River of Life, Uganda

Responding to Uganda's blood crisis...

2012-01-17T08:43:00.000Z

Rob, Development Director at River of Life Uganda, tells us about confronting his fears...

For some reason, I've always been afraid to give blood. Fortunately for me the UK Blood Service has never wanted my blood, as I've always been just back from a malarial region. But I'm one of those people that embarrassingly faint when having injections anyway, and the nervousness of someone taking a pint of blood out of me has always trumped the obvious need for donors.

Dr Sarah gives blood

That was until yesterday, when we got the call from Dr Sarah, River of Life's long-term missionary seconded to Kitovu Hospital: "Rob, we need blood donors. Three children died on the ward over the weekend, simply because there is no blood. Can you round up some of the White Eagles and staff and come and donate?"

Now, although the Ugandan Blood Service is as diligent in screening blood as anywhere else, the whole "I've just got back from a Malarial region" wasn't going to wash. We're in a malarial region. And anyway, children were dying.

For you blood donors out there, you know this is not a big deal AT ALL. But for those of us responding to that call for the first time, it's fair to say we were more than a little nervous. Uganda has a blood crisis at the moment - it's school holiday time and the whole nation is running very low on blood. Why? Because the main donor-base are older school children, who love the opportunity to get a free soda and a biscuit, and to miss an hour of lessons. The great news is that there is a generation of young Ugandans growing routinely donating blood. The bad news for me was that I was going to have to face my fears. But doesn't the bible say we are more than conquerors?

So off we went. And because Elder Betty had inspired us with a word of encouragement earlier in the week that as leaders, we were to lead by example, I gave blood straight after David, one of the other ROL Directors.

Beth giving blood

And yes, I fainted. Not at actually giving blood you understand, but at the little finger-prick thing they do first to test your blood group. And yes, they had to set up a special bed for me outside. And yes, I had to hold Dr Sarah's hand whilst they took the blood. But, do you know what? It was absolutely fine. And today I woke and could say for the first time in my life that I've donated blood, and will probably save a life.

Gerald, Beth, Kayima and Sarah followed suite with far less fuss - although big respect to Beth also donating for the first time! (she managed not to make as much of a fool of herself as me)

In the next few weeks we'll invite the mobile blood bank down to church, and encourage as many as possible from the community to donate. We'll let you know how we get on...

The New Girls Home! A sneak preview...

2011-10-11T08:52:00.000+01:00

There are over 1,748 orphaned girls, just in our part of Masaka (according to the latest figures available, which, from 2002, are pretty out of date). For 5 years we've been able to give a small number a home, but at the end of September the girls had to move out of the house we were renting.

Over the last few months we've been building a new Girls apartment, to give short-term accommodation whilst we work on resettling them with their families. The aim, of course, was to finish just before the rent ran out, but we missed the deadline by a week or so!

Anyway, it's very nearly complete, and we thought you might like to see some sneak preview pictures before the official opening...

We’re coming of age - help us celebrate!

2011-10-01T09:30:00.000+01:00

1st January 2012 marks River of Life Church’s 18th Birthday! Help us mark this wonderful milestone by fundraising for our work now and in 2012!

From recruiting sponsors for the Sponsorship Challenge through to arranging a Fundraising Event, we’re delighted to give you the opportunity to do something a bit different in the next 3 months to help us ‘come of age' in 2012.

We’ve got solid plans to expand our impact in Masaka - to support 300 orphans through the White Eagle Project, protect and purify Nyendo’s community wells, partner with the local hospital for a community-based nutrition and healthcare programme, finish building our Children’s Centre and Church in Nyendo, take part in mission trips to Northern Uganda and continue praying and working for peace and reconciliation, develop the new Prayer Mountain, build up our healing work in the villages through our Roots Ministry...

But none of it is possible without you! We’ll keep you posted to inspire you with ideas, or contact Rob direct on rob@riveroflifeuganda.org

Onwards and upwards with River of Life Church

2011-09-30T14:44:00.000+01:00

The end of this year marks a 'coming-of-age' for River of Life Church, as we're turning 18! Some of us have been around since 1994, when Pastor Duncan and Aunt Mary responded to the call to leave their work with the homeless in London, and come to Masaka in Uganda to plant a church. Since then we have grown in response to God's call, trying to keep our vision always in sight:

To see the Glory of God cover Uganda and the Earth through Church Revival and Community Transformation in the name of Jesus!

The White Eagles enjoying
the Day of the African Child

Over the years, various activities and ministries have been piloted, established and developed to help us realise this vision, from Schools Ministry (visiting 9 schools a week to run Christian Fellowships) to Street Evangelism, Operation Acts of Random Kindness (social action on the streets) to the White Eagle Project - supporting orphan and vulnerable children, particularly street children through resettlement, quality education, intensive mentoring and ensuring a safe and secure home. There are many more - we currently have 24 separate ministries either fully operating, or in pilot stage.

It's fantastic that, even in the face of grinding poverty, ill-health and the general challenge of living and working in a developing country like Uganda, the River of Life Team are plugging away with courage and determination to help some of the most vulnerable and destitute people of our Community.

Over the last year, the River of Life Board have restructured our work into four distinct departments - 1) Community Outreach, 2) Training and Discipleship, 3) Prayer and Healing and 4) Operations and Mission. We've brought on a new Operations Director, Mr David Nyongesa, who is ensuring we have the capacity and the expertise to do the work we are called to do, and so, as we 'come-of-age', we are excited by what lies ahead.

We've designed a leaflet that introduces you to all the ministries at River of Life Church. Do download it, and share it with your friends, family, church or whoever you please!

Sarah's Story - The Last Stand of the Rats

2011-09-29T09:11:00.000+01:00

Hellooooo everybody!!! I hope you’re all well! I’m very well over here. Let me tell you what’s been happening over the last month and a bit.....

The big event has been the countdown to leaving the Girls’ Home building that we currently rent. Our contract runs out at the end of September (Friday this week), and it was decided that we would move out when that happened. At the same time, the project has been building a new children’s home down on the site where the Boys’ Home is situated, and so the race was on to try and get it built and finished in time for us to move into. For several weeks now, we’ve all been thinking that there was no way that it would possibly be finished on time as we watched progress, but the guy in charge kept on telling us that it definitely would be.... Well, he has had to concede defeat, because (as you’ll be able to see from the photos below, taken yesterday), it is not going to be ready by tomorrow lunchtime!!! He has now set the expected date of completion at Friday of next week instead, but I’m not convinced that it will be finished by then, either!!! (It’s nice to know that builders are unrealistic with their time-frames the world over, isn’t it?!?!?!) So we are moving out of the current Girls’ Home building this Friday, and we’re going to stay somewhere temporarily until the new building is finished, and then we’ll move in.

At the same time, some of our girls are being resettled back home with their relatives. Hope (16 years) and Isaiah (1 year) have already returned to live with their relatives during the last school holiday, and Judith (17 years) and Teddy (11 years), are going to go home this Friday when we leave the old Girls’ Home building. Of course, we’ll continue to follow them up, sponsor them, meet with them, and mentor them, once they’ve gone, so I’ll still get to see plenty of “my girls” even after they’ve gone, which is good!!!

.... So it is change all round, come this Friday!!!

This last week has been a week of war on rats!!! Our current Girls’ Home building is infested with rats, and we’ve tried everything over the past few weeks and months – rat traps, rat glue (VERY sticky glue that you smear on a piece of cardboard, and then put in the favourite spots of the rats with food on, in the hope that they are stupid enough to walk onto it for the food, and that they will then get stuck), rat poison, and just simply trying to hit them on the head with a big stick! We had practically no success whatsoever... they ate the food from inside the rat trap, and then walked out of it, without it snapping; they avoided the rat glue, or managed to free themselves if they did stick to it (apart from one very small rat that got stuck – which I then bashed on the head to kill – I’m very proud of how brave I am – it’s the first rat that I’ve personally killed!!!); they aren’t foolish enough to eat the poison-soaked food; and when we try to hit them, they just run and hide under furniture!!! HOWEVER! Because we’ve removed nearly all of our furniture from the girls’ home in preparation for leaving this Friday (we had to move it when the boys were off school last Sunday, so that they could help us with all the heavy lifting), we’ve taken away nearly all of the hiding places that the rats would go to, so this week we’ve spent every evening chasing rats round the house with big sticks, and hitting them on the head when possible!!! (- I say “we”.... actually, it was the girls and Aunt Tinah, because although I was brave enough to kill a small rat stuck to rat glue, I am not brave enough to chase a huge rat around the room, which can jump up at me and bite me!!!) So far they’ve managed to kill 3 between them, but the war continues, and it’s our nightly entertainment now that our TV has gone!!! The only place that the rats can hide now is in the top of our cooker, but Teddy has found a long metal skewer, and spends her evenings poking the skewer through some slits in the back of the oven in an attempt to get the rats to run out of the cooker again so that they girls can hit them!!! The girls are having great fun!!!

I’ve finished my Celebrating Children course now, although I don’t know if I’ve passed my assignments (apparently lots of us have failed and will have to redo them!). So, for now, there are no more assignments to do, and I can concentrate on putting everything that we learnt into practice, and I can relax more on my days off, which is very nice!

We had a team from Runcorn visit us last month, and the kids put on a bit of a show to welcome them. They decided to paint their faces after my cousin sent some face paints out to me, and they had a fabulous time singing and dancing, and we had a fabulous time watching them – they’re very talented!

Anyway, that’s about all of my news! Have a good October!

Love Sarah

The Lane's Log Final Farewell - Webale Uganda!

2011-08-23T14:49:00.000+01:00

We are now into our final days in Uganda and so this will be our last blog during our time here in Africa. The last week has been gave us the chance to reflect on what has been an amazing three months and to start to say some goodbyes. Leaving Uganda is going to be far more difficult than we had ever thought and it is still hard to believe that we are actually leaving. We feel very much at home, despite it feeling like we arrived just a short time ago.

The fantastic Lutaaya Family

We have made some really good friends and had so many valuable experiences. Although we have found a number of things difficult along the way, we just cannot believe what a wonderful place Uganda is to live and work and are just blown away by everyone's love and generosity. The memories will live with us for a long long time and we hope we have made some friends for life.

It has also been a real privilege to have been part of the River of Life. They have made us feel so welcome and we have been made to feel part of their family, which has been really special. The work they are doing and their vision for the future is inspiring and already benefits countless people. We would really like to continue to support and assist everything they are doing in the future where possible. So be warned we may keep going on about it for a long time when we get back to the UK!

If anyone would like to know more about the River of Life or has felt that they would like to help, please take a minute to have a look on their website (http://www.riveroflifeuganda.org/). There are many ways people can help but an area of particular need at present is trying to get further sponsorship, so that they can support further children and keep them off the streets (http://www.riveroflifeuganda.org/sponsor-a-child.aspx).

News on Joseph is that his wife had returned back to their village and given birth to a baby girl. Joseph has been collected by his brothers and has been taken back to his village. His other leg hasn't been amputated and he continues to put on weight.

We have been making the most of our last week here with plenty of treats. It was a “special” Birthday for Kat, so we celebrated with a big Birthday cake, ginger biscuits, scones and jam, pancakes and a special pick nick. Given we only had about 3 hours of power we managed to time all the baking in a borrowed electric oven perfectly. The boys, Gerald and Julius, have also treated us all with a pork BBQ which was tough but great tasting!

Working hard

There has been some hard work done too! We both have worked on the land. Offering a hand to Gerald (who is employed to work on the land) by digging, planting maze and harvesting the crops we have grown on the land. We have also been set some last minute documents/reports to write up so we must get to do that soon!

In true Ugandan style we have been without power for the past 3 days so using this precious time to utilise the power to have warm showers and charge up everything we own for the next part of our adventure!

We have loved living with Kat and Rob and have valued them welcoming us into their house and family. We are certainly going to miss our mate Elena, who is now 16 months and learning new things everyday! We are desperately trying to encourage her to say Andy and Hannah. So far it's a debate whether it's Hannah or banana!

Thank you for all of those who gave money to help us to come out! We have valued your support hugely! Its difficult to say too much more as nothing we write will really sum up our thoughts and feelings. So we will end by just saying...

...Thank-You Uganda!

Andy and Hannah are with River of Life for the next 3 months. They are Physiotherapists from Newcastle, UK and are helping River of Life develop our links with the local hospitals and ROLC's Hospital Ministy. If you would like to support their work with River of Life, head over to their Justgiving page

The Lane's Log Episode 8 - Meeting our sponsored Child

2011-08-17T14:39:00.000+01:00

Due to power and internet problems this is being sent out a little later than we would like. Apologies!

We have had another busy two weeks here in Masaka, working in both hospitals and attending several Ball Line Academy games and training sessions. As we write this blog we amazingly other have just over one and a half weeks left! And although we have done and experienced so much, we already feel sad to think we will be soon leaving.

Since our last blog, the football season has got fully under way, with Ball Line having a great start, picking up 13 points from a possible 15 points. The Ball Line guys are a great bunch of lads and a pleasure to work and be around. Walu and his team certainly deserve all of their success to date and we hope it continues for a long time. In their last game, a well deserved 3-1 win, they managed to keep their discipline in very difficult circumstances. Towards the end of the game, their opponents became more and more aggressive to both Ball Line and in particular the referee. It came to a head at the end of the game, with their opponents team, squad and support invading the pitch and assaulting the referee. Everyone from Ball Line kept their heads and reacted very quickly to defend the referee and their team mates, trying to quickly defuse the situation.

The Masaka Physio Team

We have also been gradually running our programme and other commitments down, including our work at both Masaka and Kitovu Hopsitals. The work has been full of challenges and a number of difficult moments along the way for both of us, but it is something that we have ultimately enjoyed. We have certainly learnt a lot and equally hope that we have contributed to both respective services during our time working there. We now have really good relationships with many staff at both sites and wish them all the very best in the future.

Donating Medical supplies

Thanks to our time in Gulu and the generosity of E3 partners, we have also been able to give Kitovu Hospital a gift of four suitcases of medical supplies this week. To say it was appreciated is a huge understatement and it was a privilege to give the donation along with the River of Life.

The school holidays have now arrived here in Uganda and it is proving to be a very exciting time for the White Eagle Project. This morning three White Eagles left Masaka to start University on Monday, with two more are soon to join them. That takes the total number of White Eagles studying at University up to an amazing ten people!

Building work starts!

This week has also seen the start of the next building phase of the White Eagle project. The build aims to be completed in two months and will be a self contained flat, complete with living room and balcony. Several of the older White Eagles have been given the opportunity to learn a trade in their Summer break and have been working hard alongside the other workmen. It is a shame the build will be finished around a month after we leave but we look forward to seeing photos of the final build. It is going to be very impressive and make a huge difference to the project.

Margaret's family

A huge highlight of the last few weeks has been meeting Margaret, one of the White Eagles. For the last few years we have sponsored her, but since our arrival in Uganda she has been working hard at boarding school. The holidays have gave us the chance to meet her on a few occasions, including getting to drive her home to a local village. Margaret and her family are fantastic and we have been so happy to meet them in person! She is (and has) an amazing testimony of the power of prayer and how the project has helped her develop into a lovely young lady. If anyone reading this would like to know more about sponsoring a child, the White Eagle Project have a long list of people they would love to support and send to school! Just visit the website here

In our day off last week we drove to Lake Mburo National Park and did our very own Safari. It was a really unique experience and it was great to get so close to so many animals. Okay, we may have got a little lost and a little concerned when we lost the track a few times, but still had a great time. We also got to see another of the 'big five', zebras, who are stunningly beautiful. Their stripes just look like they have been painted on!

Sugarcane at Bujja Farm

In the last few days we have been given the chance to visit two farms, The White Eagle Farm (Bujja Farm) and MMF. It was great to see how lots of the food we eat at the project is sourced and were really impressed with the White Eagle vision for the development of Bujja farm. They hope to raise enough money to develop the land and significantly reduce their rather large food budget for the project. MMF is a new private farm, started up as an income generating project by Rob and Katherine, alongside a good friend, John. We loved getting shown around and seeing how excited they are about the future!

Finally we have been upset to read and hear from friends and family about the problems back in London and across the country. We hope everyone is well and we continue to think and pray for home.

Lots of love and God bless,

Andy and Hannah

Andy and Hannah are with River of Life for the next 3 months. They are Physiotherapists from Newcastle, UK and are helping River of Life develop our links with the local hospitals and ROLC's Hospital Ministy. If you would like to support their work with River of Life, head over to their Justgiving page

We're building again! The White Eagle Project goes up a gear...

2011-08-06T15:13:00.000+01:00

It's been over 2 years since we completed the second phase of the White Eagle Centre, back in 2009. By then, we had six simple rooms for the White Eagle boys, a lounge, dining room, kitchen and toilets. Throughout 2009 and 2010, fundraising for the building work has continued, most memorably with Tim and Sarah Crow's Wedding Gift List, and the maddest cycling challenge ever - non-stop from Manchester to London.

The new WEP Centre with Church
behind and Offices on left

At the same time, we've been working with Local Government and the Police here in Masaka to ensure that what we are building is absolutely perfect for the needs of our community. We've now had a new plan agreed, which includes building four, purpose-built 2-bed apartments so we can give more family-based care to children. We will be keeping our lounge and dining room, but converting the 6 old rooms into one of these apartments, and then building three new ones.

Front of the Church with Offices and
Rooms above on the right

The plans also include development of offices (because our current offices are falling down!), an extension to the church, and some independent accommodation that can either be staff-quarters, or be rented out to provide a small amount of income.

The plans have been agreed by the local Planning Authority, and we are in the process of getting the "Permission to run a residential Children's Home" approved by all the relevant authorities - Local Councillors, Health Inspector, Police and Probations Office. In the meantime, we've received permission to proceed, so today, August 6th 2011, with Pastor Duncan and Mary skype-ing in from the UK, we have laid the foundations for the next phase! Hallelujah :)

With Julius leading worship, Duncan and Mary with us through Skype,
we pour in the footings for the next phase of building

The Lane's Log Episode 7 - Community Physio and New Kits for Ball Line

2011-08-01T13:58:00.000+01:00

Sorry it's been such a long time since we last wrote a blog, we have been busy with our programme, and had many visitors since the last blog.

We currently have 6 extra bodies in our house (a total of 13 people). It's lovely having visitors and we're really enjoying getting to know more and more people. Especially when the power is out we have enjoyed many interesting conversations sat up at the dinner table. Four of our party are children, all under the age of 5.... we have been wondering why we are so tired lately?!

The water situation is a little better. We have had a few hot showers and yesterday we had a huge down pour of rain so our grass is looking greener and our rain water tank is full! With 13 people using it I am sure it will go quickly but in the mean time we can enjoy showering! However it's always quick as you're not sure when the power will cut out or when the tank is going to dry out, but were a little more presentable to the public anyhow! Thank you for your thoughts and prayers!

Masaka Hospital Gym

For the past couple of weeks we have been mostly following our programme. We are seeing more and more patients and learning more and more about different conditions. The majority of our referrals being children and some adults we have seen patients with a variety of conditions such as TB meningitis, Tetanus and severe burns.

One of Andy's outpatients is a 64 year old lady who fell, fractured her hip (intracapsular neck of femur) and because she couldn't afford surgery is now 4 months down the line with a hip that has healed, but she will always be limited to what she can do.
A lot of treatment unfortunately depends on money and therefore you see patients discharging themselves without efficient assessments or treatments. We have both found seeing and treating these patients quite distressing, however have learnt a lot through it.

Having never really thought about it before it makes you realise how important it is that we are so well looked after in the UK with our vaccines as children. In Uganda the majority of people are vaccinated against all the conditions that we are in the UK, however some do not get them due to money or the area they live in.

We continue to work at both hospital sites, with one extra morning at Kitovu Hospital. Andy has done some in-service training about lower back pain and Hannah is teaching Andy more about paediatric assessment. We have also had some interesting discussions about different treatments and learning to use translators patiently and gracefully.

Thanks to the E3 Ugandan Team, we have also been able to give out a wheelchair that was left over from our medical mission to Gulu. It was a unique experience to visit the lady's home, initially to meet and assess her. As we have found in many cases, we were warmly welcomed, with a family member bring us a soda each from the local shop! It was fantastic to give the wheelchair to a family that will benefit so much from it and will it will certainly offer the opportunity for the lady to get out of the house more.

Our programme has been made a little easier as we have been able to drive the Land Cruiser. We still enjoy walking, but it is more convenient that we have some transport on some days. We are realising just how quickly our time is flying whilst we are here and aware that to complete all that we want we need to fill our day with as much as possible!

Saying this we still make the most of our days off! Last week we went to the lake Nabugabo,
where we had local fish and chips and a stoney (ginger beer). We enjoyed having a swim in the lake and prior to jumping in were reassured that this lake doesn't have crocodiles! Apparently they have all been shot!

Most weekends we are involved in Ball line. Either training or watching. Andy and Simon (one of our visitors) also played in a friendly against a local team. We have enjoyed getting to know the boys and becoming part of the team. Simon kindly bought some kit for them from the UK which was greatly received. We have had a number of disappointments where competitive teams have not turned up, which means they have won the game but through default. However when playing against their local rival cub they gained one point with a 1-1 draw.

We have also found another toon army fan - The local kebab man was spotted by Andy. Unfortunately he could only speak French or Lugandan, so the conversation was limited despite Andy's best efforts!

News from the garden is that we have harvested two pineapples this week. Sure they are a little small, but edible and juicy none the less.

We are both well in ourselves, although over the past two weeks Andy has been suffering with his stomach and his finger continues to take him back and forth to the doctor. Hannah has had a cold (... in Africa). But thankfully we have plenty of medical supplies to keep us going!

Thank you again for all of your support and encouragement! We would love to hear from you if you have time and keep in contact with what is happening back home.

