Aunt Sarah returns and declares DEATH TO ALL RODENTS!

There's a recurring theme in Sarah's Story, namely her intense dislike of the many rodents she gets to share her accommodation with... It's been a while since we've heard from her, so read on to find out more!

Helloooo! I hope that you are all well! I haven’t sent a newsletter for a few months now, so this one is a little overdue! Here’s what I’ve been up to over the last few months....

The month in Uganda before I came home to the UK for Christmas was very busy... It was the school holidays over here, and we ran our White Eagle Project holiday programme (which included sport, Bible teachings, drama, opinion forums, life skills, aerobics, and all sorts of other things). We also did lots of special events, including a mini Operation ARK (– Acts of Random Kindness – where we cleaned up the local area), and a Parents’ and Relatives Sensitisation Day (where we did workshops for the relatives of our kids to prepare them to receive their children back home, and teach them to look after their children well). And there were several other special events which I was involved in (either leading, teaching or attending), such as a youth conference, singles teaching, a parenting seminar, etc., etc. So December was a pretty packed month, and I came back to the UK rather exhausted!!!

Christmas and January were spent in the UK, having a wonderfully restful time with friends and family... and then I returned back to Uganda at the very end of January. Since returning to Uganda:

Our youngest member of the Girls Home - a little lad - has started school and looks very cute in his shorts, which look like a basketball player’s shorts because they’re so big (see photo). He's started getting the school bus, which is apparently SOOOOOOOOO exciting – the first thing he says EVERY morning upon waking is “Aunt Sarah - getting School bus today?” His little comrade in arms, our youngest girl, cannot stop waxing lyrical about the curtains on the windows of the bus – she’s never seen a bus with curtains, so she thinks it’s the most amazing bus in the whole wide world!

Also since returning to Uganda, I have managed to kill 1 mouse, 2 rats and an ENORMOUS spider. I’m getting very brave... although the mouse and rats were caught by my mouse traps that I purchased before returning to Uganda, so all I had to do was biff them on the head once caught, in order to kill them (-although I succeeded in releasing one of the rats when I tried to do this... but it turned up dead the next day under one of the girls bed, so it must have got concussion when I biffed it on the head!). The ENORMOUS spider was in the girls’ bathroom, and our little lad had got to the stage of refusing to go to the toilet because he said that the spider was going to eat him! So the spider met an unfortunate end too! (I think that I’m becoming very brutal!!! – Sorry to animal lovers! ...although in my defence, the spider was so big that I didn’t dare go near enough to catch it in order to set it free outside, and I decided that killing it was the only safe option!).

The girls are all doing very well. They are lovably crazy(!), and spend many an evening putting on shows, singing and dancing, playing silly games, or playing hide and seek (- which is actually quite fun when the power goes off, because you can’t see a thing!). They also get a huge amount of homework, which for one of them in particular is a bit of a trial to be got through each evening (it takes her about 5 times as long as it takes the others because she’s very distractible!).... but we’ll get there eventually!!!

We’re continuing to work towards resettling lots of our kids, and after successfully resettling some children last year, we had 4 young men graduate from the boys’ home this month – they are all now working and supporting themselves, as we continue to sponsor them in further education/vocational training/through business grants. We had a big party, and sent them off in style – it was a really good celebration of everything they’ve achieved, and also of how God has completely turned their lives around - from being in a place of utter despair with no hope for the future (e.g. living on the streets for some of them, not knowing where the next meal would come from, and having no hope of going to school or getting a good job), He has given them all such an amazing hope and a future!

So things are moving forward at the project with all of this resettlement that’s happened and is going to happen over the next few months.... We keep on having some very important government officials visit us to check that we’re keeping to policies (as far as being a children’s home and resettling children are concerned), and we’ve had some very positive feedback, with one of them even saying that she considers us to be an example for other projects to follow because of our work on resettling children back with their relatives! So that was very encouraging, especially because resettling them successfully (so they don’t run away/leave home) is such hard work with so many challenges!!!

Anyway, that’s all for now. I hope that everyone is well, and that you’re all having a wonderful 2012!!! Love Sarah