May 2014 Update 4
Lwakusatu, it’s wednesday! We are having a great day!! Hope you are too!! We started our day off with breakfast, bread and bananas with tea. Then we headed to worship. This morning we are continuing our discussion of what an Abundant Life looks like. We went to John 2, the wedding at Cana. Today we learned that God celebrates with us abundantly. He desires to give us the best of all and with plenty!! I learned that I need to be more like the servants and instead of questioning what God tells me, I just need to obey and He may work a miracle through me.
We headed to small groups and Erin worked her way from group to group taking pictures of each kid. From small group, we headed out to the field for games. We have decided to play some new games. Stacey introduced us to ‘Steal the Bacon’. We needed to cane the rules up a bit because the kids were too competitive. We had a couple injuries early, but when we changed things up a bit it worked well and the kids really enjoyed it. Please pray for John Patrick who hurt his leg pretty bad. After steal the bacon we played musical chairs. We had all the girls play first and the Orange team won and then we had the boys play and the green team was victorious.
Lunchtime, fish, rice, matooke and watermelon. For the first time Stacey is actually hungry!!
We are continuing our volleyball tournament this afternoon. Cathy is our netball official and she had to run into town today, so we will play all of our volleyball games and tomorrow will be all netball. It has gotten really hot today, so they kids are getting tired, but we were able to finish all 6 games. The kids are enjoying some free time now. Some are playing cards that they won last night, others are playing Ludo, the ugandan version of Sorry with a few different rules.
Stay tuned for CPR and our night events…
Webale thank you for your prayers. Please continue to pray that the kids’ hearts would be open to the work of the Holy Spirit. Pray for Cathy as she will be sharing with the kids tonight about the righteousness of Christ.
Continued…
Let’s finish Wednesday!! We headed to CPR after volleyball and some free time. We learned about consequences of our choices today. I love this program because most health ed classes just talk about the physical consequences, pregnancy and STI’s, but this program talks about the whole person, physical, emotional, mental, social and spiritual. The decision to get involved sexually outside of marriage leads to consequences in all these areas of life. You may get lucky and not get pregnant, but you will always have memories of those times and your heartbreak will be more severe, your mind can be distracted leading to poor academics. So good for these kids to hear!! Everyday the kids are given blank papers to write questions on. Yesterday we received a question from a girl about being sexually abused. I met with Pauline and discussed how to handle it because it didn’t have a name on it. At the beginning of the class today, I stood up and shared with all the campers that we are a safe shelter for them to come with any issues of abuse happening, in hopes that the girl would come and talk with us. She did. We had a really open conversation with her. She is actually a headgirl at school and there is a worker at her school that is harassing and potentially taking advantage of girls. She has been able to avoid his advances, but is afraid. I am so glad that she felt comfortable sharing with us, so that we can talk to the headmaster about her employee and hopefully we can get rid of him. She has also seen some things at home with some weird extended family situations. Nothing has happened to her, but she is concerned. I encouraged her for her being a good self-advocate. We have given her so ideas and tools to use. Thank you Lord for opening a door to have this very important conversation. Abuse is so common here, but we can only change things one life at a time, one family at a time, one school at a time.
I had my dinner date tonight with Cathy who will be teaching tonight during worship. I am so thankful for this girl!! She has graduated from University and is using her life to teach and mentor young people. I am so amazed at the impact she has. Tonight she is teaching about the righteousness of Christ that we receive once we accept Christ based on 2 Corinthians 5:21. I know she will do an awesome job!!
I used the time of worship to prepare for our night activity. Movie night!!! I transformed our dining room into a theater. The kids came and found a seat on the ground with their pillows and each received a treat to enjoy during the movie. Tonight we are enjoying Despicable Me. The kids are loving it!! So often you can’t even hear the movie because they are laughing or clapping so loud. There is a great applause at the end and then the kids make their way to bed. The mzungus are tired!! Stacey and Erin headed to bed a while ago and I have left the Ugandans to make sure the kids get to bed.
Webale, thank you for your prayers!! We are feeling them. The kids are responding well and hearing all that we have for them. Please pray for stamina as the week goes on, all are getting tired, especially the mzungus. Please pray that more kids would open up to us about their lives and that we would have wisdom to know how to respond.