Lots of love!
Hannah and Andy x x

Andy and Hannah are with River of Life for the next 3 months. They are Physiotherapists from Newcastle, UK and are helping River of Life develop our links with the local hospitals and ROLC's Hospital Ministy. If you would like to support their work with River of Life, head over to their Justgiving page

The Lane's Log Episode 6 - Hospitals, Football and the Day of The African Child

2011-07-15T12:30:00.000+01:00

We are now two weeks into our full programme with River of Life, Masaka. Our programmes consists of a mix of activities between working as a physio and assisting with some of the River of Life ministries. We have now successfully started work at both Masaka General Hospital and Kitovu Hospital and are getting to know the staff and our roles. At Masaka we work with a friendly team of 2-3 Physios based in their own small outpatient department. Here we have already started to treating a wide variety of conditions, with Hannah volunteering to see the paediatrics. Although we are gradually learning a little more Lugandan (How are you?, I am fine, just here sir, thank you, well done) we still require a lot of help from our colleagues to translate!

Kitovu is a little different as they don't currently provide a physiotherapy service. So for the next two months we hope to help out in the best way we can. Kitovu has a large variety of wards including trauma, surgery, paediatrics, general medicine, malnutrition and gynaecology. We have been setting up a referral system to allow us to find those most in need.

Hannah taking on the u-14s

Physiotherapy is also continuing away from the hospitals with increasing involvement with Ball Line Football Acadamy (training and matches) and adhoc physio clinics. We have since both had the chance to train with the boys. In the mid day heat, no shade, and having not done much exercise for a while Hannah felt ill after the two hour training! (she would also like to highlight that the altitude is also very high!)

Day of the African Child

The rest of our time here is getting to know the white eagle boys and girls. Last week we were a part of the celebration for the African Child day.Despite a few concerns that the focus may have been lost slightly through the adults being entertained and not the children and running 3 hours behind schedule, we had two hours where they put on some African beats and we all got our groove on!
African dancing involves a lot of bottom wiggling!

Dancing at the Day of the African Child

Within our timetable we will also be serving some of the Church ministries. We are leading some of the white eagle evening sessions. Focussing on life skills and fellowship, along with having lots of fun! All of the girls and boys are a delight to be around and we are really enjoying getting to know them and the staff. We also visit Masaka General Hospital as part for the hospital ministry team where we give out food and pray with patients who request it. This week we gave out some of the mango's that are growing within the compound we live in.

Mangoes!

It has been great to get our programme up and running. We have quickly realised that since arriving that although three months felt like a long time whilst we planned, in reality it is going to be no where near long enough!

We are keeping fit by walking to work and this has been going really well, even if Andy does get a little grumpy in the heat! The rest of the time we get 'public', a local taxi (5 seater car) which follows a set route. So far our record is fitting up to 9 fully grown adults in it (two in the passenger's seat, five in the back seat, and two in the drivers seat).

We have struggled to communicate back home in the last two weeks, thanks to ever increasing powercuts. It is now rare that we have electricity for any real length of time. This is apparently reportedly thanks to the government being in huge debt to the electricity companies. As we are living on the top of a hill, this also has had a knock on effect to our water supply, as they don't have enough power to pump it up to us. With our back up supply of rain water very close to empty we are looking forward to trips to the local well with jerry cans and bucket baths for the foreseeable future. There is a general panic for water as all the wells are becoming dry, although this is is nothing like the situations in some of Uganda's neighbouring countries. It also gave us the unpleasant experience of working in the hospitals with no water to wash our hands. Never thought I would say this but prayers for rain would be gratefully received!

Andy was excited to find his first fellow Newcastle fan on Sunday, whilst watching a local football game. And this week, was asked by a physio colleague if he had heard of Alan Shearer. Happy days!
Hannah has been enjoying the garden, regularly picking avacardos and mangos. She is making the most of mango season, making mango juice as well as borrowing a neighbours electric oven to bake a lemon drizzle cake with the some of her birthday presents. Thank you for all the birthday well wishes and thoughts as they really do make a big difference to us!

Elena reading FourFourTwo to Andy

We have also had some excitement within the house. Elena is now walking!! We like to think it's due to our physiotherapy involvement, but really its possible that she has been watching some of the other walking children at the play group which Katherine has recently set up.

We will update you soon on how Joseph is getting on!

Lots of love! Please keep your emails coming! We love hearing from you and power dependent we will reply as soon as possible!

Andy and Hannah are with River of Life for the next 3 months. They are Physiotherapists from Newcastle, UK and are helping River of Life develop our links with the local hospitals and ROLC's Hospital Ministy. If you would like to support their work with River of Life, head over to their Justgiving page

Fanning the Flames of Revival!

2011-07-02T21:34:00.000+01:00

For over 22 years, Duncan has held faithfully to a vision of a Prayer Mountain that will rekindle the flames of the East African revival. 22 years is a long time to wait for a vision to see fruit. It seemed like it would never happen...

Duncan writes: “In 1989, while still in London, I believe the Lord showed me a vision of Misaali Hill, on the outskirts of Masaka Municipality, Uganda.

In the vision I saw small tongues of fire covering a small part of the hill. Then I saw those tongues spreading all over the hill, and from the middle some tongues of fire started rising. When they reached the clouds, they started breaking off like shooting stars. These tongues of fire then fell to the ground - on Masaka Town itself, the wider Masaka District, the Ssese Islands, Kampala, Uganda, East Africa, and the rest of the world.

Suddenly the Holy Spirit whispered to me “Duncan, go back to Masaka and join with others and re-kindle the fire of East African revival which was quenched through fear and religion in my church.”

I believed the strategy for the vision was to build a Prayer Hut for every nation, and to build facilities that will ensure the spiritual and material development of Masaka and Uganda. So half of the site was to be a Prayer Centre, and the other half given over to developing sports fields, an International School, and a church.”

So, the vision was awesome! But there were many that doubted - if we’re honest there were times when most of us doubted! For over 20 years the land remained available, despite it being one of the prime development sites of Masaka. But by 2010 the owners of the land were getting very old and frail. It was a complicated story - they were the trustees of the estate, and if anything happened to either of them, it was likely that the land would be parceled up and inherited by about 70 different people, making it impossible to purchase. We spent 2010 praying, surveying the site and negotiating a payment plan - completely in faith, as we didn’t have anything like enough money. Amazingly, we managed to secure a generous payment plan, at a great price...

So, by February this year the Board were presented with the choice. Either we agreed to go for it, or we could probably say goodbye to the vision. We looked at the bank account - there was no help there. But we knew we had to be faithful, and if this was of God, HE would provide.

The first massive boost to our faith was when the money for the deposit came in by the deadline - end of April. We could hardly believe it! But by the end of June, the size of the challenge was beginning to daunt us. We have many other ministries that need funding, as you know, and some of us were beginning to think, “what have we done?!”

Praying at the site at the end of June, Sarah, a visitor, shared Ezekiel 36 with us, in particular verse 36:
Then the nations that are left all around you shall know that I am the Lord; I have rebuilt the ruined places and replanted that which was desolate. I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it.

“I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it”. Fantastic, but how and when? Some of the ROL Elders have been prayer-walking around the site since 1994. Is 2011 going to be the year ROL buys the site?

The answer is yes, because 48 hours later, on 1st July this year, the Lord provided all the finances needed to buy the land. We. are. gobsmacked. Praise the Lord!

For more information, download the Prayer Mountain Vision Leaflet here

Bringing a Smile to Masaka

2011-07-02T20:21:00.000+01:00

In May we welcomed a Dental Team from Christian Relief Uganda to help bring a smile back to hundreds of patients in Masaka.

They were incredibly impressive setting up their mobile pain relief clinic at the Church, in a Rural School, at the local Prison and out in the community, performing tooth extractions, abcess draining and all manner of procedures. Uganda has a real problem with Infant Oral Mutilation - the practise of digging children’s teeth out with nails or bicycle spokes - and CRU equipped us with the potentially life changing message of oral hygeine and good practice, which we can now help to spread far and wide!

The Lane's Log Episode 5 - Back to Masaka

2011-07-02T09:30:00.000+01:00

Its hard to believe it, but we have already spent four weeks in Uganda! We are having a great time and continue to be bowled over by the beauty of the country and its people. This week has been a little quieter that the last few, giving us some time to recover and reflect further on our recent trip to Gulu.

The Road to Gulu

Uganda is around the same size as the UK, with around half the UKs population, 30 million. But whilst in the UK most people live in towns and cities, in Uganda, many still live in the countryside. The drive from Masaka to Kampala and then onto Gulu was an beautiful journey, on mostly good roads. We did have the occasional hairy moment thanks to one or two drives who seemed keen to play 'chicken' with other drivers on the road! The total journey time was around 7 hours and was mainly spent looking at greenery as far as the eye can see. Neither of us had imagined Uganda to be so green!!!

Kipp, Kim, Hannah & Andy

The week with E3 and the medical team was one of the most challenging but rewarding things we have ever done. And to a large extent we are still breaking down our experiences. It is still difficult to describe the week as a whole, but it was a real privilege to get serve the local communities and people surrounding Gulu. The work was certainly appreciated and well received with the help of E3 Ministry materials, such as Project Hope (HIV/AIDS cube), Malaria cubes and Evangecubes.

The E3 Physio Team

We particularly enjoyed getting to know and work along the E3 team, made up of 28 very happy Americans, 11 Ugandans and 7 Brits. Everyone was amazing and very supportive throughout the week. We would certainly think very seriously of future E3 trips and projects and would love to work along Kipp, Spanky, Lara and co. again. One highlight was educating the younger (slightly gullible) Americans into the English culture. This of course included the words to our national anthem being 'God save the Queen' repeated 37 and a half times. These guys were brilliant fun to be around and we loved getting to know them. We did own up to them by the end of the trip, when we both had to sing what we new of our real national anthem.

Upon our return, we have missed having Christina (Katharine's sister) around, who had been out visiting Katharine and Rob and joined us for the trip to Gulu. It was nice to get to spend so much time with her, and we truly appreciated all of her support on our week away. On a positive note this week did give us the opportunity to spend more time with Emma and Pete Hulme, two of the doctors from the Gulu medical team. Andy was Pete's right hand man at winding up the Americans. They both travelled back to Masaka with us to spend some time with close friends, Katharine and Rob. We had a great time getting to know them and look forward to crossing paths further in the future!

The walk to Kitovu Hospital

Over the last two days we have been starting to finalise our programme, and had trial journeys to and from both of the hospitals we will be working in. Both take around 45-60 minutes to walk on dusty paths. We have really enjoyed doing a little more exercise! We will see if we remain so keen after a few weeks of walking to work! We have also fed back and typed up our experiences in Gulu for The River of Life and had some very positive meetings regarding future potential benefits to similar projects/trips/ministries.

The majority of our physiotherapy skills this week has been focussed on encouraging Elena (the daughter of Rob and Katharine) who is 14 months old to walk and to talk. She is great fun and has us both wrapped around her little finger!

The walk to Masaka Hospital

Today we were given the opportunity to visit a gentleman, Joseph, that has recently came to the attention of The River of Life. He is a local taxi driver who three weeks ago was asked to drive a "special taxi" (private taxi) from one town to another. Every now and again there are police patrol areas on the roads and when the taxi was stopped, the police opened fire at the car. Apparently, the two passengers he was driving were 'most wanted'. The two men escaped, but Joseph was shot in both of his legs. He is now in hospital and as we have previously mentioned they are very different to the UK. Government hospitals can have 'private' paying patients who are seen before others, which can result in some people not getting seen at all. Resources are also very limited and sadly Joseph has to date had little treatment for his injuries. Joseph has now had one leg amputated above the knee and may still loose his other leg due to infection. Furthermore, his wife is seven months pregnant with their third baby and is looking after him whilst he is in hospital. Due to lack of money she is sleeping on the floor and eating a poor basic diet that the hospital provide. River of life are appealing for donations to give them food and cooking equipment to improve his dietary requirements and healing. Depending on the next few weeks, he may also require rehabilitation equipment. We met Joseph today and he and his wife appear very positive despite their circumstances. We also started with some basic physiotherapy which we hope to progress over the coming months. If anyone at home would like to know more about Joseph, or what The River of Life are hoping to provide, please do not hesitate to get in contact with us.

We are gradually settling more into living in Uganda and are even getting more used to making unwanted friends! Although we having seen the friendly mouse 'peep' since are return to Masaka, we have encountered several geckos, cockroaches, grasshoppers and even one (small) snake! Hannah has been very brave!

Finally Andy would like to thank everyone for his birthday messages on Tuesday last week, he had a great day, even if Hannah did need a little reminding! We are looking forward to starting our programme in full next week and will try our best to update our progress and experiences!

Andy and Hannah are with River of Life for the next 3 months. They are Physiotherapists from Newcastle, UK and are helping River of Life develop our links with the local hospitals and ROLC's Hospital Ministy. If you would like to support their work with River of Life, head over to their Justgiving page

The Lane's Log Episode 4 - Mission to Gulu!

2011-06-28T21:27:00.010+01:00

Queueing for the first clinic

Last week we travelled to the north of Uganda, to an area called Gulu. We were part of a church ministry project called E3. We worked in the medical team that visited local communities (some days we travelled up to two hours) and set up a medical clinic. In our team we had doctors, nurses, a pharmacy, an eye glass clinic and physiotherapy. The clinic also taught and educated people about malaria and HIV. The other teams spent the week assisting local nationals in planting new churches from two mother churches.

Lady's arm broken 5 years ago by the LRA.

Throughout the week the medical team visited five of the new church sites, including areas previously heavily effected by the LRA (Lord's Resistance Army). The LRA , a guerrilla group, has earned a reputation for its actions against the people of several countries, including northern Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Sudan. The LRA has abducted and forced an estimated 66,000 children to fight for them, and has also forced the internal displacement of over 2,000,000 people since its rebellion began in 1986. During the week we heard many very sad stories of the things the local people have endured and we also saw many injuries from bullets wounds and land mines that still live with people today.

One of our physiotherapy departments.

In total the clinic saw around 1,500 people. Getting to work with the team and serve the local people with physiotherapy was a real privilege. The clinics were unsurprisingly in high demand but thankfully we didn't have to turn any one away who had mobility needs. In the past they have had to turn people away due to lack of equipment, but the huge fundraising efforts of all concerned paid off providing enough equipment to cover the whole week. In our physiotherapy clinics we saw a variety of patients, including those who had been crawling for years that were provided with wheel chairs.

Two men who crawled in and wheeled out.

In total we gave out 48 wheelchairs: some old, some new, some without leg rests and some with. All however were for a good cause and everyone that received them were extremely happy. It would be great in the future if they continue to have plenty of equipment!

We were working along a fantastic team (the majority from the USA). Everyone worked hard to make the week a success. Our day started at 6.30 and finished around 9-10pm. Despite being tired emotionally and physically we thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience and have made some really special friends and memories. If you would like to know more please do ask, as we have lots of stories!

As a special treat on the way back we stayed in a posh hotel and went on a morning safari (and had a hot shower!) Wow! We saw all sorts of animals! Including Giraffes, Elephants, Buffalo, Hippo etc. We had a great time enjoying the beauty of Uganda and one of it's nature parks.

We have now returned to Masaka, and are keen to develop all that we can do here with River of Life.

We have had a few questions about the heat. We're coping with it well, although our photos may not look like it all the times! We haven’t really got burnt as most of the time we are covered up! It is polite to wear skirts below the knees which I am getting used to (Hannah not Andy!). We hear that you are all enjoying the sunshine too!

We miss you all lots!
Please do let us know more if you would like to know more!
Lots of love and hugs!
Hannah and Andy x x

Andy and Hannah are with River of Life for the next 3 months. They are Physiotherapists from Newcastle, UK and are helping River of Life develop our links with the local hospitals and ROLC's Hospital Ministy. If you would like to support their work with River of Life, head over to their Justgiving page

Medical Mission to Gulu, N. Uganda

2011-06-28T20:05:00.000+01:00

5 days, 6 church plants, 5,471 Gospel presentations, 2044 professions of faith, and over 1,000 patients treated - welcome to an E3 Partners Mission!

Team ROL head off to Gulu -
Julius, Hannah, Christina, Andy, John

In June, we partnered with E3 Partners, an American Missions Organisation, to reach out to northern Ugandans, who are still recovering after 25 years of conflict came to an end a few years ago. We have been supporting a Pastor in Gulu for many many years, and so when the opportunity came to head north as part of a bigger team, we jumped at the chance!

John, one of our Elders, and Julius, our White Eagle Project Manager joined our visitors - Andy, Hannah and Christina - on the most amazing trip. John was part of the team that went and evangelised in Jospeh Kony’s (the notorious leader of one of the worst rebel groups in Africa) village, and as well as leading his Uncle to Jesus, helped 401 others make decisions to follow Him!

Hannah treating an elderly patient

Meanwhile, Andy and Hannah, as physiotherapists, were literally helping the lame walk/wheel again, with walking aids and wheelchairs, whilst Christina and Julius, as part of other Village Teams, were spreading the gospel of Jesus and teaching people that there is HOPE! The team returned home inspired and bouncing with ideas of how to marry practical medical support with church-planting and evangelism We’re really looking forward to partnering more with E3 in the future.

We were also really fortunate to benefit from a big donation of medical supplies, which Hannah and Andy diligently catalogued. We were then able to hand these on to the Medical Superintendent and her staff at Kitovu Mission Hospital in Masaka - they were overwhelmed by some of the items in the suitcases, as they were about to run out of them!

Handing over 4 suitcases of medical supplies at Kitovu

The Lane's Log Episode 3 - Masaka's Hospitals

2011-06-16T21:16:00.002+01:00

A very quick update from Andy and Hannah before they head north...

This week, we managed to visit the local hospitals that we had been trying to arrange our voluntary work with. Hospitals are very different here! The nurses don't wash, feed or clean patients, instead family members stay with them to look after them. If there are no beds available, patients lie on the floor or corridors to receive treatment.

Like the UK, there are periods of the year in which the hospitals are particularly busy. In Uganda these pressure times of the year are due to Malaria and mostly linked to the wet season and the high number of mosquitoes.

The wards were absolutely jam packed. Sorry we don't have any photos – we didnt feel it would be appropriate. Those that can't afford private hospitals, or the local catholic hospital, go to government hospitals. However this still costs patients to see a doctor and receive treatment, which for many can still remain too expensive.

While we were being shown round the local Catholic hospital we were asked to assess and treat one little boy who had his webbed fingers surgically separated. Post operatively his wound was open and very sore! Thankfully we had packed some balloons we used to encouraged him to do his exercises. Hygiene and equipment is going to be something we learn more about as we work more.

We also visited the local government hospital. Their physiotherapy department has a room about the size of our waiting room at work, where patients come for treatment. We were surprised at the equipment they had (very old but has potential for treatment). Once we have sorted out the paper work, we are hoping to help them out with some of their clinics.

Andy and Hannah are with River of Life for the next 3 months. They are Physiotherapists from Newcastle, UK and are helping River of Life develop our links with the local hospitals and ROLC's Hospital Ministy. If you would like to support their work with River of Life, head over to their Justgiving page

Sarah's Story - new girls, a snake, baby-sitting and a visit from the dentists...

2011-06-14T16:21:00.001+01:00

Helloooo everybody!!! I hope you are all very well! Things are very good here in Uganda!

There have been even more changes in the girls’ home in the last month – we welcomed two MORE girls into our home to live with us. Their names are Tendo (9 years) and Katherine (11 years), and they are sisters. They’re staying with us for a short time until they can go and live with their relatives. Teddy (who’s 11) is loving having them live with us, and the 3 of them are as thick as thieves when they get together and leave a trail of chaos behind them wherever they go!!! So that’s 4 new residents in the girls’ home in the space of 6 weeks!!! There’s a picture below of Teddy, Katherine and Tendo (and Juuko one of the White Eagle boys) in their school uniforms about to leave for school, and another of Hope and Isaiah, and another of Isaiah, Hope, Aunt Esther (who looks after Isaiah and Kitibwa during the day) and Kitibwa (who was in a bad mood at the time, so has a scowl on his face!).

An unwanted visitor to the girls’ home this month, however, was the snake pictured below, who came to visit Aunt Tinah late one evening a few weeks ago – she has a room off the back yard, and the snake was outside her door when she came out! I wasn’t there (thank God!), but apparently she screamed very loudly, and the young man who lives above us heard her and came and walloped it on the head and killed it – then the girls put it in a bucket until I got back so that they could show it to me!!! - So I thought I’d take a picture and show you, too!

Isaiah has been poorly over the last day or two – he had malaria quite seriously and had to stay overnight at a local clinic and was on a drip for quite a long time.... But, thank God, he’s fine now, and loving being back at the girls’ home – he gave us all a HUGE smile as soon as he got back, and has been very happy ever since!!! Kitibwa missed him so much, and kept on asking where he was and wanting to play with him. One of their favourite games is to hold the handle of a skipping rope each to their mouths and use it as a microphone to sing into, and Kitibwa was trying to get me to hold one and sing with him in Isaiah’s absence - but apparently I was a very poor substitute, as he gave up in disgust after only half a minute of my singing!!!

On the theme of Kitibwa and Isaiah, I had no idea that two babies could produce quite so much poo in one day!!! I sometimes look after them (on Aunt Esther’s day off), and I’ve been shocked at the number of nappies we can go through in a day!!! I’ve also been shocked at their attention span when they like a game – one of their other favourite games to play is “Ring a ring of rosies”, but sometimes I find it hard going when we’ve already sung it about 50 times, and they want to do “Again!”!!! My muscles get tired from all that falling down and jumping up again!!!

I went on the second part of the Celebrating Children course a few weeks ago, and it was absolutely wonderful (apart from the fact that they’ve given us some horrible assignments to write before we return in a month’s time! I reeeeally hate writing essays!!!). The course is just so inspiring, and we all came back full of even more passion to work with children and show them God’s love in everything we do!

Over the last month, we’ve had a few visitors to River of Life, including a group of dentists from the UK who came to give free dental treatment to the people of Nyendo. Lots of our kids had their teeth checked and some had treatment. Some of our kids also helped out at the clinics as dental nurses (holding torches, passing instruments, etc.), and others learnt to do oral health education sessions for the local adults and children. They’re even going to do a teaching session at church this Sunday – we’re very proud of them! (One of the things I learnt during that week is that here in Uganda they don’t tell little children that a Tooth Fairy comes to take their teeth when they’ve fallen out and leave a coin, but instead they have a Tooth Rat!!!! Ha ha!!! I guess it’s much more believable for them, since rats are in nearly everyone’s houses!!!)

