His Hope Uganda

Hello!

Since I’m too late for Merry Christmas I will stick to Happy Holidays. Hope everyone is enjoying them. I know I have been because they’ve been a good excuse to do absolutely nothing. Christmas holidays are a procrastinato’rs dream come true.

We had a great Christmas here. It was my second Christmas in Uganda and I tried to get into the holiday spirit by putting up a tree, cut down from the bushes around our compound, on December 20th. It died on December 20th but for some reason it’s still in our sitting room, looking festive with its one string of lights and two short strings of garland. Charlie Brown would be proud.

We had only 21 people here on Christmas day, small and peaceful compared to the over 100 that we had for our Christmas party on the 19th. I was blessed to be able to spend the day with my eight children and our staff as well as our neighbours, who we’ve gotten to know really well in the past eight months, and a friend of mine who was visiting from Canada. On top of that, Christmas was special for three reasons.

First, the kids didn’t want a goat this year, which meant no intestines for Christmas dinner. That was a nice treat. Second, my sister sent packaged gravy that I cooked which turned out to be the key to an almost perfect day. How I managed last time without it Ill never know. And third, I bought myself a Christmas gift a few weeks ago that has been a wonderful addition to our Ugandan family.

Clooney (named after the most handsome man on the planet) is our newest family member, an adorable little puppy who has captured all of our hearts, even the children’s although they won’t admit it. Originally mistaken for a boy, we rescued her from down the road a couple of weeks ago and when she first got here she was near death and full of all sorts of fleas and bugs. Since then, she has grown and gotten rid of all her creepy crawly little friends. She is now full of life and love and I know that one day she will be clean enough for cuddles. She knows her name and I am so excited because she will eventually be a bilingual dog, knowing both English and Lugandan (that’s more civilized than of our Wonderdog Twinkie, right dad?).

I can’t wait to meet George and tell him that I named my female Ugandan rescue dog after him.That will make him love me for sure.

Apart from preparing for Christmas, we spent most of November and December looking for candidates for our Child Sponsorship Program next year. This past year we supported 47 children, most of whom are under the age of seven years.However in the past few months, we’ve realized that there is a greater need to support children who are in higher levels of school. Next year we’ve decided to expand the number of children in our program to 88. Over half of the new candidates are in Secondary or Post-Secondary classes and none are under the age of seven.

We thought it would be best to start moving around the area before school finished in November.We also thought it would be better if Auntie Christine and Auntie Annet moved without my Mzungu presence so they went out together in search of needy families. They spent a couple of days moving around and came back with a book of names and information for me to read over.The problem was that in their movements around our village, they didn’t feel like the area was very needy. So we prayed that God would lead us to the right people.

He didn’t lead us, but He certainly led them. Within a couple of days and over a period of about four weeks, we had women and children waiting on our front step almost every day when we woke up in the morning. Some people came from villages over ten kilometres away that I’ve never even heard of, let alone been to. We don’t have a sign outside our compound but somehow they managed to find us.

Every person that came was treated the same way. We would take down information about their child and listen to their story and then we would take their contact information and tell them that we weren’t promising to help but that we might be in touch. And we told them to pray. When they left, we would decide whether or not they would make it to the next step.

In those four weeks, I learned two important things. I learned how to make quick judgments and I learned how wrong my quick judgments can be. As much as I tried to fight it, I found myself judging every person that walked through our door. We often made decisions based on appearances. If a woman came here with her hair done up and she looked really nice, we would usually just say no. It might sound really bad but we had to trust what we felt.

The second step in the process was visiting the homes of families that we felt we might want to help. You can only tell so much about a person here by how they look, but you can tell a lot by where they live. After visiting a few homes I drew up some rough guidelines about choosing children:

1. NO SHIRT, NO SHOES, SERVICE. We visited a government school in our search for children and I would say that over 95% of the children were not wearing any shoes. After that, I made sure to keep a close watch on peoples’ feet as we moved around. Oh, and if none of your kids are wearing shirts, you’re pretty much in.

2. DON’T THANK THE ACADEMY. We always ask guardians where their child went to school last because it gives us an idea of their financial situation. Some people give us names of schools that I can barely pronounce that aren’t even in the district, which usually means that the child was in boarding school. General rule if it ends in Academy we’ll likely pass you by.

3. A LITTLE TOO COMFORTABLE. In this culture, you welcome every guest that comes to your home by offering them your finest piece of furniture.For most people, it’s a small wooden or wicker stool. If you want to spend money on expensive furniture, we probably don’t have room for you in our program. Basically, if my butt doesn’t hurt by the time I leave, we most likely won’t be seeing you again.

4. WE WONT CALL YOU BACK. From my experience, most visitors who come here are bothered by the number of Ugandans who own cell phones.You can find a lot of families who can’t pay their kids’ school fees but who can receive text messages from their friends. I don’t understand this concept either, but I respect families who don’t own a phone. So, the harder it is to contact someone, the more we want to help them.

