Since there’s no electricity in the area where our farm is, getting a chance to see a movie is a rare treat.
Rajan set up the screen, and since our audio is strong, hundreds of people can easily sit/stand each side of the screen & see it from far back.
The movie we showed this time in a couple places was the Jesus 2000 video–edited to take out modern distractions. The character of Jesus is so warm and kind, and we felt that was very needed in our area in particularly at this special time at Easter.
People were thrilled because our colleague from our school, Lawrence, did an excellent running translation into Acholi. People cheered at miracles & were so thrilled when Jesus rose from the dead. It was quite moving. The coolest thing was praying with people, not only to be filled with the Lord’s Spirit, but to receive His spirit of Forgiveness for each other, because they’d all suffered so much from the war instigated by Kony–either having been abducted or stuck in refugee IDP camps for years. He has a whole new start for everyone!
Seeing the power of movies, made us wonder about how to get a projector/generator set up of our own, because there is no limit to what we could teach via a medium of this type.
We have been concerned about an affordable solution to the needs of our older girls to have sanitary care provided for. This week, we came across a wonderful indigenous women’s group who are producing excellent and very reasonably priced sanitary pads made from papyrus!
This ingenious solution is a real answer to prayer as this has been a very real problem facing young women here in the North in Uganda. Thank You so much, each of you who pray for our work & send donations. It’s totally changing the quality of life of these wonderful young people who have so much potential!
We have been excited as lots of cabbages, tomatoes, onions, and a wide variety of vegetables have been growing steadily, ready to be planted immediately after the first rains, due within 2 weeks.
These vegetables are the beginning of our fully self-sustainable farm, which will not only be the income-generator for the school for our orphans, but is targeted to be a training center for agricultural methods to improve the livelihood of our surrounding communities.
We are grateful that the Invisible Children team are drawing attention to the plight of orphans here in Gulu. Our children were children of the child soldiers. They have heartbreaking personal stories & even our staff & farm workers where we’re trying to build on the rubble of war, experienced abduction & great personal loss. Thank you for any & all of your help to rebuild these lives that were so traumatized for so many years. Just a click on our Paypal can bring about tangible progress in the lives of our dear orphans.
We have been serving ‘porridge’ for lunch, but this year, we decided to give the orphans our best & trust God to supply. We built this kitchen, which will be able to store firewood during the rainy season & function well throughout the year. Our two cooks are very dedicated & sure to have it all ready by lunch time.
Now with the roof on, one of our hard-working cooks prepares beans, posho & yummy food daily.
Happy Customers. Children outside the kitchen before lunch.
This year we feel extremely blessed to have such a terrific teaching staff. Some are pictured below:
Jennifer, Francis, Douglas, Principal-Michael, Dorine, Lawrence, Jennifer, Many, Ketty and Richard–some of our excellent team.
Teachers Jennifer, Richard and Mary enjoying a light moment between classes.
We had a thrill this week because Cesar received a letter from our friend & donor Uncle John in Australia. None of the children had ever seen a real letter before so Cesar was surrounded by many friends as he happily opened the news. We had to have a class on sheep because no-one had seen anything like Uncle John was talking about–we came around to a close equivalent till we rounded up photos of extremely woolly goats! Ha~! Here’s Cesar below, sitting at the front of the class.
The toilet block we’ve built is all finished now, ready for the coats of paint.
Teaching cleanliness here in Africa is an extremely needed exercise, so we’ve started the school year with an emphasis on it, thanks to generous donations to supply for building the toilet & buying hand-washing units for the children.
Each week is seeing a LOT of tangible progress. The toilet is getting the roof today, after having the walls cemented smoothly.
It’s exciting that the toilet block has been built just in perfect time before the students come back.
Happy New Year friends! Well we’re excited as we’re off to a new start with … a brand new toilet block being constructed for the school for our orphans.
It’s far more efficient here in Uganda to do a project quickly with a bigger team, so the whole thing will be finished, cemented and painted within a week. We’re very excited and are so grateful to those of you who contributed to making it possible–just in time before the children return to school.
At the same time the roof of the second building is being completed. It’s so exciting seeing all this solid progress as properly ventilated, clean toilets for the children is essential. We have a lot to do before they come back to school in 10 days so … it’s not boring! =)