Anyway, I think that’s all my news from this month. You’ll be glad to hear that the beans with the bean weevils in are finished (yeah!!!), and, although we had maggots in our maize flour which we make our porridge and posho from (posho is one of the main foods here, made of flour and water mixed together and cooked in banana leaves for about 4 hours), I managed to avoid them as I ate somewhere else the day they discovered them (- lucky escape for me!). We gave the rest of the maggots and flour to the farm to make posho for the pigs, who don’t seem to mind the maggots in the slightest bit!

I hope that you are all doing very well.

Lots of love,

Sarah

The Lane's Log Episode 2 - Nutrition, Outreach and Ball Line Football Academy

2011-06-12T17:13:00.001+01:00

We know it hasn't been long since our first email, but a lot has happened in our first week here. We are gradually finding out more and more about what life is like here in Uganda.

At the beginning of the week we were living with a trainee dietician, who has been doing research into malnutrition in the surrounding areas of Masaka. This has involved visits to local clinics and several trips into the wider communities away from the major towns. On some occassions, these trips ended in taking babies/children back to hospital due to the severity of their conditions. 70% of the population is under 24 years old and the country has high child mortality rate. Hospitals and local community clinics have large population areas and most children born in these areas won't have a birth certificate.

Community Clinic

We were able to join the final research trip to find out more about what she has been doing and also look into the possibilty of River of Life Church creating some community health outreach projects/clinics. We visited a clinic and were able to chat to a number of their staff. This particular clinic has a catchment area population of around 59,100 people, 27,500 of these are believed to be under the age of 15.

During the visit the team were told of some children away from the clinic that may benifit from a visit, as they were known to be malnourished. As we visited the families it began to hit home that we were in Uganda. I (Hannah) went into two homes, both approximately 3x3 metres in size, where the families lived, ate, slept etc. They were very dirty but this didn’t stop young children running around playing. One of the young girls we met had oedema around her face, which is one of the first stages of malnutrician.

On our trip we passed other villages along very unkept, poorly maintained roads. Whilst we were driving we passed a lady sat by the side of the road with a pile of blankets. There was a body under these blanket and we were told by the Ugandans on our trip that she would be waiting for the family to collect the body. Pretty unbelievable really!

Over the past couple of days we have been spending time getting to know the River of Life Church Projects. They have a number of ministries into the local area, including work with a number of schools and the nearby prison and hospitals. On Friday we had the opportunity to visit a school. We walked into a classroom not much bigger than our staffroom at work, where about 100 little faces greeted us with beaming smiles, huge excitement and deafening noise. We were asked if we were okay to share a little about ourselves and talk a bit about Health and God. This was/is totally out of our comfort zone, as we haven't done anything like this before but it is an area we would very much like to support! It is also an area the projects are looking to progress and develop to include additional health education. We will see how it goes!

We later walked back to the charity offices through a more deprived area of Masaka, Nyendo, an area we will be spending quite a bit of our time. The River of Life sponsors and supports a number of the local children to go to school, teach them life skills and gives them places of rest and love. This in many cases also includes giving them somewhere to live, such as the respected boys and girls homes and others at local boarding schools. All of the children sponsored are called White Eagles. One of the managers is a trained social worker, Julius (previously mentioned in our last email) and he supports children when possible to go back to live with their parents. He kindly took us to two schools to meet a number of the White Eagles. Again we were greeted with laughing, clapping and screams of excitement. What an experience! They were all so welcoming – They were so thankful that we have visited their country, so much so that it was a little uncomfortable. Andy and I stood at the front and told each class (around 7 in total) why we have visited, what our jobs are back in the UK etc. Unfortuneately we didn't take any photos as we didn't want to appear rude, but I'm sure you would have loved to have seen their faces!

Today (Saturday) we had our first physiotherapy clinic with the White Eagle boys. It was great to start doing some Physiotherapy, teaching and advising them appropriately. We look forward to progressing the clinics in the coming weeks.

We have also spent some time with Ball Line Acadamy, River of Life's football academy based in Nyendo. We were scoping out the possibility of doing some Physiotherapy and Healthy Living/Life Skills work with the group of boys who train and play within Ball Line. Training goes on for two hours in the midday heat. Some of these boys play in bare feet on the dry red African patchy grass. So when Andy got asked to play in his slightly too small plimpsoles he couldn't really say no! Two side-line trips to put suntan lotion on and two blisers later, the ref blew the final whistle – much to Andy’s relief! We will see how much we can do with these guys in the coming weeks when we get to meet their main coach.

Relaxing before food at the boys home

We are learning a huge amount about life in Uganda. We can't quite believe it has been only a week since we arrived! It has been a hard week but also a very rewarding start to our time here. Everyone we have had the privilidge to meet have been extremely friendly and we have been very excited to see some of the amazing work the The River of Life Projects are doing in the community.

We will tell you more when we write an update next week. We are missing people at home and hope you are all well! Lots of love and thank you so much for all of your emails/messages!

Lots of love!
Hannah and Andy x x

Andy and Hannah are with River of Life for the next 3 months. They are Physiotherapists from Newcastle, UK and are helping River of Life develop our links with the local hospitals and ROLC's Hospital Ministy. If you would like to support their work with River of Life, head over to their Justgiving page

The Lane's Log - Andy and Hannah Arrive!

2011-06-06T17:02:00.014+01:00

Andy and Hannah are with River of Life for the next 3 months. They are Physiotherapists from Newcastle, UK and are helping River of Life develop our links with the local hospitals and ROLC's Hospital Ministy

We arrived in Entebbe, Uganda, after our 8 hours flight at around 7:30am. It had been a long day, travelling to Heathrow terminal 5 and not getting much sleep during the flight to Uganda. We were met at the Airport by John, a driver for the river of life, who kindly helped us with our bags to the van we were to travel to to Masaka in. After a quick stop at a local supermarket, where John kindly supplied us with lots of water and bananas to keep us going, we set off to Masaka.

John stops to buy fish for his dinner!

After the night flight it felt like another long journey, on a large variety of roads, but it gave us a good opportunity to see our surroundings. It did not take long before it was clear that we are no longer in the UK and that for most of Uganda their way of life is very different to back home.

Crossing the equator!

After around 2 hours, we had a quick stop as we passed the equator and posed for a few photos, before climbing back into the van. Uganda looks like a beautiful country with far more greenery than we had anticipated and after around 3:30 - 4:00 hours, a journey that would take around 90 minutes on UK roads, we arrived in Massaka.

Our first port of call was to meet up with Rob and Kat, who are kindly putting us up for the next 3 months. They were at The River of Life Church, and we arrived just as the service was ending by greeting new visitors. Before we put our bags down, Rob had greeted us with a big hug before ushering us to the front to introduce ourselves. We received a massively very warm welcome, with big smiles, hugs and handshakes, both in the service and afterwards.

After Church, we drove the final 10 minutes of our journey up to the house that Rob and Kat are currently renting. The Church have found them a beautiful base, with an amazing garden, to help to greet visitors to the River of Life and look after Elena, Rob and Kat's beautiful baby girl. We feel very privileged to have the opportunity to stay here and it has certainly helped us to settle and feel safe.

Rob and Kat are also currently hosting a student, Mariah, who has been working on co-ordination with the local hospital and River of Life looking into malnutrition in the surrounding areas. Mariah has also been very welcoming, helping us to feel relaxed and it's a shame our stints only overlap for the next few days.

After a quick nap to re-energise and to attempt to stop Andy being so grumpy, we were treated to a trip to Masaka's nicest hotel, to swim and eat. We decided to skip the swimming, as we were still both tired and looked forward to our first meal in Uganda. An hour after our arranged eating time, and several power cuts later, we tucked into our meal. As we ate, we enjoyed chatting to Gerald and Julius, who joined us at the hotel. Both guys are Ugandan and play important roles at River of Life. We finished the meal with Ugandan tea, served using hot milk and ginger!

Our new bedroom!

After food, we headed back to our new base and quickly set up our mosquito net and headed to bed. It wasn't long before we were both out for the count and didn't wake until 10am this morning...

Today we have continued to settle, unpacking our bags and enjoyed local chapattis, guacamole and groundnut sauce for lunch. Later we are discussing our plans for the next few months and hoping to make up a timetable for the coming weeks. Exciting times!

Finally, we would like to thank everyone once more for all of their love and support. We have both found leaving our normal lives in the UK very difficult, and we wouldn't have made it this far without everyone back home. A special thanks to our families were have continued to support, comfort and encourage us in our times of need. Thank-you!

An extra special thank-you must also go to everyone that has given money to support our time here with the River of Life. As we type, we have raised an amazing 73% of our target total - a massive £2,028.50!!! Thank-you!

If you would like to support River of Life and Andy and Hannah's time with us, head over to their Justgiving page

Sarah's story - welcoming new members of the family, riots, insects and Operation ARK

2011-05-10T17:13:00.001+01:00

Hellooooooo everyone!!! I hope that you are doing well! Life here is good, and the last month has been great!

One of the highlights of the last month was welcoming 2 new residents into the girls’ home: Hope, who is 16 years old, and her son Isaiah, who is 1 year old. We were all soooooooo excited to see them, and are loving getting to know them! Kitibwa, in particular, is overjoyed to have a little friend to play with, and spends all his time hugging and kissing Isaiah... although he tends to smother Isaiah a bit at times with all his affection!!!

But they play together a lot (see photo – Kitibwa is in blue, and Isaiah is in grey and yellow), and whenever Isaiah cries, Kitibwa comes over and says “Sorry” and strokes him. On the first day that they arrived, Kitibwa took Isaiah by the hand and led him from his room and into the sitting room to where everyone else was - he was really looking after him and it was soooooooo cute!!! Hope is lovely! She is very tall (Isaiah takes after her – he’s almost a year younger than Kitibwa, but nearly as tall), very gentle and kind, and wonderful with Isaiah. She’s getting on particularly well with Kitibwa’s Mum, Kellen.

Another noteworthy event of the last month has been the riot that we had.... in fact, there were 3, but the first was particularly severe. People in Uganda, and particularly in Kampala, have been doing “Walk to work protests” that have often escalated into riots, and people in Nyendo (where I live) started to riot too one day 3 weeks ago. They were dragging people out of cars and off motorbikes, and trying to burn and destroy their vehicles, and setting up road blockages with burning tyres. The police came with guns and tear gas, and then the army came with their guns too, so there was a lot of gunfire for a few hours. I was safely locked inside the girls’ home, but most of our kids had just gone down to the boys’ home. Although they were safely locked in, they got tear-gassed, because, when the police came, many of the rioters ran and hid behind our church (just by the boy’s home), so when the police tear-gassed them, our kids got tear-gassed in the process, because the wind blew the gas straight into the boy’s home! They were all crying and coughing, and their skin stung for some time, but no one was badly hurt.

The whole thing lasted about 4 and a half hours, and initially, I was watching proceedings from the balcony of the lady who lives above the girls’ home, but when they started firing shots, I beat a hasty retreat, just in case a bullet went astray!!! There were quite a few injured that day, but most tragically of all, a little 2 year old girl who lives not far from church got killed during the riot, when a member of the reserve army entered her house and blindly opened fire because he thought one of the rioters was hiding in there. That resulted in tensions being rather high in Nyendo, and there have been 2 further riots since the bad one (but they only lasted for 3 hours and 2 hours, and there were much fewer shots and a lot less tear-gas). Since then, there have been police patrolling Nyendo every single day, dressed in riot gear and gas masks – they look like navy-coloured Storm Troopers from Star Wars, and are quite scary-looking when they’re all dressed up!!! They seem to have taken up 2 bases in Nyendo – the first is in the church grounds (by the boys’ home), and the other place they sometimes go is just outside the girls’ home – I don’t know whether they think we’re a particularly dodgy lot, and likely to start a riot!!! Anyway, we’ve decided that we’ll be particularly safe in the event of another riot, since they’re camping out just by us!!! The surprising thing (for me) is that the riots didn’t leave me feeling scared, and it wasn’t scary during it either, and I had thought that something like that would be!

The last month has also been a month of insects.... first of all it was “White Ant Season”, when all the ants come flying out of their nests, and are promptly caught by all the local kids, to be eaten either straight away (i.e. alive), or saved for later to be fried. (White ants are a local delicacy.) I wasn’t brave enough to try them alive (I kept imagining them running round my mouth!), but I did try them fried, and they were very nice, to my surprise! Then, it’s also “Grasshopper Season” again, although there don’t seem to be as many as last season, so we’ve not been eating them much. And then, lastly, we’re eating lots of insects in our beans.... but that one is not intentional or planned! The problem is that we’re growing our own beans at the White Eagle Project farm in order to save money, but they didn’t spray them with chemicals (like they do with the ones we usually buy), so the beans are infested with weevils!!! They’re horrible – they float in the sauce, so I try to remove them when I see them, but they’re also hidden inside some beans, so as you’re eating you suddenly feel your teeth crunching on something like grit, and you realise that you’ve just chewed a bean weevil!!! It reeeeeeally puts me off my food, which is a shame as beans are my favourite food over here, and we have them 5 days a week!!! Unfortunately the sack is huge, so we’ve another month or so of eating weevils and beans still to go! (And you can’t waste food over here by throwing it away, just because it’s infested with weevils!)

Last week, we had Operation ARK (Acts of Random Kindness). It was great fun!!! We (the youth and youth leaders from the churches in Masaka) spent the week clearing rubbish from the streets and market places of Nyendo and Masaka town, clearing drains, and generally blessing the community.

Everyone worked soooooooo hard, and got ridiculously dirty and grimy in the process, but there was such a good atmosphere the whole week, and there was a lot of joking and good fun!!! We also had lots of singing and dancing and good food (-apart from the bean weevils!) each day! Here are some photos below showing sludge from a blocked drain, someone clearing said blocked drain, and someone clearing rubbish from the street...

And there’s also a photos I took of the hundreds of chickens that arrived packed in the back of a truck, ready to be sold at the market that day, because it looked funny!

Anyway, that’s my news. Life continues to be interesting, and full of new experiences!!! I’m also busy running the holiday programme with our kids, doing my homework and assignments for the “Celebrating Children” course I did last month (they have to be done before I go back for part 2 of the course in 2 weeks’ time), and doing various other things at church and with the project.

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter and are enjoying Spring!!!

Lots of love,

Sarah

Sarah's story - Going on retreat, Snakes, and Celebrating Children

2011-04-12T16:48:00.001+01:00

Helloooooooooo!!! I hope everyone is doing really well!!! Thank you to everyone who’s e-mailed me! I’ve had quite a busy month, so I’m slightly behind with my e-mails, but I’ll catch up soon!

Despite being busy, the last month has been wonderful! The highlight of it was when I went on a retreat during my week off. I went with my friend Thirsa, going on public transport all the way, which is always an interesting (if rather uncomfortable) experience, as you get packed in like sardines, and often share the space with chickens, sacks of potatoes, and lots of wierd and wonderful stuff. The retreat was in Jinja, on the banks of Lake Victoria at the source of the Nile. It was soooooooooo incredibly beautiful!!!!!

The retreat was entitled “The Father Heart Encounter” and was AMAZING!!! It was all about knowing God as a Father, and was really really wonderful! Also, the food they gave us was amazing, and I even had a strawberry!!!! – it was the most beautiful strawberry I’ve ever tasted! (- although one of the Ugandans was very suspicious of what he called “a funny English flower”, and was convinced it would make him ill!) There were also lots of interesting people there, including 4 people from Karamoja, a very primitive part of Uganda, who amazed us with stories of life in their village, where they still wear very few clothes (just a few strategically placed animal skins if what they said is true), drink blood mixed with milk, and buy their wives with cows (- it costs 150 cows to get a good wife, apparently!). They invited us to go there and preach (and even offered to give us some animal skins to wear so that we could dress - or rather undress - like them!!!)..... Maybe one day I’ll get the chance to go.... Anyway, as I said, the retreat place was incredibly beautiful, and it was so lovely to sit and enjoy the views, etc. Thirsa and I were slightly worried when they told us that a quite big water snake had recently been seen just by the edge of the lake – we decided to go down there together, just in case we saw one... though in retrospect, we decided that we didn’t know what on earth we would have done if we had seen one, or why going together would help – although I guess it would mean we had only 50% chance of getting bitten if the snake decided it wanted a bite!!! (But they assured us that water snakes are very timid snakes, and very unlikely to attack!).

Speaking of snakes, one of our VERY brave White Eagle boys killed a big (to my eyes, anyway – it was about 1 metre long and just over an inch in diameter!) snake down at the boys’ home last week!!! It was at the edge of their football pitch, and he hit it on the head with a big stick. It became a bit of a local tourist attraction for the local kids for a few hours - they picked up the dead snake with sticks, and tried to scare each other by chasing after their friends with it. Every child is terrified of snakes here, whether they be alive or dead, so there was a lot of screaming for a few hours, until someone disposed of it!

Last week, I had the privilege of going on a course in Kampala, along with Uncle Julius and Aunt Emily (the project manager and project director). It was called “Celebrating Children”, and was the first of 4 separate weeks during the year. It was all about working with children, how God views children, how to listen to children, stand up for their rights, include them in decisions, run children’s projects well, be good children’s workers, etc. It was really good, and everyone left with a renewed passion for working with kids, with new skills, and with fresh ideas about developing their projects. We have to do six assignments before the next training week, so I’m trying to organise myself to get all of them done in time. Some of them are quite hard, and not very fun.... Others are quite fun – one involves observing a child at play and writing up a load of stuff on it, and I’ve chosen to observe Kitibwa – so far I’ve observed him hiding his toys all round my room, hiding my keys (- lucky I was observing him!!!), and trying to “phone” me with the television remote control! I don’t really like tests and assignments (- I had decided to try and avoid ever doing any exams/coursework again after finishing uni.! -), but it’s worth it, because I’m learning so much through the course, and we hope it will help us develop the project, as well as helping us improve individually.

This week, we’ve got 4 visitors from the UK staying at the girls’ home. It’s reeeeeally wonderful to have them, and we’re all enjoying their company!!! I’m continuing to slog away at learning Lugandan, and am not making very fast progress, which is sometimes frustrating because some other people come and seem pick it up very quickly! I’m focussing on particular areas, one of which is phrases to use for the hospital ministry.... so on Monday, I acted as an interpreter for one of our visitors as we went round the hospital – I was sooooooo pleased, as I understood nearly everything that was said to me and had some medium length conversations, and only needed help when some patients asked if they could give their lives to Jesus – I got stuck after 2 sentences! (I’m learning a few new phrases every week, so I’ll try to add that to my repertoire soon!).

We’ve had a HUGE amount of rain here in Uganda over the past month – despite 2 months of dire warnings via TV, radio and texts from the government telling us there’d be a drought and a famine in Uganda!!! Everyone’s very pleased about the rain, although it has meant that there is an abundance of mosquitos, and I’m getting eaten alive everyday by them despite wearing a ridiculous amount of mosquito repellent and eating Marmite like there’s no tomorrow, as someone said that can help! (– I’ve even tried wearing 3 different makes of repellent at once, but had to stop because the girls complained that I smelt so bad! – but it didn’t work anyway – they still bit me!).

I’d better leave off here, as the girls are about to come home, and I need to meet with Teddy to hear her read – she reads to me every day to try and improve her English, although she tends to read with a Mancunian accent, as she’s learnt how to read and pronounce lots of words from me!!! She doesn’t speak like that yet, but it would be funny if she did! Maybe Kitibwa will!

I hope everyone is doing very well, and that you have a WONDERFUL Easter!!! Eat lots of chocolate eggs for me!!!

Lots of love,

- Sarah

Sarah's Story - Back in the saddle for River of Life 2011!

2011-03-06T15:18:00.001Z

Hello everyone! I hope you are all ok! I’m doing well here. I’ve been back just over a month now, so I thought it was time I wrote another newsletter.

Having had a WONDERFUL time in the UK seeing friends and family, (and eating like there was no tomorrow!), I returned back to Uganda and received a lovely welcome from the White Eagle kids and staff, especially from the girls, who nearly knocked me over in their enthusiasm! Kitibwa was in a mood with me for some time (-I think because he felt that I’d abandoned him!), but now he’s back to normal, and gives me just as many hugs and kisses as ever! He’d learnt loads of words while I was away, and also knows nearly everyone’s name now. He doesn’t always pronounce them correctly, hence “Aunt Sarah” is “Ah-Fat-cha”, and “Kevin” is “Mi-mi-mi” – but we all know who he means! It’s sooooooooo cute!!!

Three of the girls had returned home over Christmas to live with their families (although we see 2 of them every weekend at church), just leaving 4 girls and Kitibwa in the house. And two of the remaining girls have had to go to boarding school, and so we just see them at weekends!!! So the house is considerably quieter than it was last year!!! But we continue to run the evening programme, etc., so my work hasn’t changed.

As I mentioned to loads of you when I was home in the UK, much of our emphasis this year is on trying to resettle our residential kids (i.e. those in the boys’ and girls’ homes) with relatives. It’s not possible in all cases, because some of our kids were abandoned, and for some of them it’s not safe for them because of violent relatives. - But for those that can, we are trying to prepare them to return home. So we’re busy writing policies, mentoring our kids, and arranging meetings with relatives. - But our homes won’t be empty, because we will take in more kids to replace the ones who go home – we already got asked to take in a little baby/child by the probations officer at the police station for some time until their situation can be sorted out (-but we don’t know if we can as they’ve not told us much about them yet!). So watch this space!

If it’s ok, I would just like to flag up one of our girls in the girls’ home. I hope that this doesn’t offend anyone, as that’s not my intention. Please ignore it if it does!..... but just in case anyone would like to have the opportunity to bless one of the girls that I look after, I’ve been told that one of the girls in our girls’ home, Judith (see picture below), is in need of another co-sponsor. She has been with the project now for several years. She is an orphan (both of her parents died when she was young), and came to the White Eagle Project when she was 10 years old. She has just turned 17 years old, and is in the second year of Secondary school - she didn’t start school until she was quite old because when she was little she worked as a house-girl (doing the cooking, cleaning, washing, etc. for a family). Anyway, she’s growing into a wonderful young lady (although I’m very biased!), and works hard at everything she does, and is greatly in need of another co-sponsor. (If you are interested in helping, please go on the website: http://www.riveroflifeuganda.org/sponsor-a-child.aspx )

Appeal over!