5. CAN YOU CRY A LITTLE? Tears in this culture are very rare. Crying, or showing any emotion, is a sign of weakness and most Ugandans don’t do it (at least not in the presence of other people). Seeing grown women crying because they can’t contain their emotion always breaks me. It’s a good thing it’s only happened twice because otherwise we’d have 200 kids in our program next year>

Choosing children was not always easy, especially the saying no part, but it was so exciting to actually be the one making the decisions. The children in our program now were chosen by Alvin, under guidelines which I didn’t really agree with, and although I am thankful for each of them, we have struggled with some of the decisions made in the past. I really believe that next year’s students are the right ones for the program and that we are supporting families who really need help.

I’ve learned that 99% of the people I meet here consider themselves needy and I’m convinced that even the president would ask me to help his children if I met him. We went in one multi-roomed brick house that had two couches, a stereo system, and a T.V. in the sitting room and listened to a young girl who had already completed her secondary education beg for help. Five minutes earlier we had been at her neighbour’s house, an elderly grandmother who lives in a mud hut and takes care of more grandchildren than I can count. Her eight year old grandson who will be in our program next year has never been to school. Yet the girl couldn’t see her neighbour’s need, all she could think about was missing her own chance.

I remember one day when I was feeling very discouraged because we had seen a lot of people who didn’t seem needy but were telling us they were. I complained to Auntie Christine that night about how people seem so stuck on getting help for themselves that they can’t see that there are so many other people who are really in need. I remember saying that I’d only ever met three or four Ugandan people who saw other’s needs before they saw their own. I was so frustrated.

The next morning Auntie Christine knocked on my door and told me that she needed me to meet a woman who had come asking for help. I met the woman, named Jennipher, and when she introduced herself as a teacher, I immediately felt annoyed that she had come asking for help. However, what she did next shocked me.

She gave me a small book. Inside the book were the names and stories of about twenty children from the school that she taught at. She explained that since she’s been teaching there, she’s been writing down the names of the children she sees at school who are most needy. She carried the names around with her in hopes that she could find someone who could help them. She had brought that book to several clinics asking for free treatment for the children but she has not yet been successful.

Jennipher is a woman whose husband left her when she told him she was HIV positive. She now takes care of her five children alone and her salary at a government school is barely enough to make ends meet. She told us that she needs help but she knows that there are other children needier than her own. And she chooses to put them first.

We are called to be like that. We are called to put the interests and needs of others before our own. And to love others more than ourselves. Sometimes it’s easy and sometimes it’s difficult. But it is ALWAYS rewarding. And it is ALWAYS worth it.

When I came here in April last year, I was told by a very reliable source that it would take a miracle to get our NGO (non-government organization) status in less than a year. We got our CBO (community based organization) status in two days and I considered that a miracle because I’ve heard of it taking over a year. After about three months of getting organized and visiting numerous government offices (where we were blessed with incredible favour), I submitted an application to the NGO board on August 24th. Since then, I have been waiting for our number to appear on a board at the NGO office, where I have been checking every month since October.

I still haven’t seen our number on that board. But it doesnt matter now. When I went to the NGO secretary on Monday to check on our status, she handed me our NGO Certificate of Registration.It was dated August 28th.

It took four days to get our status! I know a girl who has been here a year and a half and still doesn’t have status. Let me say this again - it took four days to get our status! It may have been even less than that except that the Board hesitated to give us status in Jinja because they were concerned about my safety working in this district.

I can’t just say this, so let me shout it: PRAISE GOD! Praise God for His favour, His mercy, His love, His greatness, His grace, and His amazing power.

I know that He listens and I know that He answers. So let me make a few more humble requests.

A few weeks ago I sent a prayer request because I was concerned about my diabetes. It went out of control for a few days but things are back to normal now so thank you for your prayers. When I come back to Canada in February I need to decide what the future of my diabetes will be because being on the insulin pump is not cheap. Please pray for favour with the pump company, that they might be able to help me, and for wisdom to know what to do.

God has provided for us financially in huge ways and we haven’t even really had to ask. Praise Him for that. Please pray for continued peace and favour in the finance department and that we will be able to find sponsors for all our new children.

Please pray for continued wisdom about children in our program next year. We still have a couple of decisions left to make so pray that we make the right choices.

Please please please keep praying for Auntie Christine. She is really struggling and she has been under spiritual and physical attack. For the past year she has been hearing a voice telling her that she will die when she is 26 years old. She turns 27 on January 22nd and Satan is really attacking her right now. There have been two deaths and one stroke in her family this past week. She will be travelling to her village on Saturday so please pray for her safety and also that she will have an impact on her family as none of them are believers. God has done amazing things in her life in the past couple of months. She has been set free and God is using her and will continue to use her for amazing things. Praise Him for that but please keep praying for her protection and peace.

Thank you for all your continued prayers and support. Since you can’t be here, I hope you believe me when I tell you that God is doing amazing things through this organization and through all of your support. May He continue to shine through us and be glorified in all that we do.

What an amazing year it’s been. May God bless all of you in the year to come. Much love, Kimi