FOL help, which Mamma Flavia dreams of developing so there is space for 300 children, and for a secondary school.

It was heartbreaking at times to hear of how she longs to care for more abandoned and orphaned kids, and has the space for them… but not enough resources to feed them all. Can you imagine turning your kids away because you couldn’t feed them? You can help with this! Visit the FOL website for information on sponsoring a child through FOL.

Lazy Weekend

I’ve had a pretty lazy weekend, and it’s been welcomed! The past week of traveling all over the show with teams was incredible but pretty tiring, so I was ready for a nice slow weekend. Kicked off on Friday evening by heading down to Entebbe to pick up the Aberdeen team, who are lead by my good friend Susie. Susie is the person who put me in contact with FOL initially, so it was cool to get to spend a bit of time with her at the weekend. I’ll be heading up to Kiwoko with them next Sunday for the week, so will have plenty of time to get to know the girls!

We spent a few hours chilling out at Garden City on Saturday afternoon, including introducing the girls to the food court – quite the experience! There are about 8 different restaurants, they all come at you from different directions with menus, pointing things out, hovering over you like flies until you choose their menu! I also managed to bump into a friend from Glasgow who’s out in Kampala for a month, which was good fun.

This morning we went along to the International Church here in Kampala, and man, I loved it! They aren’t particularly high-tech in the way some churches would be, but they made so much use of such a wide variety of creative and artistic worship, it was incredible to watch/participate in. I was trying to find some of the liturgy they used in communion this morning, because it just blew me away by its power – can’t seem to find it right now, but if I do I’ll post it up.

How’s your weekend been?

Traveling With Teams

Over the last few days I’ve been out and about with different teams every day – Love For Life, Emmanuel, and Hamilton Road Baptist, took a trip into Kampala city centre to buy some fabrics for a team, went to Entebbe to meet a team at the airport, hung out with the Aussie team here at Shalom, took a trip to visit Rapha medical clinic, and such like… it’s been a busy but excellent few days!

I’ll try post a little more about the teams and what they’re up to later, along with some more photos, but for now here’s one of my favourite shots so far. It was taken on Monday when I headed out with the Love For Life team.

Teaching At Kawondwe

Grace’s Introduction

On Saturday I went to Grace’s “introduction”, a kind of Ugandan pre-wedding wedding. It was the longest I’ve ever sat still in my whole life… we must have sat for about 5 hours before we left, and it still wasn’t over then! There are a lot of speeches, and role-play type things, the bride finding the groom, giving gifts, the fathers agreeing upon a gift for the daughter, lots of traditional music and dance. It was definitely a very cultural experience, although not one I plan to repeat anytime soon!

A few snaps:

Grace's Introduction (1)

Grace's Introduction (4)

Grace's Introduction (8)

Grace's Introduction (9)