We’ve had elections here in Uganda since I’ve been back, and it’s been very interesting watching the candidates campaign ( - 1 man who wanted to be elected to the local government gave us hundreds and hundreds of grasshoppers – yum! - , to try and convince us to vote for him! I’m told that hardly any of our kids and staff who vote were persuaded to vote for him, but we all enjoyed the grasshoppers immensely!!!). When they last had presidential elections a few years ago, there was a lot of violence all over the country, so we were praying that there would be peace this time.... and there was!!! There were a few small problems in some other parts of the country, but nothing too major (nothing like a few years ago!), and Masaka where I live was SOOOOOOOOOOOOO quiet and peaceful – people keep saying it’s never been like that before in Masaka during the elections, so that was great!!!

The kids were all off school (and came back from boarding school) during the elections. We couldn’t go out much (just in case of violence starting up suddenly while we were out), so we had to entertain ourselves and think of things to do.... and we at the girls’ home decided that on the Saturday after the elections we would have a feast of chicken and chips, which is a rare treat indeed!!! (- it was funded by my brother!). The girls were sooooooooo excited all week, and there were whoops of excitement whenever anyone mentioned the coming Saturday, and then we spent ALL of the Saturday preparing our food – we had to kill the chicken and pluck it, etc., and we had to peel and chop a whole load of potatoes, and then do the cooking, which took us hours and hours and HOURS on the charcoal stove, but it was good fun as it occupied us all day and everyone got involved! And then in the evening, we had our feast!!! Yeah!!! Aunt Tinah is an AMAZING cook, and was in charge of all the cooking, and managed to produce the most wonderful tasting chicken ever!!!!!!! We stuffed ourselves silly (Hee hee hee!!!), and then sat there very happy and very full, talking into the night!!! We had a few chips left over, which the girls had cold for breakfast the next day, so as not to waste even a single one! It has gone down in girls’ home history as “the Big Feast of February 2011”, and the girls are still talking about it now!!! It was a fab day!!!!

I’ve been keeping on going with trying to learn Lugandan, and whilst I remain not very good at all, and can only say a few sentences, I have learnt some specific sentences.... these include sentences I can use when I go on the hospital ministry, e.g. asking how people are and what’s wrong with them, and can I pray for them, etc..... and so this month I managed without a translator for the first time at the hospital!!!! Yeah!!! I was so happy!!! I still prayed in English, but the rest was in Lugandan!!! When I didn’t understand what someone was saying, I just nodded and said “Bambi” in a sympathetic tone (which means a lot of different things, including “I’m sorry for your situation”) and that seemed to go down well when I said it, as people thought I understood every word!!! Ha ha! So that was good, and has given me a boost to keep on learning little bits.

I’m very tired at the moment, because Teddy has been borrowing my alarm clock to wake up in time for school (she has to wake up at 5.30am) and is getting confused about the time.... Let me explain... Telling the time in Uganda is a bit different - because the sun rises at about 7am and sets at 7pm all year round, they tell the time by the number of hours into the day or night there are. So what we call 7am, is the first hour of the day, or 1 o’clock... And this can cause some confusion, as I discovered this week when Teddy kept coming to wake me up in the middle of the night to tell me that the alarm clock didn’t go off and that she’s missed school - because when she sees it saying 2am she thinks it’s 8am and that she’s late!!! It’s very hard to be patient when you’re woken up in the middle of the night every night for a week!!!! Ha ha! I don’t know how people with young babies manage being woken up for months on end!

Anyway, I’ll end here, as this is a VERY long e-mail! It was soooooooooo lovely to see so many of you when I was in the UK over Christmas and January!!! I’m sorry for anyone I didn’t get to see!

Lots of love!

- Sarah

Presents with a Purpose! Our Alternative Gift List this Christmas

2010-12-08T00:39:00.000Z

It's that time of year again where we offer you the fabulous opportunity to purchase a present with a purpose!

We are still fundraising to develop our site to be a Children and Community Centre that will be a beacon of hope for Nyendo! Brick by brick we’re moving forward... We have now agreed full Architectural Drawings for the whole development, which is a major step forward. Our number one priority is to raise funds to build a secure perimeter wall in time for the February 2011 elections, so plenty of bricks, sand and cement are needed to keep the children safe! Please consider making this a Christmas to remember...

You can visit out special River of Life Alternative Gifts Justgiving page here

Or you can download the PDF flyer by clicking here

Down on the Farm - November update

2010-12-01T23:28:00.000Z

Just a quick update on the farm progress. This is from Emily's monthly report on the White Eagle Project:

The farm is going well. They finished planting elephant grass (for the cow to eat) all around the edge of the farm. The workers now pray together daily. The beans are looking very healthy, and have brought out flowers. The eggplants have flowered also. The surveyors from the government administration came to see if it’s possible to irrigate the farm. It is possible and they are making a budget for us.

To see a birds-eye view of farm, and some pictures of what's going on there, click here to view our map

November WEP Report: the busiest month of the year - so far!

2010-11-30T23:02:00.001Z

Emily (White Eagle Project Director) reports on November...

November has been the busiest month of the year for me, so far. It has been a very difficult one, especially with Pastor Duncan being very sick. There have been a lot of challenges but God has been faithful, and has guided us day by day in each and every situation we have faced.
It has also been a very busy month for all the children, especially those in the candidate classes. Most of our kids have finished school now. James and Roderick finished P7 at the beginning of November after taking their Primary Leaving Exam, and Namatovu came home in mid-November after finishing her O-level exams. Dennis, Robinah and Fred are finishing their A-levels in early December, and we are expecting good results.

Emily also met with the Probations Office, the Family Protection Unit and the Community Development Officer.

In the meeting with the Probations Office, they informed us about the Child Community Programme Committees (CCPC’s) that have been formed. Five CCPC’s have been formed in Masaka municipality to look into children’s issues in the locality and there are about 5 people on each committee. Each of the committee members is responsible for a particular category of children e.g. children involved in grasshopper issues, children who go to the film places, girls and boys who are living on the streets, children abused in homes and children in conflict with the law etc

.

This is a major step forward in Masaka, and we're going to be working hard to ensure it helps coordinate interventions among Orphans and Vulnerable Children.

In the meantime, we've had a couple of serious incidents this month. Our night guard at the Girls Home discovered two men trying to get into the compound. He called back-up and very impressively they were dispatched to the police station with the minimum of fuss. We've had a computer keyboard stolen by someone reaching in a broken window, and we've had a small fire in the Boys home which again was impressively dealt with by two of the older boys. These things are sent to trial us - what's encouraging though is that through the Security and Fire training we're able to deal with it. God is good!

We've also welcomed an American visitor from Saudi Arabia this month - Katie - and our auditor has finished preparing the 2009 accounts and produced an interim report on the 2010 accounts.

LIke Emily said, it's been a busy month!

Sarah's Story - Grasshoppers, Jackfruit and the year to come...

2010-11-17T00:08:00.001Z

Sarah keeps us updated on the latest chapter in her Ugandan story, in her own, inimitable stlye:

Helloooooooooooooo! How are you? I'm really well, and continuing to have a fab time here!!!

It's "Grasshopper Season" again here in Uganda (I think there are 2 a year), so I've been eating grasshoppers the last day or two. And it's also been the season for jackfruits, which are one of my favourite fruits ever! We have a jackfruit tree in our garden, so we've been eating plenty of them! If you don't know what a jackfruit is, see the photo. They're gorgeous!!! (The best way I can describe the taste is that it tastes a bit like Tutti Fruiti flavour Chewitts used to taste like!)

It's the wet season at the moment (there are 2 wet and 2 dry seasons a year), so everywhere is very soggy, muddy and slimy all morning, until the sun dries it all up again by mid-afternoon. The power continues to be a problem, but the water supply has improved slightly over the past 2 weeks, so that's VERY good! Kitibwa (see photo, when he decided to come and help us with the washing up!!!!) was scared of all the shadows thrown by the paraffin lamps at night a month ago, but he's getting so used to the dark every evening that he's become a lot braver now, as power cuts every day (and so paraffin lamps each evening) are just a way of life to him now!

He's getting cuter by the day!!! His vocabulary has progressed from "Alleluia!" and "Amen!" (said each time with a punch in the air!) to saying "Auntie Wala" (which I think is Auntie Sarah/Ronnah/Tinah!), "Teddy", "Kisakye", etc. (...all the girls' names). He has learnt to sing a song called "Baby Jesus", and is soooooooooooooo cute when he sings it!!! I'm trying to capture it on video, but he gets stage fright every time I stick a camera in his face!

The girls have all been doing exams over the past 2 weeks, and Robinah has now started her A-levels. Apart from Robinah (who finishes in December), they all break up from school in 2 weeks' time, so we'll be into the holiday programme again soon. It'll be really nice to have them all around again!

My Mum and Dad came to visit a few weeks ago, and I had a FABULOUS time with them! The only bad thing was that I didn't get all the hot baths and showers I was anticipating, because we had several days when the hotel had no power and no water! So my Mum and Dad had a REAL taste of Uganda (including bucket baths!).

Now that my Mum and Dad have been, and we have had a chance to have some long chats, I can officially announce that I'm coming back to Uganda next year! Yeah! I'm SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO incredibly excited about coming home and seeing all my family and all my friends!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (- You would not believe quite how excited I am!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) But I'm also very excited about what God has for me to do here in Uganda next year, and about spending another year with the girls and all the kids here in Uganda! Yeah!

Anyway, that's enough for now! As usual, I've written more than I intended to!!!! I hope that you are all really well, and I hope that when I come back I can see as many people as possible!!!

Loads of love to everyone!

- Sarah

Down on the Farm - October Update

2010-11-01T23:32:00.002Z

Here's this month's update onthe farm, from Emily's monthly report:

"We thank God that we got some rain this month. About 110kg of beans have been planted, but we need more rain for them to grow well. We’re praying for more rain. The young matooke is coming out well now, and they have finished all the weeding, but we need more rain for the beans and the other things that have been planted."

To see a birds-eye view of farm, and some pictures of what's going on there, click here to view our map

October WEP Report - Mentoring, Meetings and Matoke

2010-10-31T21:59:00.003Z

Emily, our White Eagle Project Director has sent her monthly report - here are the highlights!

We've spent a lot of time this month in intensive mentoring, as the need has arisen. I believe we need to spend more time in this area - I'm encouraging the staff to focus on mentoring so that we can help our children develop into productive and responsible members of society.

The White Eagles donated some of their old clothes this month. The clothes went to needy children known to the church and to another local charity - Child Restoration Outreach (CRO). The manager was very happy and thanked us for our thoughtfulness. The clothes are particularly appreciated at this time of year, because it is cold and the children helped by CRO often spend the night sleeping rough.

Emily has focussed on developing relationships with other agencies this month. She's met with teachers at various local schools to talk about discipline; the Manager of CRO to arrange meetings with local Government, including the Community Development Officer, the Family Protection Unit and the Probation Office; the National Coordinator of a charity called Kings Sports Ministry Uganda to talk about sports outreach in the community; and the Director of a new project in Nyendo called Helping Children and Youth Counselling.

Lastly, the programmes have continued at the Boys and Girls home, and we've enjoyed having Sarah's parents to stay again.

Do get in touch if you have any questions - email us here - and thank you to all our supporters that help us help our orphans and vulnerable children to Fly High!

Sarah's Story - Luganda Learning, Policy Planning, Sponsorship Support and Erratic Electricity!

2010-10-12T10:43:00.013+01:00

Hello everyone!!! How is everyone? I hope you're all doing well! I'm doing great!!! But the last month has been busy!!!

I've been REALLY trying to learn some more Lugandan over the last month, as it will make such a difference if I can speak a bit more.... And it's going ok-ish. I'm not really gifted in learning languages(!), but I'm having fun because the girls are teaching me, and it's creating a lot of laughs round the dinner table (I'm trying to speak only Lugandan every evening during dinner, which is a bit of challenge with my limited vocabulary - so I just make most of it up!!!). Also, apparently, I keep on saying rude words by mistake, which always creates a lot of screaming laughter! - My pronunciation leaves a lot to be desired, it would appear!!! Ah well!!! At least I'm trying!!! When I go on the Hospital Ministry every Monday, I try out little bits now and again with the patients, and they seem to appreciate my efforts (as well as laughing at me, of course!). I'm also trying to learn to cook some Ugandan dishes, and the girls are my teachers again... so that's been fun too!

I've been very busy with the staff each week, developing some policies with them for the White Eagle Project, which has been interesting - I never thought I'd do anything managerial like this, and find it weird that I'm now doing this stuff!!! I'm learning a lot...

I've also spent a lot of time working on getting background information on very needy kids who live locally that we've identified as needing urgent help, so that we can try to get sponsors for them. So I've been doing lots of interviews, lots of typing, etc. to try to get all the important information down about them. (....So, if you'd like to sponsor anyone, let me know!!! There are a whole load of reeeeeeeally needy kids in difficult situations that we're looking for sponsorship for!!!).

The kids on the project are all doing really well at the moment, although some of them are working far too hard (in my opinion!!!) because they've got their exams (O-levels and A-levels) approaching. I can't believe the hours they do at school!!! Some of them leave for school at 6am, and don't return home until 7pm. It's crazy!!! I'm glad I didn't go to school in Uganda!!! But just to prove it's not all hard work, here's Kyesake as a puppet (for some reason...)

We had some visitors from America about a month ago, so we had fun when they came, and they took the kids to the local (and the only!) swimming pool, so some of the kids got a chance to relax and have a break from their studies that day at least.

All the usual stuff has continued, like the evening sessions with the kids, the youth group, church, prayer meetings, hospital ministry, staff meetings, etc, etc. So, life is full and interesting! ......And I'm still loving it here!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm very excited at the moment, because my Mum and Dad are coming to visit me next week!!! Yeahhhhh!!!! They're coming for a week, and I'm taking my week off while they're here so that I can spend all my time with them. I'm particularly looking forward to staying in a hotel for a whole week which has hot running water!!!! I'm going to have about a million hot baths, even if the weather's boiling outside, just to make the most of it!!!

We had over a week with virtually no electricity at all, a week or so ago (it would come on for a few minutes every couple of days, then go off right away again!!!). It was a bit frustrating, but also fun, because we had to make our own entertainment in the girls' home (due to the lack of a TV and adequate lighting), and so we played lots of silly games, and spent some evenings rolling about in hysterics!!! Kitibwa (the little toddler who lives in the girls' home) was terrified, though, every evening, because he found all the dancing shadows caused by the lanterns we used really scary, so he spent every evening clinging to anyone he could!!!

Anyway, I'll go now! Loads of love to everyone! Sarah

Challenge 21 - 21 Days to Transform the World for Someone Else

2010-10-01T22:36:00.002+01:00

Can you join Challenge 21?! It’s our end of year campaign to raise much needed funds to cover both this year’s work and budget for next.

Over the last few years we have seen our work expand. Our Community Outreach Teams are seeing people filled with hope for perhaps the first time - in the Hospital, Prison, Nazareth Children's Home and out and about in Nyendo itself. Our Discipling & Training Work - the Student Conferences, the Youth Club, the White Eagle Project (now directly supporting 50 orphans and other vulnerable children!), and Ball Line Football Academy (now with 250 children on the books and winning national competitions!) - is seeing lives TRANSFORMED! And through our Prayer and Reconciliation work we’re seeing the body of Christ come together like never before in Uganda, people set free and healed and, most importantly, lots and lots of prayer!

So we want to launch Challenge 21 - 21 Days to Transform the World!

To help continue the work, become part of it! Challenge 21 is about giving yourself, and maybe your friends, 21 days to do something amazing to Transform the World for Someone Else. It might be a sponsored event, a dinner party, a quiz night, or just a work whip-round, but what ever it is, it can only take 21 days from start to finish! So far we’ve had a Sponsored Bike Ride from Manchester to Milton Keynes (we aimed to get to London but were defeated by a lethal combo of torrential rain and the A5), a Musical Marathon, a Quiz Night (which to be fair has taken longer than 21 days to prep!)

So the question is, what could you do for some of the world’s poorest?! Get in touch for tips and advice!

Aug-Sept WEP Report: Holiday betrayal whilst we welcome the Flixton Team!

2010-09-30T22:28:00.001+01:00

Here are the highlights from August and September's monthly reports!

The White Eagle staff met together to develop a new admissions policy for the project, in line with the Government of Uganda’s National Orphan Policy. We hope to be able to support more vulnerable children next year. The staff also worked on a disciplinary policy for the project, and once Emily was back from maternity leave met with a number of teachers from schools attended by the White Eagles to talk to them about appropriate disciplinary techniques – although illegal, caning is still very common in schools.

A local architect began work to draw up plans for developing the whole Nyendo site into a Church and Children’s Centre. We are hoping to extend the buildings so that there is more comfortable accommodation, and so that those girls who we need to give residential care for can also move into their own accommodation on the site. The plans are very exciting, but in the meantime there is also work to be done to maintain the existing boys home as rats have begun to nest in the ceiling of the bedrooms, and the office is nearly fallen down!

The elections scheduled for February 2011 meant that the holiday we anticipated to have in August was shortened to 2 weeks, which meant that whilst our friends from Flixton Fellowship Church were here a lot of the White Eagles had to return to school. Nonetheless it was a great trip - Sarah, the girls' home aunty, and Lizzy who has been staying at the girls' home for a few months on her pre-university gap year are also from Flixton, so there was a great reunion at the airport! The team spent time on the Prayer Mountain, took part in the hospital ministry, visited Nazareth Children's home, led the evening fellowship sessions and even helped to plant some crops on the farm. And of course they joined the White Eagles on a trip to Lake Nabugabo for sunshine and swimming – with the added excitement of rescuing 3 people from another group who had got out of their depth in the Lake!

Our maddest cycle challenge ever to raise £21k!

2010-09-10T00:06:00.000+01:00

This is going to be our biggest challenge ever... after the exploits of Manchester to Blackpool in 2008, the Great North 'Try'Athalon in 2009 we've set our sights higher... a non-stop team endurance ride from Manchester to London! 185 miles of batty-punishing, thigh-knackering, madness which will see us riding in pairs from Manchester's Albert Square to London's Big Ben in one go!

The madcap scheme was inspired by Jon Room, who liked the look of the London to Paris 24 hr endurance ride. Jon has already run a Marathon, cycled from Manchester to Liverpool and back and swam 2 miles in aid of River of Life, and was clearly wanting more of a challenge... He nearly bailed when working out the route he thought we'd be going most of the way on the monster-road, the A5, but has regained his enthusiasm with the revised route which will takes us from Manchester, over the Peaks to Derby, down through Nottingham and Milton Keynes to end up under Big Ben. Hopefully.

Jon has been a tower of strength in our challenges over the years - you can check out his motivational talk 60 miles into last year's bike-ride here.

So this year, we really are going one better. We'll be riding 185 miles non-stop in pairs - 3 hours on, 3 hours off the bike - all the way to London. We have some awesome team members - some familiar faces from previous years, and some new ones: Ming the Merciless, joining us in his jesters outfit; Mark "I'm not waiting for the rest of yous" Cartmell, Dan the Man (who can forget his yellow leotard of the Blackpool Ride?) the legendary Tim 'Rabu' Crow and the unforgettable Andy "I'm ready to throw my bike into a ditch and catch a taxi" Rous. New to this cycle challenge we also have Will, James, Richard and Leigh - all of whom i'm sure will provide unforgettable memories!

And why are we doing this? For the poor and needy, and the Orphans and Street Children of Masaka, Uganda! The 50 orphans and vulnerable children that we're helping 'fly high' and reach heights they never in their wildest dream thought possible all need extra funds. But there's thousands more children that need help, so we've set ourselves the fantastic challenge of raising £21,000 in 21 days to help establish the next phase of the White Eagle Project and rescue more children from a future of despair in Masaka! The money we raise will also go towards running River of Life's other ministries - wherever the need is most.

You can be part of something amazing, and save a child from neglect and poverty. Please give generously on our JustGiving page - click here!

The latest news from Sarah @ the Girl's Home

2010-09-08T08:45:00.001+01:00

Helloooooo everyone!!!! I hope that you are all well!!!! I'm sorry that I haven't written a newsletter for AGES!!! I've been quite busy! Anyway, here's my news.....

I've had a really great couple of months! It started with going on safari 2 months ago with Anna and Liz (the 2 gap year girls who've been living at the girls' home), which was soooooooooooooooo much fun!!!! We rode on top of the Project van as we drove around the safari park, and then had a boat trip on the lake, and I got completely over-excited at seeing monkeys, baboons, zebras, hippos, crocodiles, etc. close up!!! We had SUCH a fun day!!!!!!!

Shortly after that, Anna left us (sob!), to go and prepare for starting university.

I had my week's holiday during the first week in August, and I spent it in Entebbe and Kampala with a group of Christian and Messianic Jewish dancers who I used to dance with in England. They were ministering at a church in Kampala, and asked me to join them, which I was very happy to do. I had a FAB week - we really saw God move during the sessions we did at the church, through the teaching, dancing, praying, etc., and I felt completely spoiled the whole week - we were staying in a lovely house on the edge of Lake Victoria (it was really beautiful!), we had amazing food (we even got taken out for a Chinese one day - my favourite!), we got to visit the source of the Nile (which was beautiful), we got treated by everyone we met, we had the privilege of visiting and meeting some amazing places and people, and I had a brilliant and very inspiring time just hanging out with everyone - it was just generally fab!!! (I'm running out of words to describe how amazing it was!)

The kids broke up for their school holidays as soon as I got back, so I was then busy running the holiday programme with them for a couple of weeks, which I reeeeally enjoyed, as we had a lot of fun and the kids were very enthusiastic (although, as usual, it was tiring!)!!!

