When we listen to the kids prayers at night and watch them march off to church holding hands with each other, we know that our dream has come true. These children have flourished in just a short time. It has been a month of learning and adjustments but as they grow, we know they will be moulded into good citizens of Uganda.
Our latest little one to arrive was Alan, age 2 1/2. Alan was raised by his grandmother in a poor village north of us. She has 8 other little grandchildren to look after so was very grateful to us for raising him. We brought him home to find that he was very sick and undernourished. He had bed bugs, lice, fungal disease, jiggers and Dr. Isaac had to deworm him. The jiggers were the worst....a total of 24 of those nasty things in his fingers and toes. And then to top it off, a few days after arrival, he contracted malaria. The life of a child in the African bush.
We are waiting for three more children to arrive from the north. Once they are here, we will be enrolling all the children into Victoria Junior Academy, a 5 minute walk from us. We have chosen this school because of it's strength in academics and class sizes. A normal class here consists of 116 children. Victoria Junior Academy averages 32 students and much more individual attention is given.
We would like to share the last month with you......
The grass hut where all meals are eaten and meetings held.
The kids playing in the yard.
The 8' wall has been built for the sustainability program but still must be plastered. Once it is, we can start planting our vegetable gardens and raising the chickens.
Aunty Aidha and Aunty Aidha cooking food for the children
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The children on their way to church. Sam and Joseph are such boys....walking ahead
Barbara has now moved in with us and is teaching the kids how to make thank you cards for all the people who have helped us. She has helped me so much with the techniques to teach English in the Ugandan way. We even have little Alan counting to 10 already.
Each child will start planting their own garden. They are in the process of clearing the land.
Aunty Aidha is teaching the girls how to wash clothes properly.
Our English lessons on the back stairs
Edwin and Joseph
We opened the well to the community last week. Hundreds of people came due to lack of rains. We are blessed to have so much clean water to share with the poor and as long as we have it, we will continue to do this.
The Abbotsford Gleaners sent me off with 1,200 meals. We took 100 of those meals to Alan's
village to feed them before we brought him home with us. Everyone enjoyed it, as it had been prepared in the traditional Ugandan way.
Both Aunties prepared it a special way for Ugandan taste bud.
We will be judged by "I was hungry and you gave me to eat, I was naked and you clothed me, I was homeless and you took me in. "Hungry not only for bread, but hungry for love.....Mother Theresa
I will be departing for Vancouver on September 11th in order to raise money to put towards running our Home of Angels. We have decided that in order to do a good job in raising these children, we will have to lower the count from 57 to 20 and put the money towards wages, food and finishing the sustainability program of gardens and chickens. Once we can establish an income from the Ugandan side, we will be in a much better position. In order to do this, we thought we could start a bakery in our community as there is none. With our donated ultra-sound machine, Dr. Isaac is thinking he could charge the well-off people but will continue to help the poor at no cost. With the wall going up, we would be able to raise money by growing maize, ground nuts and beans, all common staples in Uganda. Then, with the chickens, we could sell the eggs at a profit and chickens for meat. If we can build up a profit, we could then go to the deep villages for rice and beans to feed the children.
These are all things we would like to achieve but we know that in God's timing, they will happen.