Then, a couple of weeks ago, 9 people from my church in Flixton came to visit Masaka (Yeahhhhh!!!!!!!) - 5 of my really good friends, and 4 of the girls from the teenagers group I used to help with. I almost burst with excitement seeing them all, and I had the most brilliant week with them!!! I just loved spending time with them, laughing, joking, talking, praying, etc, and it was great for them to all come to the church, the White Eagles Project, and some of the other ministries, and get involved with all the stuff that I'm involved with! And they came equipped with chocolate and cheese!!!! (Yeahhhhh!!!!) It was really wonderful (- having them here, that is, not just the chocolate and cheese, although that was really wonderful too!)!!!

We also took the kids to Lake Nabugabu, (- funded by some people from my old dance school, who had raised a whole load of money so we could treat the kids to a day out -- THANK YOU SOOOOOOO MUCH!!!!!), where we spent the day swimming, eating, chilling, playing, chatting, etc. with the kids. In short, it was an amazing week!!!

Then, Liz (the other gap year student who'd been staying in the girls' home) and Kate (a girl who came here for just a month) left (sob!), as did most of the Flixton crew.... But 2 of my really good friends, Sarah and Anna, stayed on for another week, and we had a great week doing some stuff with the kids and staff, going out for meals, etc. It was reeeeeeeeally wonderful to spend quality time with them!!!!

Now they've all left, but we have 3 American visitors who are here for a week! Phew!

- So, life has been busy, but lots and lots of fun, with lots of visitors who have been a HUGE blessing to me, and also to the White Eagles kids and staff!!!!

Life should settle down a bit now, as we don't have any more visitors planned, and the kids are all back at school this week, so we'll all get back into our term-time routines!

On the new River of Life Farm

2010-08-26T20:10:00.005+01:00

Today we visited our brand new farm! We have been wanting to start developing our own farm for a LONG time. Recently we acquired a fantastic site, just 2 miles from Nyendo, and although we haven't managed to pay the fantastically discounted £6,000 for the approximately 7 acres, the owners have allowed us to start developing it.

As we're feeding upwards of 40 people a day, and food prices are going through the roof (up 14% last year in Masaka, according to the Ugandan Bureau of Statistics, and up 57% in the last 4 years) Uncle Kayima has made it his personal ambition to develop the 7 acre site into the most productive area of land in Uganda, if not the world (!)

And what a huge amount of work has been done! Already about 2 acres have been dug, and sweet potatoes, sugar cane and yams planted - a small section was left for the FFC Missions trip to plant on their visit, and even though it was early and the sun wasn't at full strength, we got an idea of just how hard the guys must have been working.

It's now urgent that we get the Matoke (our staple diet of green bananas) in before the next rains, due any day now, so that they can get well established before the dry seasons. If we don't get it in now, we'll have to wait another 12 months, which we REALLY don;t want to do. But we need approximately £3,000 (10 million Ugandan Shillings) to plant it all out... Kayima and the Team are going to continue preparing the land, and as they dig, pray for provision!

If you are able to support River of Life's Food Security Project by investing in the farm, please either donate here, or get in touch with Rob by email

You can see a photo album of our visit to the farm on flick here

July WEP Report – Josiah & Joan our latest babies and the Crawleys come to stay

2010-07-31T22:25:00.000+01:00

Here are highlights form the White Eagle Project July Report!

Juliet gave birth to twins on 21st July – Josiah and Joan – and John took 2 weeks of paternity leave to help Juliet with the new arrivals.

The Crawley family visited from London and got involved in several of the church ministries – including teaching in the evening fellowship sessions at the boys and girls homes, visiting Nazareth Children's Home and Good Foundation School. Their elder daughter Jess also visited Kitovu hospital where she saw twins being delivered, with the help of Dr Gerald – Emily's husband.

Anna, a visitor from France who had been living in the girls home for four months returned to Paris in the middle of July. She had a leaving party where all the children and staff gave a little speech about her, to encourage her as she left.

The office building was broken into overnight on the 27th July 2010 night and a bike was stolen – fortunately the thieves didn't manage to get into the room where the computers are stored, although they did damage the window.

Paul's back from YWAM!

2010-07-24T22:32:00.001+01:00

Some of the original White Eagle boys are now young men, who have finished school and are moving on to the next stage in their training. This year, Paul was able to join the Youth With a Mission Discipleship Training School (YWAM DTS) in Jinja for 5 months. Here he describes some of his experiences:

The first few weeks were spent in classes learning more about the scriptures and different topics. The lessons I found most interesting were those on Intercession and Humility. In these lessons, I became more committed to God, and we learnt to listen to God’s voice. Then we had a mini-outreach trip where we spent three weeks speaking to people about Jesus – some of the people did not know anything about Jesus Christ and Salvation and tried to hurt us with pangas! Then we went on the main outreach trip - I entered different countries, like Burundi, Rwanda, and the Congo. We spent a month in each country, and did door to door evangelism, open-air evangelism, preached in churches, and prayed for people. We also visited schools, prisons, hospitals and markets.

Paul is now back in Masaka, and has just begun his studies towards a Certificate in Secondary education.

June WEP Report: Julius and Sarah take the helm for World Cup Fever

2010-06-30T22:19:00.004+01:00

Here are June's highlights from the White Eagle Project...

Emily, our Project Director, gave birth to a bouncing baby boy - Samuel Sharma Efatta – and began her 3 months of maternity leave, leaving the White Eagle Project in the capable hands of Julius and Sarah. Their motto for leading the project is “Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance”!
Uncle Kayima's wife Esther joined the White Eagle Team to help take care of little Kitibwa, who's now 18 months old, while his mum Kellen is back at school. She has two young sons of her own, so they make quite the gang when they’re all crashing around.

Our wonderful visitors, Shelley and Denita from Australia came and spent a lot of time with the White Eagle boys. Their activities ranged from learning to making chapaatis for the evening meal, to teaching the boys new games like Newspaper Hockey, to leading the boys' evening programme with a focus on team-building – taught in a fun and interactive way with tasks and challenges for the boys to complete.

Work began on the farm! (see October 2010 Newsletter for more info about our newly acquired farm) Uncle Kayima has really taken a lead and has worked his socks off and impressed us all. All of the ground was weeded and prepared for planting with beans, maize, matoke, cassava, yams, sugarcane, and a few other crops, all of which will help to feed the White Eagle children when harvested.

A water tank has also been installed at the boys' home which can hold up to 10,000 litres of rain water.

And a real highlight in June was the installation of satellite TV in the boys home which will allow the boys to watch educational programmes, documentaries and sports – Ugandan terrestrial TV is awful! The boys are so excited and happy to be able to watch football in their living room! “Webale, webale nyo Uncle Julio, mukitukolede mwana,” most of the boys exclaimed in Luganda - “thank you, thank you Uncle Julio, you guys have done it for us!” The boys are so happy to have the TV fixed for them. They watched the World Cup using the projector which was really great.

Can you do a sponsored event for River of Life Ministries this summer?!

2010-06-29T23:10:00.001+01:00

With 4,000 Orphaned and Vulnerable Children on our doorstep, and the vast majority of the people around us living on less than a dollar a day, there is a MASSIVE need to be met. Can you help?!

Cycle, Swim, Run, Walk, Auction, Quiz Night, World Cup BBQ - whatever it is, be inspired by our new Fundraising Pack with ideas to do something this summer that will make a massive difference to some of the poorest people on the planet. Whether you raise £100 or £10,000, every little bit helps to keep the River of Life Ministries running. The target is that between us we raise £20,000 this year from fundraising events, that will help the River of Life Team on the ground continue to reach out to the neediest children, care for the poor and sick, and help put the destitute back on track. Together we can do it! Download your fundraising pack today!

If you want to chat to someone about your plans, please email us

Lizzy’s Letter from Uganda – Episode 4

2010-06-24T11:37:00.002+01:00

Hello from the big UG! Hope everyone's well, and happy!

These few weeks have been great,sorry it's been so long since my last blog! Still getting used to the way people live over here, for example the other day me and Anna got in a taxi, and then the taxi man carried on to pile 6 more people into the car! This was a normal 5 seater car, but with 8 people in it! But over here the more people they cram in, the more money the driver gets! But the most scary part was that the taxi driver had someone virtually sitting on his knee, and this stranger was actually steering the taxi!!!!! We couldn’t believe it!

But this week has been really great, I brought high school musical 1,2 and 3 with me, we must have seen them all at least 6 times per film!! We worked out the other day we have seen high school musical 2, 7 times! As this is their fav out of the 3!! Then the day after we talked about how many times we have seen them, the girls decided to watch them all again, which was great! But by the end of the film they all were up dancing around the living room copying all the dance moves and singing at the top of their voices! It was so so lovely, and it so made my day! The girls only have high school musical and another film, so if anyone has any spare films that they don't watch any more the girls would be very happy to watch them!!! they would like Disney and teen ageie films!

…just got interrupted while I was writing from a huge amount of screaming and cheering from the living room! It turns out we finally caught the mouse we have had round the house!! Its so midgey, I don’t want them to kill it but they think im crazy! Its just like my pet hamster back home though!!

Back to this week sorry...

…Our ministry to Nazareth is going well. As the weeks go on we get to know these lovely children more and more. They enjoy playing the games, and doing activities with us which is lovely. There all so sweet in their own little ways!

I went to hospital ministry again this week, we were in the childrens ward, so it wasn’t as shocking as last time. But it was still very sad, all the children were suffering from malaria, and some of them were in quite serious situations. Some of the children were from the villages, and so they had never seen muzungus before, and one gorgeous little girl, Anna bent down to pray for her, and touched her foot, and the little girl just started screaming her head off, so we prayed for peace as well as healing!

On Friday we all us muzungu went to Kampala to go and get Annas and Sarahs visa sorted out! Everything went well! We got to have a little shop around as well, and it so made me happy to not be living in the city, because there were so many muzungu around, that it almost didn't feel like we were in Africa! So it really made me appreciate living where we do, and living with the girls! Also when we got home all the local kids were all happy to see us, and then we went to church and loads of people were there, chatting, and listening to music, and then we went back to the girls home and the girls were all so happy an chatty, and it just made me so happy, I'm really having such a great time, I feel so at home here, I love them all!

If you would like to help fund the new Nazareth Programme run by River of Life, or the Hospital Ministry, please email Rob

Lizzy normally lives in Manchester, and is currently with us for her Gap Year. She has very kindly agreed to post some of her thoughts about life at River of Life on our blog - cheers Lizzy!

Anyone up for a Cycle Challenge?

2010-06-24T11:14:00.002+01:00

In 2008 we cycled Manchester to Blackpool. In 2009 we cycled Manchester to Liverpool and back, climbed a couple of mountains and swam the combined total of about a million miles. But we've not managed to do anything quite as impressive as the guys that helped kick this all off back in 2000, when they cycled Lands End to John O'Groats to raise money to build the first section of the Boys Home. Until now...

This is an idea, only an idea at the moment, but it's gathering momentum. We're thinking of organising a Bike Ride - Edinburgh to London. That's 400 miles, which is pretty impressive in itself - but we want to do it non-stop. Yes! That's right non-stop Edinburgh to London. It's madness! The way it would work is that we would cycle in teams of two for four hours at a time, one on the bike the other resting in the support car, on, off, on, off all the way down the East Coast, through Newcastle, York, Scunthorpe, Lincoln and on to London!

And to make it that more exciting, we've got one of the guys, Richard, that did the original bike ride back in 2000 interested. It could be immense - if you're interested in joining us - for all of it or perhaps for some it - drop me a line! It's likely to be sometime in September...

Anna's Adventure - a busy busy week

2010-06-24T07:31:00.001+01:00

Let me start off with a funny story! Little Mercy, who is 5, asked to see photographs of – I quote – 'my family and my sponsor!' It was very cute, we all laughed!

This week has been quite a successful one actually! So many lovely things happened. Auntie Juliet invited us to her house, which is pink inside actually of which I approve whole heartedly! Her son was very excited to have bazungu in his house! We saw photos of her wedding to Uncle John. She looked beautiful!

Friday was a very busy day! We drove all the way to Kampala where I am pleased to report that my visa application was accepted first time round! Thirsa had to go back seven times or something ridiculous like that! Kampala was as a matter a fact a scary place! The shops were too, and there were too many bazungu; it no longer felt like I was in Africa! The supermarket was bigger than my local supermarket. Those of you who live in France, picture Auchan or Carrefour and then picture it bigger! Pretty much your worst nightmare, right? When we arrived back in Nyendo, I was so happy. I was home. We arrived at church and everyone was setting things up for the student conference the next day. Everyone was laughing, everyone was happy and everyone was happy to welcome us back! I felt at home again! That evening, I had a practice for the conference the next day so by the end of the day, I was exhausted! We are due to go back on Friday!

However, Saturday went really well. Young people gave their lives to Christ, which is always a success! I felt like an integral part of the church, like I have a place there, a role. By the end of the day, I felt like I could collapse!

Sunday was an awesome. I spent the whole afternoon cooking with the girls. We laughed and laughed and laughed. To be honest, I hadnt laughed like that in a while!

We went to Nazareth yesterday where we cuddled children! They were too tired to do anything else! One of the little lads asked me to teach him though and in lugandan too which I understood without anyone translating for me! I was impressed with myself and encouraged by what he said too.

I have been fasting from lunch time to tea time and have been praying for breakthrough in various areas and am expectant that God will indeed answer those prayers. Testimonies to come. (hopefully...!)

Our Schools Ministry Conference - What is your Destination?

2010-06-21T14:18:00.002+01:00

Under the leadership of Richard and Thirsa, River of Life held a Schools Conference on the 19th June entitled "What is your destination?". We hosted a massive 230 students from 8 local schools which was BRILLIANT! The church was absolutely packed for the day. Each school gave a 'creative contribution' as a way of encouraging participation on the conference theme, Pastor Duncan and Richard Waiswa our Schools Ministry Coordinator taught a session each, and our new House Comedian Mr Nicholas 'Nico' Kikomeko - one of the White Eagle Boys - kept the crowds entertained handsomely.

A major part of the one-day conference was to break out into small groups and discuss practical examples of service in communities. This also served to show the students how the planned Schools Cell Groups Ministry can work. On this, Thirsa reports that:

Three of our White eagles have been attending the Cell Group training program faithfully and have done an amazing job in leading a small group at the student conference! For some it was the first time of leading a small group and it was a great opportunity for them to experience and evaluate leading a small group. One of the White Eagles said "some of the students were a bit shy in the beginning, which led me in the trap to started preaching instead of teaching. I really became aware that I did this and in the future I want to be teaching more instead of talking to them and telling them all the answers. Thank you for the opportunity to experience what it is like to lead a small group session, because now I am more aware of what it is like and how I can improve".

The aim of the conference was to raise awareness of successful and unsuccessful destinations in life, to help students discover in which stage in life they are and to encourage and challenge the students to stay on the right track. With many children and young people having very limited horizon because of poverty, it's so important that we help them reach out and try their best to 'fly high'!

A massive thank you to Thirsa and to Waiswa, and to all the team for a fantastic conference!

Miracles in Malawi - Duncan goes on Mission!

2010-06-15T23:19:00.002+01:00

Duncan has come back from a Mission to Malawi totally fired up! He spent two weeks there with a team from the Maranatha Community. He's got some amazing tales to tell! Here's one or two of them:

My two weeks trip to Malawi was very successful. I preached to a congregation of 4,000 which pumped me up into overdrive gear and I enjoyed every minute of it! It is the biggest congregation I have ever preached to. At the end a hundred people came forward and gave their lives to our Lord.

We also went to a number of very poor villages. It was strange for me to see poverty in Africa outside my own country, and it gave me a new impetus for continuing to work for the reduction of poverty in the world especially in Africa. In the villages we went about sharing the gospel in word and praying for the sick.

For me the whole thing was very exciting because evangelism is one thing I particularly enjoy, especially in Africa. So, I was buzzing even though it was very hot. On one of the days I prayed for an 83 year old gentleman called Austin (going by his name you would have thought that he was born in Oxford!!). The doctors had told him that they cannot help him anymore and he was one step away from becoming totally blind. I prayed for him and after a number of attempts God divinely completely healed him! Allellujah and glory to God!

In addition to that the Lord restored total strength in Austin’s left leg which was semi-paralysed. Before praying for his leg Austin’s mobility was confined to crawling and sometimes dragging his left leg with a help of walking stick for short distances. After God healed Austin’s leg he walked around the compound even at some speed without the help of stick. Most of the village people were there and witnessed the miracle power working in the life of Austin.

God is able and willing! On the last day all the 13 villages in that area came together with their chiefs. We had a ceremony of thanksgiving to God, and lots of vigorous singing and dancing! At the end we gave material gifts to each one of the villages. The gifts included items such as iron sheets for roofing, footballs and many others. For me the gift I will never forget was a bicycle Ambulance!!!, which was a stretcher attacked to a bicycle. I reckon would have to be a good cyclist like Rob and Timo to get that thing moving especially if the patient is an African mammal which is carrying twin and needs to urgently be taken to hospital for delivery.

There's more, but those are some of the highlights! A massive thank you to Maranatha for inviting Duncan to join them on this trip. Duncan has made good friends with some senior church leaders in Malawi, and we hope to welcome them to Uganda soon, so watch this space.

Praying for a Miracle - Anna's African Adventure

2010-06-10T09:52:00.002+01:00

I feel I should start with some good news! Bridget in fact is pretty much fine! The TB is not active but because due to late treatment, she has a lump on her back. Mum had a vision of God pushng her back back into place so I would appreciate prayer for a miracle. Lizzy, Thirsa and I have committed to pray for her. Emotionally, it is getting harder and harder to go to Nazareth. I find myself doing a lot of crying. Many will be saying 'Duh! Your surname is Thorley! That is what you do!' God has really been speaking to me about them and letting me know that He has NOT failed them because he NEVER fails. Yetalemwa! That is He never fails in Lugandan. I believe I actually heard God tell me that. I am learning the value of praising God in all circomtances.

Those children are rejected and hurting and just need God's love so desperately. I didn't know I could love them THIS much! We would appreciate prayer about how we are teaching them. We are still figuring out the right way of doing it. I feel we need to pray the beginning of Ephesians over them and have commited to do that- chapter 1 and the beginning of chapter 2. Carol, a wonderful worker at Nazareth, said 'thank you for making the children happy', maybe that is our victory.

On Sunday, the worship was so powerful. I loved it. God was there. Before starting the worship we the leadership team sang some prophetic singing which was amazing. I loved that too! God's presence just descended! We sang a song that actually I preffered in Lugandan! The bridge just lifted the worship to a higher level! God is good. Speaking of worship, there is School Conference happening in River of Life church and the River of Life worship team have been asked to lead worship. I would appreciate prayer for the Lugandan. Being on the worship team has enabled me to get to know a girl called Lydia, who is also 19. We get on really well and it so lovely just to be able to chat to her.

Friday, you know is our day off and we enjoyed a lovely day at the pool where the weather could have been better to be honest. I must admit that that was slightly disappointing! Tommorrow we are due to go to Bwala for chicken and chips in triple portions! We are looking forward to it!

I will finish with a funny anecdote. Yesterday, I was in a taxi. They are regularly overcrowded! There were four of in the back and four in the front, which, you guessed, meant that two people were sitting on the driver's seat. However, the driver was sitting sideways on the seat and there was no way his feet could touch the peddles! His hands were not on the stearing wheel either. The passenger was driving. Lizzy and I could not see ahead of us because of all the people in the front!

Sarah's Story - Highlights from May

2010-06-08T11:37:00.001+01:00

Hello everybody!!! How has everyone been over the last month? - The last month has been good here in Uganda.....

We had the last week and a half of the holiday programme at the beginning of May - Highlights include:

Watching High School Musical 1, 2 and 3 (the kids were up on their feet clapping, singing and dancing throughout the movie each time - the atmosphere was electric! - And at the end of the first movie they didn't want to stop, so they just put on some music and carried on singing and dancing for ages - it turned into a full scale party, and was sooooooo much fun!!! I also found it funny watching the films with the kids, because every time anyone kissed during the movie (even a quick peck on the cheek), they would rewind the DVD, then pause it at the point of the kiss/peck on the cheek, and all start clapping, jumping up and down, and whooping at the tops of their voices - it was absolutely hilarious to watch them!!!);
Going to the swimming pool with the kids and spending the whole day there in gorgeous sunshine (I love Ugandan weather!);
A visit to the farm (the White Eagles dig there in the hope that we'll be able to grow some of our own food to reduce food costs - I went with them one morning and it was absolutely brilliant - the kids had so much fun despite the hard work so the atmosphere was wonderful, and the view was absolutely BEAUTIFUL (Uganda is seriously a beautiful country!!!), and when they'd finished, we all sat down and ate sugar cane, guavas and paw paws freshly picked from the farm - it was a near on perfect morning!!! (- The only thing that stopped it being completely perfect was the amount of very big, very disgusting, and VERY scary looking creepy crawlies and flying things - Yuk!!! - One of the few not so nice things about Uganda!!!) I had a go at digging, but I wasn't at all good at it compared to the kids (who've all grown up doing loads of digging on their families' farms since they were tiny children), so the kids told me (with some pity in their voices, it has to be said) to stop and let them do it, as they would be much quicker and much more effective than me!
Aerobics sessions, which were a lot of fun, and which the VERY pregnant Aunt Emily (the Project Director) took a full part in, jumping up and down with as much vigour and energy as anyone else, much to everyone's consternation!!!

The school term is now in full swing, as are all the White Eagle evening activities and staff sessions that I'm involved with. There are loads of visitors here, who are helping out with different activities, which is really wonderful - Anna and Lizzy (the 2 Mazungus on their gap year who are here for 4 months each) have been getting stuck in and are both taking more and more responsibility for leading different things, and doing amazing, and really growing into their roles here! And we've got some Australian girls here for a month too helping out, which is great ...and Thirsa is still here.... So there are 6 of us Mazungus altogether, and we've had some good times swimming, making pancakes, visiting the bakery (my favourite shop in Masaka!!!), and watching DVD's together!!!

We had a staff team-building day a few weeks ago, which involved a meal out (- Roast pork - it made me very happy! ), and playing/having tournaments on the Nintendo Wii and WiiFit - it was SOOOOOOOOO funny seeing the staff get really into it, and we still laugh about it now whenever we talk about it (- especially as one really quiet member of staff got soooooo into it when anyone else played - he was practically off his seat shouting out instructions and advice to them at the top of his voice - everyone ended up watching him instead of the screen because it was so out of character for him, and so funny!).

I've REALLY enjoyed going on the visits to the hospital over the past few weeks - it's SUCH a privilege to pray for people, and I just love it!!!! I'm also really enjoying the time I have (now that the school holidays are over) to pray, study the Bible, and prepare for the evening sessions, etc. - God's teaching me loads, including how to trust in Him when there are tricky situations with the girls (which there are every so often - what with them being teenagers, and teenagers from difficult and abusive backgrounds at that) that are really difficult to handle, and where I don't know what to do - He's teaching me to just follow Him step by step, as He works things out. - So that's cool!

Kitibwa gets cuter by the day!!! He now runs everywhere (-walking is just too slow!), and he has the most gorgeous smile ever! He also understands a lot of what we say, including "No" and "Come here", so is much easier to control!!!! They've just sorted out some day-care arrangements for him in the last day or two, and we all miss him LOADS since he's been out of the house all day (although it's much easier to get on and do our work and prepare for things, admittedly).

...Anyway, that's a round-up of my news over the last month. I hope that everyone is well!!!

Sarah is originally from Manchester, UK, and is currently our Girls Home Aunty in the White Eagle Project. She's very kindly agreed to us publishing her newsletters on our blog to give a taste of life as a missionary at River of Life

Who do you call for a blocked open-sewer?

2010-05-31T10:11:00.002+01:00

Operation ARK! Operation ARK (Acts of Random Kindness) has been a great success this year. For four days from the 2nd - 6th May 2010, scores of young people from the local churches in Nyendo took to the streets and defying the expectations of the locals, undertook a massive clear-up operation... I'll let Julius, Operation ARK Coordinator, make his report:

The theme for Operation ARK was “Faith by itself, if not accompanied by action, is dead!” (James 2:17). 13 churches from Masaka were represented, which was really a privilege to have them join us bless the community. 80- 100 youth turned up everyday during that week to bless the community and impact it with the love of God.

This year we were privileged to be joined by people from England’ France, and Holland. We divided into 3 groups, one was to paint, the other to clean and the third group preached and prayed for the people in the areas that we worked every day. We had different pastors from different churches teaching on different topics in line with the theme, and then we moved out painting homes, clearing rubbish off streets, and giving out 50 'Boxes of Blessings' to people - food and other basic necessities - this was amazing to see them happy and exited. Amazingly, 19 people gave their lives to Jesus within those 4 days of Operation A.R.K.

The most exiting thing in that week for me was this blocked open-sewer that we found in Kitaka Zone Nyendo. Before Operation A.R.K had come in to help, people couldn’t do anything about it; it was blocked up to the level of 6 feet deep. All the men around made all these funny comments on how we were going to fail and not make it because it was so deep and stinking a lot. But thank God that we were able to join our efforts together and managed to unblock it and all the people were astonished and surprised on how we managed to unblock it at last. News started spreading out in the area on how the Christians managed to unblocked the filthy trench!

We can’t wait to see what 2011 holds for Operation A.R.K.
Thank you! Julius

There'll be plenty of pictures and video clips making their way onto this site over the next few weeks so you can see for yourself what Operation ARK has achieved!

Lizzy’s Letter from Uganda – Episode 3

2010-05-27T15:58:00.006+01:00

Hello from uganda! Hope everyones just as lovely as ever :) This week has been quite a hard one - the girls have all gone back to school, and its odd how much I miss them being around! But it has meant I have had the chance to take part in some different ministries...

On Monday I had my first day on the Hospital Ministry. We go around a local hospital, praying for the patients and helping out with food and medicine where we can. The hospital is government run but people still have to pay for their care, treatment. Also they dont get given any food, so patients have to rely on friends or relatives to bring them food.

The first thing that stood out was that there were people just asleep on mats in the hallways. The wards were also so packed, there were about 10 patients in a room, that in England would hold around 4! The first ward we went on was supposedly a recovering womens ward, but when we walked in the shock really hit me, a lady had just died, and had been covered up with a white sheet, but you could hardly tell there was a body underneath it, the lady must have been so thin.

Then we went over to a lady who was having breathing difficulty, she had liquid in her lungs, in England they would usually be able to drain the lungs, but here they dont have the equipment, so this lady will simply die. Then the first lady we went over to pray for, was so thin, she was virtually a bag of bones. I couldn’t believe my eyes, I just couldn't handle it, and I had to stay out side, it was to hard seeing all the suffering. I felt so helpless, and bad. But then I realised how the only way we can help and give hope to these people is through prayer, and I realised then why River of Life has the Hospital Ministry. What if someone was on their death bed, like quite a few of these people are, and they die without knowing God? At least we give them the opportunity to know Jesus.

On Wednesday, we went to Nazareth Children’s Home. One of the older girls there unfortunately hasn't been able to go back to school as she could no longer live with a family that had been supporting her. Last year she used to live with a family in another village. She used to help out around the house and was able to go to school in return. Now she is back at Nazareth Children’s Home and is helping out there - she can't go back to school until school fees can be found. It’s so sad, but such a common story.

Also one of the other children at Nazareth called Bridget, who's about 3, has bad scoliosis, and so her spine is twisted around her organs, which gives her a hunch back, and stops her being able to learn to walk. In England she would have been able to have a back brace from a very young age, or maybe an operation. She went to the doctors last week, because she hasn't been well, and the doctor said she has T.B, but he can’t give her any medication until August - if she still has it. But I don't think that TB can just go on its own, as many people die from it over here! So we are going to try and keep a close eye on her, and take her to hospital if she gets any worse! But also because they can’t do anything for her spine, as she grows, it could grow more around her spine, and end up suffocating her. It’s so heartbreaking holding a child knowing how ill she could really get.

On a positive note we’ve developed a new programme at Nazareth with the staff there, teaching the younger children who aren’t at school. It’s starting off well, although it’s very new for the children and they are finding it hard taking so much in! But we have time, and we are positive its going to help them :)

If you would like to help fund the new Nazareth Programme run by River of Life, or the Hospital Ministry, please email Rob

Lizzy normally lives in Manchester, and is currently with us for her Gap Year. She has very kindly agreed to post some of her thoughts about life at River of Life on our blog - cheers Lizzy!

Working together to help more of Masaka's Orphans

2010-05-25T01:17:00.002+01:00

Thirsa, one of our volunteers, has been battling against all the odds to put together a proposal on how we can help our friends at Nazareth Children's Home. What with power cuts, a stolen laptop and limited internet access, she's done wonders to draw up a plan, with help from Anna and Lizzy.

Nazareth is a children's home in Nyendo, providing residential care to 25 vulnerable children. They are primarily supported by the guys at Uganda Rural Fund, and we've made some great connections there over the years, supporting the feeding of some of the more malnourished children and practically helping out with chores. Over the last few months we've been looking closely at how we can help develop the fantastic work that goes on there.

With Anna and Lizzy, Thirsa has written up a proposal that focuses on regularly assisting Nazareth with practical help and a program to stimulate Early Learning Skills through structured play and interacion - so crucially important for children! Due to staff shortages, the children are not receiving the developmental input which is crucial in their early years, so by developing a team of local volunteers, including the White Eagles, we hope to help set-up a sustainable program that will have a long-lasting impact on the life-chances of some of Masaka's most vulnerable children.

If you would like to have a copy of the proposal, or would like to support this initiative, please send us an email

Nazareth and High School Musical - Anna's African Adventure

2010-05-17T11:33:00.005+01:00

Hello everyone!

As you know I have been going to Nazareth Children's Home two days a week. On Wednesday, Lizzy, Thirsa and I went and the children acted differently to usual. In fact, instead of crying for attention they were playing and laughing. We just watched and couldn't stop laughing ourselves.We are now going to implement a program to offer the children a chance at being able to develop skills they would usually use at nursery. We had to go slowly in order for our input to be accepted. We are very excited about teaching the children, at least, I know I am.

With the girls we have been enjoying evenings of High School Musical. I actually really enjoy it! I think I have been caught singing a few of the songs. We have High School Musical Three on now. I must say, it is hard typing in the dark!

The talk went really well. I did indeed talk about Surrender. Everyone there listened and participated.

Sadly, Saturday, when were due to go to the pool, it rained, very hard to say the least. However, it did give me the chance to perfect my Matatu skills, a card game that everyone plays here. There is no point trying to introduce any new ones, noone takes any notice! It rained again today so we played cards very often. I think I lost just about every game I played though!

I am not so patiently now waiting for three packages. The girls keep asking for chocolate too. I am growing impatient too!!!

The holiday program is ending soon. Sunday will be the last day of the holiday. I am impressed at how much some of the White Eagles want to go back to school. They really deserved a good break. On Monday, the usual program will start again and things, will become a little more relaxed I feel with more time to pray which I am really looking forward to.

Anna normally lives in France and is currently staying with us for 4 months on a Gap Year. She's giving us her special flavour on all things River of Life in a series of posts

Lizzy's Letter from Uganda - Episode 2

2010-05-15T23:28:00.006+01:00

Can’t believe how time has flown since I’ve been here! Hope everyone back home is doing well,

I’m still having a great time, I’m getting use to the swing of life out here, and the holiday club is still going well! Last week was so great!

Operation ARK took place, we painted peoples shop fronts, and houses. We moved rubbish tips from people’s doorstep, which wasn’t the most glamorous job, but it was great when people walked past saying thank you! And asking why we are doing it, so we could tell them about Operation ARK, and River of Life Church. We had a lot of people asking us for prayers, and people giving their lives to Christ! This was amazing to see. On the final day we went out into the community to give out boxes, which were filled with daily essentials, such as beans, bread, matches, oil, everything! Before we gave them out we went out in group of 4s, to find people who we thought needed the boxes the most, which was so hard, because, I felt everyone needed them! It was hard seeing how people live, we went into compounds where families of 4 lived in 2 rooms, which were so small, and simple, and so dark! It just hit me how different our cultures really are! But it was such a great week, Tim and Sarah have visited this week for Operation Ark, it was so great having them, as they really inspired and got the kids up ready for going out into the community with God's will on the hearts.

Nazareth is going really well! On our last visit, the children were all so happy, but instead of crying, and pushing each other around to get attention, they were all running around with huge grins on the faces, they all seemed so happy, I really think they are getting to know us more, which is so great! We are starting to plan some sessions with the children, like teaching them simple things like colours and counting, which we are all really looking forward to doing! Please pray that God will give us guidance as we prepare the sessions for the children, that we are teaching what god wants to be taught.

The other night, 2 of the lady upstairs' chickens were stolen in the middle of the night, even though we had our night guard on, (which me and Anna didn’t mind as they always woke us up at 5 am!) but I think this may have worried the girls a bit, as they feel more protected because of the night guard, but this has worried a few of them, so please pray that the girls trust in God for protection, and also that God does protect the girls home.

Lizzy normally lives in Manchester, and is currently with us for her Gap Year. She has very kindly agreed to post some of her thoughts about life at River of Life on our blog - cheers Lizzy!

Operation ARK, Lake Nab and a Party - Anna's African Adventure

2010-05-13T23:55:00.007+01:00

I have been having an awesome week! We have just finished Operation ARK. I remember telling you about the painting last newsletter, which was by far the funnest day! However, I also cleared rubbish and mud and such which was fun too; anything is fun with Uncle Julius singing and dancing! Many people got saved which lead to Auntie Thirsa and other people on the team going into a school! Recently, I was walking through Nyendo and people pointed at me shouting out Operation Ark!I know that I stick out like a sore thumb. What with being a muzungo, but still!

Everyone enjoyed a rewarding day out at the lake. The weather was beautiful by the end and swimming in the lake was gorgeous. I really wish we could go back. It was a good day! TO get there, we were in a truck that usually transports cattle and goats, it was one of the funniest things ever, even if I did need looking after! In the evening we watched Avatar which was awesome. I did intend to rest that evening because I was exhausted but I ended up cuddling various scared children at some bits of thefilm but that was ok. They loved it by the end and enjoyed all the explosions.

On Sunday, I was on worship for the first time!!!!!! It was a tad scary to begin which but guess what? I sang in Lugandan. St Mark's get ready for some very internatational worship! I couldnt have done without Lydia, another girl in the team she helped me with the Lugandan.

I found a party outfit in the end! The party was lovely and Julius obviously enjoyed himself! Gerrard's party was equally funny and we have decided that we need to invent another excuse for a party, just to dance all together in the church, it was so much fun!

The boys saw photographs of my family yesterday which they really enjoyed.

The holiday program had started again so we are very busy again! Yesterday we had a debate, or what was meant to be one, it just degenerated into who can shout the loudest. The kinds claimed that they wanted to develop their speaking skils but they really just enjoy being raucous!

Anna normally lives in France and is currently staying with us for 4 months on a Gap Year. She's giving us her special flavour on all things River of Life in a series of posts

Sarah's Story - burglars, chocolate and sewers!

2010-05-11T23:33:00.005+01:00

Hellooooooooooooooooo everyone!!! I hope that you are all well!!! So, the last month has been interesting...

First of all, we had two burglaries about a month ago (both were done by the burglar reaching through the window in my room - one while we were at church, and one during the night). We now have a night guard, and a guard while we're at church, and lots of extra security measures!

On a good note, though, since my last newsletter, Lizzy (a gap year student from my church in Manchester) arrived to stay in the girls' home and help out with the White Eagle Project and Nazareth Orphanage for four months. She came equipped with chocolate, "Friends" DVD's, a new DVD player, and presents from my church in Manchester! Yeah!!! It's really great to have her and Anna (the other gap year student who's here for 4 months) here, and we're having a great time!

The kids have been on holiday for the last 3 weeks, so life is REALLY hectic, but fun!!! We've got the holiday programme up and running, so my time is being taken up with doing dance sessions, aerobics classes, debates (which don't involve much debating at all, but do involve lots of ridiculous and hilarious objections!), group discussions, life skills sessions, games sessions, volleyball (watching and keeping score, you understand, not doing!!!), Fellowships, prayer meetings, etc., etc., etc. There have also been a few parties, swimming trips, worship events, and other things thrown in to the mix.

Last week, we had "Operation ARK" (Acts of Random Kindness), which involved the young people (including all the White Eagles) from the churches in and around Nyendo going to the poorer areas of Nyendo and doing things to bless the residents, including: painting houses (in rather garish shades of green and blue, mostly!!!), sweeping streets, cleaning and sweeping up the market area (very smelly!), clearing a rubbish heap (even more smelly!), clearing a drain (the most smelly of all!), and giving out "Boxes of Blessing" (boxes with basic supplies in, like rice, sugar, tea, etc.). It was soooooooooooooooooo much fun!!!!!!!!! There was much hilarity, alongside the hard work, and the atmosphere was great! I REALLY enjoyed it, and it was good getting to know the youth from the other churches, and great to do a hard day's work and see a difference at the end, and see the residents really happy with what we'd done (- at least, that's how I interpreted their faces, but they could have been grimacing at the smells created by unblocking the drain, etc!).

We also went to Lake Nabugabu last Friday with all the kids, as Tim and Sarah (an English couple who came for Operation ARK) took us. Tim volunteered here at the White Eagles Project for several years, and Sarah is his new wife, so they took us to the Lake to celebrate their wedding and the end of Operation ARK (which was Tim's idea in the first place and has been run by him for the last 2 years). It was wonderful, and everyone had a fab day!!! We all swam loads, ate loads, and, in my case, drank loads, because the Lake was really choppy that day, and I swallowed rather a lot of rather brown-looking water whilst swimming... but I haven't had any ill effects, so far! We finished the day by watching "Avatar", cinema style, in the boys' home - it was amazing, and a brilliant end to a brilliant week!!!!

Unfortunately, Jack the dog died yesterday. Jack (who was actually a lady-dog) had been the White Eagles' dog for 7 years - she was a stray who sort of attached herself to the project - and despite them spending months trying to get rid of her initially, she was much loved in the end. She will be remembered for her affection (she always walked the kids to the nearby schools, or to and from the girls' home/church), as well as for her promiscuity (- she had puppies every year she was here practically!). The kids held their own funeral today, which was half tongue-in-cheek, and half serious - it was both funny and solemn at the same time!!!

We've got a week and a half left of the holiday, then the kids go back to school. At the moment, it is well and truly grasshopper season, and they are all over the place (there were about 30 flying and hopping about the toilet at the office today - it was a scary experience using it, as they are huge compared to English grasshoppers, and they kept flying or hopping onto me whilst I was in there!!!) The kids catch loads everyday, and then fry and eat them. Today, I had a lesson from some of the younger kids in de-legging, de-winging, de-tailing and de-antennaeing(!) a grasshopper!!! I never realised how soft and squishy grasshopper bodies were until I kept squashing them by mistake today when I wasn't gentle enough de-winging them!!!

Sarah is originally from Manchester, UK, and is currently our Girls Home Aunty in the White Eagle Project. She's very kindly agreed to us publishing her newsletters on our blog to give a taste of life as a missionary at River of Life

Operation ARK & Kids Club - Anna's African Adventure

2010-05-04T09:04:00.011+01:00

Hello there!

We had the first day of Operation Ark today. We painted the outsides of shops and buildings! I feel I got more paint on me than the house but we had so much fun, even if I was picked on a little! Today I think I shall be sweeping streets which will hopefully be less messy!

I had a lovely day off on Friday. We went to the bakery and bought various different treats. For lunch we enjoyed a mixture of various different cakes and samosas! Yummy!

Uncle John, gave me some disappointing news, that my package has not arrived yet! Hopefully it will be here by next weekend. I can't wait!

We had our first Kid's Club session on Saturday. It went well. We are learning from our first session on how to improve and already have ideas. If you have any good craft ideas, which are easy then please do send them.

I am thinking about talking about Surrender on Monday to the White Eagles. However, I am in no way sure that it is from God but I think I should step out in faith. Any words of encouragement, feel free to send those too!

Anna normally lives in France and is currently staying with us for 4 months on a Gap Year. She's giving us her special flavour on all things River of Life in a series of posts

With the World Cup round the corner...

2010-05-03T22:23:00.006+01:00

... what better time to update you on Ball-line Soccer Academy? Thanks in most part to the efforts of manager Walusimbi, Ball-line has been going from strength to strength. With the World Cup just around the corner we dream of a day when we might see some of our talented youngsters playing in such a prestigious tournament at the highest level.

The truth is, the ability is clear for all to see and with the right investment, there is no reason why some of our players couldn’t end up playing at the top level.

Just recently Tim managed to acquire over £1000 of football training equipment for the sum of just £130! Under the watchful eye of the Ugandan Under 17s national coach, we put this new equipment to good use to showcase the awesome potential of many of our young players. He was extremely impressed with our set up, the resources we had and level of talent on show!

Over 15 of our players have now acquired football scholarships to local schools, enabling them to receive a proper education, as well as working on their football! A handful have even been scouted for possible futures on the international stage, representing their country in their age group.

With 3 titles under our belt already in 2010, Ball Line Academy is struggling to find competitive opponents these days, and are looking further a field to places like Kampala to find teams that can match us and help challenge our abilities.
We are all excited about what the future holds for Ball Line Academy, especially as manager Walu progresses in his training qualifications and rubs shoulders with some of the most influential people on the Ugandan football scene. In a recent conversation Walu smiles and says, “The future is bright, some of these boys are seriously impressing important people at a young age, even at 8 or 9 years old! Every where we go Ball-Line Academy is on people’s lips! If we can do that with the few resources we have now, imagine what we could do when we get serious investment into our academy!”

To find out more about Ball Line Academy, please send us an email.

Lizzy's Letter from Uganda - Episode 1

2010-04-29T11:20:00.005+01:00

Welcome to my first ever blog post!!!

And so far I've had 4 mosquito bites, seen 4 cockroaches round the house, got sunburnt, and had most of one day with no electricity!

Hope everyone back home is happy and well.

I’ve nearly finished my first week, and it has gone so fast! It’s been great though, these last few days I feel like I’m settling in, all the girls are so lovely, and have made me feel so welcome!

Because the girls have been on school holidays, we have spent most of our days down at the boys home, doing activities like discussions, games, aerobics, worship, which have all been fun.

On Sunday we all went to church, which was lovely, Pastor Duncan asked me to come up to the front and say a few words, I didn’t really know what to say! But then they prayed for me which was great. But everyone at church was really friendly also!

Yesterday I had my first day at Nazareth, which is a local orphanage that River of Life supports. Me, Anna, and Thirsa are going to start making more connections with Nazareth, so we can help there a few days a week, help to communicate and play with the children. As soon as we got there the kids were all longing for our attention, and trying to grab our hands. We helped bathe some of them them and put nappies on them, and played with them, they were all so sweet, I’m looking forward to getting to know these lovely children! One of the little girls fell asleep on me when I was giving her a cuddle, and I just can’t stop imagining how much her mum must have suffered to have abandoned her. It's heart-breaking.

Lizzy normally lives in Manchester, and is currently with us for her Gap Year. She has very kindly agreed to post some of her thoughts about life at River of Life on our blog - cheers Lizzy!

School Holidays and Grasshoppers - Anna's African Adventure

2010-04-27T00:11:00.006+01:00

Hi everybody!

Right now we are in the middle of the holiday program, spending lots of time at the boys home. I love being able to get to know the boys, getting on well with them, they are lots of fun and I have already heard a few stories. I was suprised at how open they are and love the fact that they feel they can tell me!

I have had many an interesting experience, including a gheko in my room, more than one in fact! I have also tried grasshoppers, bet you you didn't think I'd do that! On Friday, I went to Kisakye and Teddy's school to go and collect their report. They did really well and praying payed off. Kisakye told us that 'praying with Auntie Anna made a miracle.' On arrival at the school, the children were amazed that a white person was there! I had a crowd of amazed children follow me around the school. The girls are now famous I am sure. I also went to Kellen's school to meet her best friend which was equally lovely!

The girls (and staff at that), love galaxy chocolate and are looking forward to another package due to arrive with some more in. Mum has said she will post some more for the girls- thank you so much. Neeedless to say that I have no galaxy left what so ever!

Recently, I made Chapatis with Robinah and Nakawuki which was lots of fun. I always look forward to them and spending time with those two girls was lovely. We chatted and laughed together and I am due to make more with them next time. I can't wait.

Lizzy has arrived and has settled in well. I am enjoying spending time with her and setting up various different programs together. We went to the market with the girls today to buy clothes. It puts things in persepective for me was they rarely get new clothes. I found it hard to deal with the haggling and the overcrowdedness of the place but the girls are all very excited about their new clothes and I am sure I will see many of them in the days to come.

I am a little stuck! The Girls from the girls home, so all of us, have been invited to two parties and I have no party clothes! I have no idea what to wear, at all! Uncle Julius has requested me to sing at his graduation party. Speaking of singing, I sang at church on Sunday. It was very impromptu and have not had to sing and Lugandan songs yet. I can only sing 3 and understand at the moment so I am a tad worried about that.

Anna normally lives in France and is currently staying with us for 4 months on a Gap Year. She's giving us her special flavour on all things River of Life in a series of posts

Highs and Lows of Anna's African Adventure

2010-04-14T09:29:00.003+01:00

Hello everybody!

Things have been eventful to say the least! Loads of amazing and awesome and lovely things have been going on and other things have been less lovely!

Having Ben and Sarah (some visitors from Leeds) here has been SUCH a blessing. We prayed around the girls which was a very powerful moment leading up to quite drastic ending!

People have ben SO encouraging affirming that I am here for a reason. The project director, Aunt Emily said that she was so excited about me being here because God showed her how annointed I was in so many different areas. I shared my testimony with the girls about my experience of God's love and healing and I was told how anointed I was with speaking and teaching. I will actually be running a kid's club whilst the older kids have Youth Group. I am very excited about that! We will be watching clips of the Prince of Eygpt, which I love, but is so rich in things to talk about!

All week we have been praying for protection and sending curses to dry and dusty places! The result was that we have been burgled twice since Sunday. A witch dr has been seen near the girl's home. The two cannot be separate! Aunt Thirsa's laptop was stolen with material for the Kid's Club and the Cell Groups! We ARE however persevearing because we are MORE than conquerors in Christ! However, we are in the middle of a spiritual battle! My main concern is that the girls' will no longer feel secure in the home, which is something they desperately need. Needless to say none of us have slept very much.

I am however still loving being here. The Muzungu's have introduced a new rule that you have to hug us as soon as you enter the door. A rule which has caught on well. The house is now a Manchester United supporting house, which both Sarah and I being, as you can imagine, ardent supporters are very pleased with. Liverpool football shirts and looked down upon and are, I am sad to say, often worn amongst a few of the girls!!!!!!

Anna normally lives in France and is currently staying with us for 4 months on a Gap Year. She's giving us her special flavour on all things River of Life in a series of posts

Sarah's Story - hot running water and grasshoppers!

2010-04-13T23:50:00.004+01:00

Hello everybody, I hope that this post finds everyone well! I'm going to try to keep it shorter than my previous posts... So here goes....

I think I told you in my last newsletter that I was looking forward to seeing my Mum and Dad at the beginning of March... Well, they arrived safely, and I had a WONDERFUL time!!!!!!! It was so lovely to show them the places I'm going to, the things I'm doing, to introduce them to all the kids and staff, and to show them why I'm so passionate about this place!!!!! They had a great time, and we even had power nearly the whole time they were here, so we got our quota of 10 or so cups of tea a day every single day!!! We lived in luxury for a week, and stayed in a hotel in Masaka (- we even had hot running water!!! - I felt the most clean I've been since I came to Uganda! - it was fantastic!), and I had a nice rest and felt very refreshed and invigorated after my short break. (- And they brought me lots of chocolate, which did my soul good - hee hee!!!). So it was just great!!!

Other than that, life here has continued in much the same routine - looking after Kitibwa, staff training and staff meetings, activities with the kids in the evenings, youth group, hospital ministry, prayer meetings, and church. I'm really loving everything I'm doing, and have had some fantastic times with the girls over the last month - the girls' home has resounded with laughter on a regular basis, so much so, that the lady who lives above us has come to check if we're ok a few times because of the noise we were making! The hospital ministry (where we go and pray for patients and give out food, etc.) is a particular highlight of my week, as is eating chapati and beans and freshly made passion fruit juice on a Sunday evening!!!!!!

We've had a few visitors over the last couple of weeks, which has been great fun - first off an English guy came to film bits and bobs for a promotional DVD; then an English couple called Ben and Sarah came and helped with the White Eagles Project (they're youth workers in England, and they were absolutely brilliant as they did some staff training and all the evening events with the kids for a week); and last of all a girl called Anna, who is English (but lives in France), has come for 4 months... She's on her year out before Uni, and is helping with the younger kids here and at Nazareth orphanage. We have another girl called Lizzy (from my church in Manchester) coming out in a couple of weeks, also for 4 months, and also on her gap year before Uni - she'll be working with Anna, and they'll both be living here in the girls' home. So the girls' home is getting busy!!! I'm now sharing a room with Thirsa (the Dutch girl I've mentioned before).... And we're all getting excited as we're hoping to have even more visitors coming over the next few months (but not staying in the girls' home, thank goodness!) for various reasons, including "Operation ARK" (Act of Random Kindness) which begins in a few weeks. I'll write about it more in my next e-mail, but Operation ARK involves a week where the youth from the local churches do things to bless the local community, like painting houses, cleaning up rubbish, giving food parcels to the poorest families, etc. It should be AMAZING.... I'll let you know all about it in my next e-mail.

I've also had the privilege(!) of eating grasshoppers this month!!! They are considered a great delicacy over here, and it is currently grasshopper season (so there are loads of huge grasshoppers about), so I had to have a go! (They actually don't taste too bad if you can get the thought out of your head that you're eating a grasshopper!!!!!)

Anyway, I'll end my post here, in the hope of keeping it shorter than my last two!

Sarah is originally from Manchester, UK, and is currently our Girls Home Aunty in the White Eagle Project. She's very kindly agreed to us publishing her newsletters on our blog to give a taste of life as a missionary at River of Life

Day One of Anna's African Adventure

2010-04-06T11:22:00.003+01:00

Anna normally lives in France and is currently staying with us for 4 months on a Gap Year. She's giving us her special flavour on all things River of Life in a series of posts

Hello everybody, or should I say wasuze otya which is good morning in Lugandan.

I said my first Lugandan word yesterday: Sula Bulungi: good night. Everyone was very proud of me and pleased to see I was picking their language up, which incidently is beautiful!

It is very exciting that I am able to email you. I cannot ensure that I will be able to reply to you all presonally, but I will do my very best. For the minute, I am loving being here. I have never felt welcomed anywhere like I feel it here. Sunday, when I arrived, I walked into my room to find cards all over the floor which were made for me. They are proudly displayed in my room, on a very fetching handmade Ugandan set of shelves.

My first evening here, I was at the boys home along with all the girls and everyone knew who I was which was just lovely! I was told that everyone has been praying about my time here and I feel part of a family, a loving one at that, which I love! My name now is Aunt Anna. I really do enjoy being her!

So much has happened that I do not really know where to start! Julius, the youth worker-y person is also the assisstant worship pastor at River of Life church and he was hoping that I'd be a singer on a worship team and I am! He has asked me to join the worship team which is very exciting. I cannot wait to learn some Lugandan songs!

Yesterday, I really started to get stuck into River of Life and way of life. I went to the prayer mountain which consists of three prayer huts on a hill/mountain. It is the perfect place to wander, sing, pray. The view is absolutely beautiful. The huts are very strategically places: next to a which doctor's shrine. I remember when I was praying urged to ask God to keep is presence on those huts because of what they represent. They are love and hope next to death and we know that the victory has already been won! We commited my time to God there as well and I am so exciting to see what God will do in me and through me. I know God has changes to make in me too!

Just before going to bed last night, I saw two of the girls polishing their shoes ready for the next morning. So, I popped into their room and chatted with them. I went to bed feeling so happy. Just that little chat with those girls was enough to make me sleep well. We just laughed together, they showed me their things. After being here a whole day and seeing what River of Life does, after that little chat, I just want to be able to provide something of what they need, that something of Anna Thorley that does something- as long as it's what God wants, then I don't mind what it is. I just pray that I will enable God to do that, because He knows best!

Thank you and lots of love xxxxxxxx

What a month at the White Eagle Project...

2010-03-31T20:45:00.008+01:00

The 2010 Sponsorship Challenge is well underway as we try to recruit more sponsors to help the children of Nyendo - if you know anyone who would like to sponsor a child, please get in touch!

In the meantime... March has been quite a month! First of all we had a small fire in the Girls Home - faulty electrics meant a light fitting started behaving more like a firework. The girls were petrified, but thanks to the quick thinking of Thirsa the electrics were quickly switched off and no one was hurt. The Girls Home is rented, and although definitely one of the best houses in Nyendo, in Uganda there aren't the strict standards for Landlords to keep to so we're at risk. The good thing is that our Fire Drill has been tested (and improved upon!) and everyone now knows how serious the risks are, and all the electrics have been checked out and fixed. Then poor Ernest, one of the White Eagle Boys, was knocked over by a car on his way home from school - he wasn't badly injured but did stay the night in hospital under observation. Roads and driving in Uganda are an absolute nightmare, but that incident has driven home how careful we need to be. We're thankful that noone has been badly hurt - it's a testament to our staff and to the White Eagles that these kind of things happen so rarely.

However, twice in one week's a bit much, and it's prompted us (along with other recent events) to get cracking with something we've wanted to do or a LONG time - set up the River of Life Prayer NET - a network of people praying regularly with and for River of Life, the White Eagle Project and particularly for Duncan and Mary. You can read more about it here, and if you're interested, please do get in touch by email.

As well as the accidents, there's more positive news. Mercy and Jonah and settling in well at Nursery (don't they look smart in their uniforms!), and we enjoyed a fabulous visit by Sarah's parents for a week. As it's school term time the staff are getting plenty of training in, and we've introduced new practices that help the White Eagles develop. We're also working on a new Team Document that sets out the vision, our goals, our values and all the rules and procedures that make us tick along nicely!

Where is he now - Jjunju Fred!

2010-03-28T10:49:00.005+01:00

Jjunju Fred was one of the first to be supported by River of Life Uganda back in the 1990s - his is an exciting tale! We wrote about his fabulous wedding to Liz last year, so what's he been up to since..?

In October 09 Jjunju, after studying for a BSc in Computer Science at Makerere University and working for the British Council's Commonwealth Business Solutions on their ZIPP Program, was one of only six people to be accepted by the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) for a fully-funded PhD in Electrical Engineering - rock on Fred! He's found studying there pretty demanding, but has risen to the challenge. I caught him on skype today, and asked him what he thought of KAUST:

KAUST is a house of wisdom where minds from all over the world meet and interact to apply science and technology to solve global problems... Sometimes (to be honest) it's a little boring, because we only are studying and eating (!) But all I can say is I thank God for giving me this golden chance to part of KAUST - it is a global community with a diverse culture.

So in one breath he's solving the world's problems, and in the next he's saying it's a little boring...! Anyway, Jjunju is working on a research project on Visible Light Communication and will become a Visiting Scholar at Oxford University this summer!

He was orphaned at the age of 14, but through the love and care of Duncan and Mary, and all the people who gave so generously to get him through school and university, his is a real rags to riches story. A man of many words, but little punctuation, he has this to say:

First and foremost I would like to thank God for giving me all these opportunities and then helping me through out this journey till this point to be successful in what ever I do and I would like to really thank all who sponsored me through my studies up to this point - thank you very much for giving me so much and for your immense faith and confidence you entrusted me with for this continuous unfathomable support you gave me through out my studies and my research work!

And we'd like to add our thanks to everyone that has supported Fred over the last 15 years! He's now not only standing on his own two feet, he's standing on the shoulders of giants...

Raising up the leaders of tomorrow!

2010-03-22T13:34:00.001Z

This is terrifically exciting - this month we saw the first one-day training conference for future Cell Group leaders! Developing Cell Groups has been part of our core vision for a long time, and it's so exciting to see it happening thanks to the hard work of Thirsa, Waiswa and the team.

The aim is to raise up Christian leaders who will disciple others, help others grow in their relationship with God and to reach out to the community as a cell group. The Conference combined future leaders from River of Life and students from local schools, who will form Cell Groups in their schools. We had four training sessions throughout the day, and delegates came up with ideas of how to reach out with their cell group to others to show the love of Christ. Ideas from the students included cleaning up other students' rooms, helping the cooks with doing dishes, praying for other students etc...

We hope to launch the cell groups on May 1st! There'll be ongoing guidance and training sessions to the future cell group leaders to equip them to lead a cell group effectively. It's all about helping each cell group member to start walking in the First Commandment and the First Commission!

If you would like to know more, to support the ministry, or to receive a copy of the Cell Group Ministry Proposal, please email Rob.

Prayer Mountain - Rekindling the fires of Revival!

2010-03-12T21:32:00.001Z

Prayer, fasting and intercession are central parts of our life at River of Life Church. We have had a vision to establish Masaka Prayer Mountain for over 20 years, and very excitingly, we believe we are now finally moving forward!

The vision is for the fires of Revival to be rekindled in East Africa and beyond. We know this can only be achieved through a lot of prayer. Uganda and East Africa is in a desperate mess - full of witchcraft, physical poverty and enormous injustice. And yet Uganda is a country where the vast majority claim to be Christian. It is clear that there is a lot of nominalism, and we need to pray, disciple, and teach people to lead righteous lives that glorify God.

If you'd like to know more about this Vision, and to receive a leaflet explaining it all, please email us

It's time for Operation ARK once again!

2010-03-04T16:35:00.008Z

Watch the Operation ARK 2010 Promo on our website!

Remember the amazing Operation Acts of Random Kindness (ARK) where we gather together the youth of Nyendo and Masaka for a week long programme of social action in some of the poorest areas of MAsaka? Well, it's coming to town again! In May we hope to bring together 100s of Christian youth from across the churches in an act of unity to help bless the poorest in our community. Faith without action is dead, and we believe we must show the love of God to the poor through deed as well as word.

When we launched in 2008, 20 young people, almost exclusively from River of Life Church took to the streets of Mabera, a notorious local slum. In 2009, 109 young people from six different churches in Nyendo joined in the action for Kakyafu, a local area which when translated into English literally means 'rubbish'.

You can read all about last years efforts here on Tim's, the Operation ARK Coordinator, blog

We also need to help raise £1,200 to make it happen - so if you would like to donate, please visit our JustGiving Fundraising page. Every penny helps!

Sarah's Story - Wii, nappies, and pit latrines!

2010-03-04T00:09:00.002Z

Hello everybody!!! I hope that everyone is well! I'm doing great! It's been just over a month since I last wrote a newsletter, and I've been keeping very busy!!!......

The kids all went back to school at the beginning of February, and so my role changed a bit. I'm running the evening programme for the girls' home (which consists of a fellowship/Bible teaching on a Monday, Life Skills on Tuesdays, MDD (music, dance and drama... which is actually just dance at the moment, because I'm doing it!) on Wednesdays, a fellowship led by kids on Thursdays, and Games on Fridays). I'm really enjoying teaching the girls different kids of dancing, and they seem to enjoy it too, as they often ask me to go through dances with them on other days too. The "Games" night on Fridays usually consists of playing on the Wii - I brought my Nintendo Wii with me, and we have absolutely hilarious evenings having tennis tournaments, bowling competitions, skiing or snowboarding, etc. Sometimes we're so loud in our laughing and cheering that I worry that we'll get told off by our neighbour above, but it's really good to see the girls having so much fun!!! I'm afraid to say, as well, that they're getting much better at it than me, and I have been beaten on several occasions now!... Oh well!!!

During the days, I have lots to do... We have twice weekly staff meetings, and Thirsa (the Dutch girl) and I do staff training at these. I always feel a bit silly doing staff training, as I'm not sure that I've got much to teach them, but they all seem to be ok with what I'm doing so far, so that's good. I'm also the secretary at the staff meetings and any other meetings we have, so spend a lot of time typing up the minutes (some meetings go on for 4 hours(!), but the good thing is that we have an absolutely amazing meal after each staff meeting, which helps you to endure the long meeting, although my stomach often complains loudly if the meeting goes on past 2.30pm!).

I also try to prepare the trainings, the evening sessions, and pray during the days. However, most of my time over the last month has been taken up with looking after the one year old little boy, Kitibwa, who lives in the girls' home... This is no easy feat!!! He eats absolutely anything he finds - whether it be paper, mud, stones, dirt, dead wasps and lizards, etc, etc, and I have to constantly watch him, and scoop things out of his mouth - and he has very sharp teeth, and bites my finger whenever I try to remove things! And he poos more often than any baby I've ever met before!!! I spend the whole day changing his nappy! I've had to learn how to put on the toweling nappies that they use here... There were a few disasters initially - the nappies kept on falling off, because they don't use nappy pins to secure them in place, and I hadn't quite got the knack - but I'm a pro now!!! He's absolutely gorgeous - he has the biggest toothy grin ever, and gorgeous eyes. He's just learning to walk, and managed to walk 5 tottering steps yesterday, to great applause!!! (- It was more of a controlled lunge towards me, actually, but I'm counting it as walking!) Looking after him doesn't leave me much time to do anything else at all, and I am now in awe of all mothers, and I REALLY don't know how anyone manages with more than one child!!!

I've been visiting the local hospital each Monday afternoon, too, as part of the church's Hospital Ministry - we pray for the patients and give them food, etc. I've also had the chance to do little bits of physio as I've been going around praying for the patients - I've taught some breathing exercises to patients with TB, and given a few range of movement exercises to burns victims, as well as the accident and trauma patients. I'm really enjoying it.

I've visited some of the local schools that our girls go to, also. We go to see how our girls are getting on and check that there are no problems, and I'm pleased to say that all the schools have given very positive feedback so far. It's been really nice, actually, because ever since I got here, I've been asking loads of people to pray for the girls' home and in the last 2 weeks we've seen a great improvement.

One of the things that has left a deep and lasting impression on me this month was when there was no water for a few days in the whole of Masaka (where I live). It made me appreciate being able to wash my hands and flush a toilet so much!!! We had to use a pit latrine... This was not fun!!! The pit latrine stank - it was disgusting. And it was so dark as well, especially in the evenings - I thought I would be clever and take my head torch with me so I could at least see a little bit... this was a big mistake, because when I switched it on, I saw that there were loads of giant cockroaches all over the walls and floor! Eurgghh! - Blissful ignorance would have been better, I think!!! We also had to visit the pit latrine in groups of 5 or more when it was dark, as the latrine is on a banana plantation just behind the compound where I live, and apparently "Night Dancers" like to frequent banana plantations at night - "Night Dancers", I found out, are kind of witch doctors who get high on drugs and alcohol, then dance around naked - and they are not very pleasant if you meet them.... luckily for me, we didn't come across any!!! While the water was off, we didn't even have enough water to bathe or drink. The girls and I had to walk with our 2 jerry cans each for 30 minutes to find water - we initially went to the local well, but the water had run out because there had been over a thousand people all getting water from it earlier that day who wouldn't usually get it from there.... so we had to march to a "water hole" instead (which was actually a big dirty muddy puddle as far as I could see). I had a lot of comments from people as I passed by - apparently they'd never seen a Mazungu carrying jerry cans and getting water from a well or water hole before! But we got our water and then boiled it to try to clean it, and then I had a wash, so it was well worth it!!! So that was exciting for a few days (not!) - I was so thankful when the water came back!!! I don't know if I've ever been so happy!!!

I've also learnt to appreciate some things that I've always taken for granted before... someone went to Kampala (the capital city) a few weeks ago, and I asked them to get me some cheese and ham - I only had a bit, but I do not think I have ever eaten anything so wonderful as the cheese and ham omelette I made with it - I thought I was in heaven!!!

I'm very excited at the moment, because my Mum and Dad are going to come to visit next week!!! We're going to stay in a local hotel so that I can get a proper break. I'm just hoping that we don't have a water cut as I'm not sure how they will like using a pit latrine!!! And I'm hoping that we have power every so often as well so that we can have the occasional cup of tea, because, (as anyone will know who knows our family), we Beales are rather partial to a cup of tea! Speaking of tea, my favourite thing to eat/drink at the moment is African tea - it's boiled milk with tea, lots of sugar, and a bit of ginger/other spices in - and I love it!!! If it was easier to get fresh milk, I'd have it several times a week... but I go to a local cafe on my day off and have it every Friday - it's my treat to myself!

Anyway, I've whittered on for ages now!!! I hope that everyone is doing really well. Thank you to everyone who's e-mailed me! It's much appreciated!

God bless!!!

Flying High! The White Eagle Project spreads its wings...

2010-02-23T12:15:00.001Z

We've had a really exciting, if challenging, start to 2010. Emily, who has been our manager since we started back in 2000, is now fully taking the reins as our newly appointed Director, and she's had a baptism of fire!

We've been looking very closely at how we can serve more orphans and vulnerable children in Nyendo and Masaka. Government statistics indicate that there are well over 3,000 orphans on our doorstep, and we are ideally placed to be helping more of them - we've got a good team, good experience and the appetite to take on some of our community's roughest diamonds.

So we've prepared a new brochure that outlines what the White Eagle Project is all about, and how you can help! If you already sponsor a child through us you will have received your reports, photos and letters recently, and you'll have already seen the 'Join the 2010 Sponsorship Challenge' brochure.

But for those of who you haven't seen it yet, you can view the new leaflet here, and see if you can become part of the 2010 Challenge to reach 100 more of Masaka's most vulnerable children! You can also read a previous post about it by clicking here.

No water and no power... what's a girl to do?

2010-02-22T15:09:00.002Z

Sarah's continuing to settle in as Team Leader in the Girls' Home, responsible for all aspects of their care and wellbeing, as well as getting involved in the Hospital Ministry and Youth Work. She had a bit of a traumatic week last week as she was introduced to the horrendous consequences of the unreliability of Uganda's utility services... I'll let her tell you all about it:

"One of the things that has left a deep and lasting impression on me this month was when there was no water for a few days in the whole of Masaka (where I live). It made me appreciate being able to wash my hands and flush a toilet so much!!! We had to use a pit latrine... This was not fun!!! The pit latrine stank - it was disgusting. And it was so dark as well, especially in the evenings - I thought I would be clever and take my head torch with me so I could at least see a little bit... this was a big mistake, because when I switched it on, I saw that there were loads of giant cockroaches all over the walls and floor! Eurgghh! - Blissful ignorance would have been better, I think!!!

We also had to visit the pit latrine in groups of 5 or more when it was dark, as the latrine is on a banana plantation just behind the compound where I live, and apparently "Night Dancers" like to frequent banana plantations at night - "Night Dancers", I found out, are dodgy characters involved in witchcraft who get high on drugs and alcohol, then dance around naked - and they are not very pleasant if you meet them.... luckily for me, we didn't come across any!!! While the water was off, we didn't even have enough water to bathe or drink.

The girls and I had to walk with our 2 jerry cans each for 30 minutes to find water - we initially went to the local well, but the water had run out because there had been over a thousand people all getting water from it earlier that day who wouldn't usually get it from there.... so we had to march to a "water hole" instead (which was actually a big dirty muddy puddle as far as I could see). I had a lot of comments from people as I passed by - apparently they'd never seen a Mazungu carrying jerry cans and getting water from a well or water hole before! But we got our water and then boiled it to try to clean it, and then I had a wash, so it was well worth it!!! So that was exciting for a few days (not!) - I was so thankful when the water came back!!! I don't know if I've ever been so happy!!!"

White Eagles excel in Primary Leaving Exams!

2010-01-28T09:09:00.008Z

You are not going to believe this - when Emily (the White Eagle Director) found out she was so excited she didn't sleep all night! One of the major achievements for children in Uganda, and especially for the children we work with, is to complete your Primary Education by taking the PLE - Primary Leaving Examinations. For many of the White Eagles the despair of believing they were never going to be able to achieve something like that is still a not too distant memory... so when we get results like this we shout with joy from the rooftops!

Because let me tell you, we cannot BELIEVE how good the White Eagles' PLE results were this year. We had 7 lads and 1 girl doing the exam... Ivan, Daniel, Earnest, another Ivan, Joseph, Gerald, Hussein and Judith. And here are the results:

Both Ivans, Daniel, Earnest, Joseph and Gerald ALL passed in First Grade - that's a distinction in our language - with Big Ivan getting some of the BEST results in MAsaka District. C'mon! And Hussein and Judith both passing very very well in Second grade - that's a Merit!

We are so proud of them all, so so proud and although there are big congratulations in store for them, we've also got to thank our brilliant, dedicated, compassionate staff, who let's be honest don't have the easiest job in the world looking after 30 odd children and all the fruitiness that can bring - so here's a big shout out to Emily, Julius, Ronnah, John, Margaret, Kayima, Grace, and Tina - and a big welcome to Sarah who has just joined us!

Sarah's Story - Episode 1!

2010-01-26T00:21:00.000Z

Hellooooooo!!! I hope you are all well!!! I've been in Uganda almost a month now, so I have LOADS of stuff to tell you! (Warning: this post could be a bit long!) Here goes......

I had the most awesome welcome when I got here from the kids in the White Eagle Project, which involved loads of speeches, lots of cheering, and even being lifted up in the air above their heads!!! The girls had also prepared a whole load of welcome cards for me. So that was cool! (For those of you who don't know, the White Eagle Project consists of a boys' and a girls' home. There are about 30 kids who live in the two homes (and a few more who live with their families), aged from 11 months to about 19 years old - they are all vulnerable and underprivileged children (many are orphans) who are provided with physical, emotional and spiritual help.)

I'm staying in the girls' home, as a sort of House-Aunt. There are 7 girls, a baby boy, and another 2 Ugandan helpers who I'm living with. The home is nice, although some things are a bit different here... For example, I have bucket baths each day, and I had a little brown furry friend with a long tail visiting me every night for the first week. We managed to get rid of my rat room-mate, and a little lizard moved in (which I don't mind so much, as long as it doesn't crawl on me at night!). We also have an abundance of all things creepy crawly, and I regularly find cockroaches around the home, and there are ants everywhere! They don't have washing machines here either, so it's hand washing only... but all the staff pay someone to come and do their washing, which I think is a wonderful idea, so I'm doing that too! We have power cuts on an almost daily basis, so you have to seize any opportunity that arises to do your ironing, charge your phone, etc. The food here is quite basic and doesn't vary much - I have cabbage with either rice, potatoes, matoke (savoury green banana) or chips every single day for lunch and dinner. (The kids don't get chips - they make them specially for me because I can't have the beans that the kids have on those days because my stomach isn't strong enough - so I'm very lucky!) There's also occasionally a slice of pineapple or avocado, and sometimes the cabbage has other vegetables in with it. So life is somewhat different!!!

There was a team of Muzungus (that's what they call white people - wherever I go, little kids call out "Bye Mazungu!") here from England at the beginning of January, and we ran a week long children's holiday club, which attracted about 85 children each day. It was so much fun! We played games, did loads of art and craft, learnt action songs, did little talks, and generally had a fab time!

During that week, we visited a local orphanage called Nazareth Orphanage which the White Eagle Project kids support through doing practical things like entertaining kids, washing babies, cleaning floors, picking coffee beans, etc. I had visited it 15 months before when I was last here, and at that time there were two desperately ill babies, Babiyire and Josephine who were close to death. We took them to hospital and got them admitted, and then we came back to England (but with arrangements for River of Life to sponsor them so that they had enough food and medication).... Then when we visited the orphanage a couple of weeks ago, I saw them again....It was SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO amazing to see them looking fat and well!!!! I couldn't believe they were the same babies! It was really special! At the end of the holiday club week, we went to Lake Nabugabu (a gorgeous lakeside place where we take the kids every so often for a day out - usually when people visit who can fund it!) with all the kids from the holiday club and all the church members, and I had the awesome privilege of baptising a whole load of people (including most of the girls from the girls' home) in the lake, John-the-Baptist-style!

Since the team of Muzungus left, I've been settling into life here in Masaka. The kids are all on school holidays until the end of January, so we all spend the day at the boys' home (where there's more room), and we follow a weekly timetable. The timetable involves loads of different activities - discussions, debates, indoor games, outdoor games, life skills talks, and small group discussions (each member of staff has 3 or 4 kids that they meet with and mentor on a regular basis). In between the scheduled activities, the kids just chill, and I chill with them, playing cards or chatting to them about their lives, school, etc. I've been given some specific things to lead, so for the last few weeks, I've been helping lead a Youth Group on Saturday afternoons, giving a "preach" to the kids on a Monday night during their fellowship time, leading a discussion time with the kids on a Tuesday morning, giving training to the staff on a Wednesday morning, and doing a dancing session with the kids on a Thursday. We have staff prayers every day at midday, which is really nice to help us focus on what we're here for. I've also been having Luganda lessons for an hour each afternooon (Mon-Thurs), although so far my progress is limited! I go to church on Sunday, which is absolutely amazing (especially the worship - you should see them all dancing!), and can last anything from 3 to 4 hours! Friday is my day off, and I've spent it at Bwala so far (at the house where the pastor and his wife live) just relaxing, watching DVD's, reading, praying, etc. - It's lovely to do nothing after a hectic week!

A week ago, another Mazungu arrived - a Dutch girl called Thirsa, who is staying in the girls' home with us. She's here for 6 months, and is really nice - we get on well, and it's great to have someone to talk to from a similar culture to mine! (Before I came, I was advised to pray for another white person that I would be able to be friends with, talk to and share with, so it's really cool that she's come within a couple of weeks of me arriving!)

Anyway, I'm sorry if this post is too long and takes you forever to read!!! It's just that I'm very excited, and really enjoying myself, and wanted to tell you all about it!!!

I hope that you are all well, and that you're not too cold over in chilly England (hee hee!!!).

Loads of love,

Sarah

Sarah is originally from Manchester, UK, and is currently our Girls Home Aunty in the White Eagle Project. She's very kindly agreed to us publishing her newsletters on our blog to give a taste of life as a missionary at River of Life

Join the 2010 Sponsorship Challenge!

2010-01-20T14:09:00.011Z

Could you, or someone who know, provide sponsorship for one of the White Eagles?

This Christmas and New Year has marked the 10th Anniversary of the White Eagle Project, and what a ten years it has been! From the original 21 boys that we took off the street on Boxing Day 1999, we have grown to be helping 50 orphans and vulnerable children in Masaka, through our boys home, our girls home and where possible in their families. From 2010 to 2015, we want to significantly boost the number of children that we're helping.

Our vision at the White Eagle Project is to love and empower our children to excel in all areas of life so that they can grown up to be responsible and productive members of Uganda - which means we focus on quality education and quality mentoring, so that the White Eagles may become tomorrow's nation-changers - like Fred, Charles and even little Mercy!

Could you, or someone you know, help us help more children?

There are an estimated 2.3 million orphaned and vulnerable children in Uganda - we estimate 2,000 of them are on our doorstep in Nyendo. We know we can really help give these children a hope for the future - could you help it happen for Jonah, Mukisa, or Shadia?

If you would like to find out more about our Sponsorship Program, please send us an email by clicking here

River of Life's 2010 Holiday Club - Building the Body of Christ!

2010-01-16T09:07:00.005Z

On Jan 2nd, the fabulous team from St Bertelines in Runcorn touched down in Uganda. For the next 8 days they were to get stuck into all things River of Life, and in particular run a Holiday Club for the children of Nyendo. We were expecting maybe 50 children, but no-one quite knew what would happen come Monday morning... !

With Big Charles and Gerald managing registrations, we waited for the children to arrive... First there were 10, then 20, 25, 30... at this point I was thinking we should have got the word out a bit better! Then there was 50, 60, 70. Soon the Church was filled with over 90 'children' aged from 3 to 23 = plus the 10-strong team of staff and volunteers looking slightly alarmed.

But we rocked (if I may say so myself), and really set the scene for 2010 - River of Life is a church that exists for the community, for mission and to see peoples lives transformed. Themed 'The Body of Christ' we taught from Corinthians 12 about how everyone has a part to play in God's Plan, and everyone's part is important. With a drama skit designed and performed by the White Eagles, games, parachutes, balloons and teaching sessions, the holiday club was something that most of the children there would never have experienced before.

You can check out pictures of the week on our Flickr gallery. A special thank you to the team from St Berts!

A little piece of Runcorn comes to River of Life...

2010-01-14T09:05:00.005Z

We were immensely blessed in the first week of January to welcome a team from St Bertelines Church and Primary School in Norton, near Runcorn (which is near Liverpool). Musumba John, the vicar, Julie, the headteacher, Nicki, Rob, Josh and Sarah Beaney were the A-Team, and their passion and commitment was wonderful to see! They had spent the autumn term fundraising for the White Eagles with their very own 'St Bert's Build a Bog' campaign, and were able to see/smell for themselves the pit latrines that the new washrooms will replace. They also brought with them a fine collection of football shirts (a lot of Liverpool shirts - so there'll no doubt be a few more fans singing 'You'll Never Walk Alone' in the coming years), games, toys, and clothes to bless the children with.

But perhaps their single biggest contribution was themselves. They threw themselves into serving the children of Nyendo and Masaka with such energy. They ran a holiday club for about 90 children all week - children from Nazareth Children's Home, River of Life Sunday School including the White Eagles and a lot of local children. With art, crafts, games, parachutes, balls, balloons and all the rest they absolutely thrilled the children. Mzee Rob's 'Mary Poppins' bag deserves a special mention - but I'll leave the rest to put in this story...

Credit where credit's due - I'll give the last word to some of the staff who were so blessed to work with the team:
"They were generous givers to everyone - even if they were tired, they still gave of themselves fully and had the joy of the Lord all the time... they showed a lot of love to everyone - we can learn from this and ask God to give us more of His love!"

We hope very much that this will be the start of something very exciting as we build a link with St Bertelines!

Lake Nabugabo Baptisms!

2010-01-10T09:10:00.003Z

With 161 people crammed into the back of a lorry, van and 4x4, we started 2010 the best way possible - by baptising 40+ people at Lake Nabugabo. Generously funded by the St Berts Team, for the first time in YEARS we were able to offer the WHOLE church a celebration and party at Lake Nabugabo (normally we take just the White Eagles). And man, what a celebration it was! A feast like you'd never seen before, baptisms like you'd never seen before, games, fun, and for us Bazungu (white-people) sunburn - I was going to say like you'd never seen before but if you know me, you know how burnt I can get... Check out all the pictures from this very very special day on our Flickr Gallery - click here.

The Girls get a new Aunty!

2010-01-05T09:08:00.002Z

On a snowy, cold and slightly nerve-wracking morning just after Christmas, the wonderful Sarah put the final things into her suitcases, not quite believing that everything she was going to use for the next 12 months (at least) was tightly packed into the two bags in front of her.

Sarah was about to start a journey she'd started planning only a few months earlier - prompted by prayer, prophesy and a deep conviction of God's call on her life, she'd given up her job as a Physio, said her goodbyes to her family and friends, packed up her flat, undergone cross-cultural mission training, had many planning sessions with us, and booked her flights - she was ready to become the Girls Home Aunty.

Touching down in Uganda in time for a New Years Eve she never experienced before (all night prayer meeting anyone?!) Sarah has flung herself/been flung headlong into serving the poor of Nyendo. She's our Girls Home Aunty, responsible for the White Eagle Girls, our deputy-Manager, responsible with Emily and Julius for the smooth running of the project and is involved in our Hospital Ministry and Youth Club. She got a pretty enthusiastic welcome from the staff and White Eagles too!

You'll be hearing plenty more about Sarah on this blog...! For now, we wish her all the best and we're so excited about what God is going to do in her life, and in others' lives through her. Amiina!

Buy a gift with a difference this Christmas...

2009-12-01T17:57:00.007Z

Back by popular demand, we have updated our Alternative Gift List... this year, it's all about boosting the bog fund! As you know fundraising has been continuing apace all year to keep on building the boys home. In January, we opened the new sitting room, dining room, kitchen and store. And now it's time to build the washrooms and toilets! Our estimate for this section of the boys home is about £15,000. With all the fundraising that's been going on we're hoping to have raised about £13,000 - can you help us push it up to the target?!

Our vision in the White Eagle Project is for a qood quality home in the middle of Nyendo. Somewhere that some of Uganda's most destitute and vulnerable can call home, somewhere that can help us give a standard of care which will release the White Eagles to fly high!

So, please do download the all new Alternative Gift List here , go straight to our online donation page here and be inspired to buy someone a washbasin, a toilet or even part of a cesspit!

Time for a little swim...

2009-11-21T17:50:00.004Z

The 'Try'Athlon Team have finally finished their challenge! 12 River of Life supporters met up at the Manchester Aquatics Centre to see how far they could swim, most having not managed more than 20 lengths since before time began... Collectively they managed 13 miles, with 8 year-old Eva the star of the show, putting in a very handy 50 lengths at about twice the speed of everyone else. Others who couldn't make the Manchester swim did it where they are, with a particularly impressive 150 lengths from Kath Room the following morning, and the extraordinary exploits of Brenda Davies, who is training to swim 300 lengths - just shy of 5 miles - next week!

Most excitingly, the White Eagles themselves joined in! Emily, our Director, writes: Thirteen children and two staff were able to swim last Saturday and the rest of us were just giving them morale support - I didn't know we could actually have world champions in the White Eagle children! Eight children - Mujuzi, Nicholas, Ssemakula, Tony, James, Ernest, and Nakawuki - and Julius were able to swim lengths and five children - Judith, Daniel, Namatovu, Kisakye and Kevin - and Rhonnah swum widths. The 1st group swum a total number of 129 lengths and Ivan was the best and swum 30. The 2nd group that swum across did 20 widths. We were all shocked at Ivan's speed!

Who'd have thought it, the White Eagles swimming well over 2 miles between them! You can sponsor their heroic efforts by donating online here.

A week in the life of the White Eagle Project

2009-11-12T17:53:00.002Z

Julius, our new deputy Manager and boys mentor, has been with River of Life for as long as i can remember - his Mum Betty is an Elder and leads the Hospital Ministry and other Community Outreach initiatives. Here are some extracts from his first weekly report - it gives you a flavour of what life as a White Eagle is like!

This week 7 of our boys and 1 girl did their Primary Leaving Examination (P.L.E). On Tuesday evening we went to the school to pick them up. On their arrival, they looked exited and free as if they were out of Jail ha, ha! Every one was happy for them and they commented on how they believe they are to pass with 1st grades. The next day we surprised them with a welcome back home party. Charles arranged music for the evening and the food was delicious. In the afternoon we took them to the pool to have fun and also see who can join in the swim on the 21st of November.

Three of our kids attended a worship gathering at Masaka Pentecostal Church; the boys and girls gave testimonies this week on how the Lord has blessed them to be part of this project - they were really touching; we had a sports evening; we continued the staff training on physical Intervention and different ways to help and support each other as colleagues in front of the children; Kelvin started crawling; In Youth Group we talked about The Power of the Tongue and over 18 youth came to the meeting, we got 4 that came for the 1st time.

This week I visited Hope and Good Foundation Schools to see how the children are doing. The headmistress thanked us in general for supporting the school. She continued to appreciate the way all the kids have behaved.

Spread the word on Facebook!

2009-10-15T17:48:00.006+01:00

We're starting a campaign this autumn to spread the word about River of Life on Facebook. We're developing a fancy new Facebook Connect Gizmo that will help us easily tell all those hundreds of Facebook 'friends' most of us have by posting a message to our walls...

You'll see a little Facebook Connect button appear on the homepage, and throughout the rest of the site, and the idea is you just click on the button, write a short message like "I'm checking out the River of Life website" or something, and submit it to your wall... that then turns up in all your friends' newsfeeds, and they get a chance to click on the link and go check out the site. Ultimately we want to spread the word and gain support for the work :)

We've also got a Facebook Group you can join, and our own Facebook Page which I'm beginning to build...

Let me know what you think about it all, either by emailing me or leaving a comment below!

Latest newsletter is out!

2009-10-03T12:44:00.003+01:00

We've just produced our latest newsletter which you can download here. It comes complete with a sponsorship form for the 10/10 hike - where the White Eagles will be doing a sponsored walk in Uganda and we can all raise sponsorship for them!

It contains some of the stories you can also read on this blog, plus more including prayer requests, 'news in brief' and more about the 10/10 hike.

Please do download it here and share it with your friends and family!

Can anyone sponsor Daniel or Veronica?

2009-10-02T15:51:00.013+01:00

It costs on average just £60 per month to provide a home, an education, care, spiritual guidance, and of course decent grub for each White Eagle. We're looking for sponsors who can contribute any amount towards the costs for quite a few of the White Eagles, but we'll start with Daniel and Veronica!

Daniel is in P7 - the final year of primary school. With the all important Primary Leaving Exams coming up in December, he's buckling down to work harder than he's ever worked before!

Veronica is currently at secondary school. She joined us in 2008, we think the victim of a child traffiking attempt. She's wonderful - very helpful and kind!

If you can help, please get in touch by emailing us!

Pray for the sick with the Hospital Ministry

2009-09-25T13:39:00.003+01:00

Every Monday, Betty and Jjaja Sarah visit Mulago Hospital in Masaka Town. For those of you who have visited and had a chance to join the team, you'll agree that Ugandan hospitals are something else, especially if a road traffic accident comes in while you're there - certainly helps you appreciate the NHS. There are few medicines, and few doctors. You can wait days to be seen. Day to day care is not done by nurses but by a relative or friend - but of course many have no one to look after them.

Betty and Jjaja (Grandma) Sarah faithfully visit those who have no one, praying for them, preaching, cutting their hair, giving a small amount of money, or fruit juice or soap or washing their clothes. In the holidays, the White Eagle Children often join the team to help out - and of course any one staying with us gets involved too!

Love the neglected with the Prison Ministry

2009-09-17T15:29:00.001+01:00

River of Life Church has been working with other churches in Masaka to help and care for those in prisons - often the most scorned and neglected people in our community. Earlier this year, we felt called to put a fresh emphasis on this work, so now every month a team, led by Kayima, visits Masaka's notorious Prison. Conditions are appalling - mass overcrowding, people can wait years just to get to court, and they have to rely on relatives to bring basic things needed to live. Kayima says:

"So far we're going on well, we've found favour with God and the prison officers and the prisoners. The prisoners always appreciate the things we take to them, and we've seen 80 prisoners accept Jesus as their personal Saviour! Our prayer is to get a little more funding to provide for those that are in need like the new born babies and their mothers".

Big Charles goes to YWAM Uganda!

2009-09-12T14:53:00.001+01:00

Big Charles is one of our first - he was the ring leader of the gang when the boys were still on the street. In February he was the first to pass his A Levels, and in March he joined the Disciple Training School at Youth With A Mission (YWAM).

He's had some tough times, but he writes: "God can pick you up from anywhere... He is able to do wonderful things to those who depend on Him!" Although it was hard at YWAM at first, he didn't want to leave by the end - "When I reached the school I asked myself when the six months were going to end because I was missing home a lot. But to my surprise when the time came, I never wanted to go home..."

The first half of the course was devoted to studying, and then he was let loose on the people of East Africa. He'd never left Uganda before, but he says "God started changing me... and he also used me to change other people. I went to Tanzania and I managed to preach to different churches and the last church I went to had 700 people!"

Charles has returned to us grown in wisdom and stature! He's extremely useful to have around, and has now started his Certificate in Business Administration.

Join in with the 10/10 Hike!

2009-08-07T21:54:00.001+01:00

On October 10th across the UK and Uganda we're organising sponsored hikes to commemorate 10 years of the White Eagle Project! The White Eagles and all the staff themselves will be walking 16 miles from the church to Lake Nabugabo and back, and we're hoping that there will be a number of hikes organised by different people across the UK too!

So, if you would like to organise your very own sponsored walk, please let me know. We can give you all the advice and materials you might need, and you can get your friends and family to join in the fun!

To whet your appetite and encourage you to organise something if you can, the guys at LUXSON who do our website and have helped River of Life in so many ways have decided to organise a hike for the 10th October, but also a bike ride and a swim as well - the The Great North Bike Hike 'n Pike Try-athlon! It'll be spread over 3 months to maximise the number of people who can be involved (and give us a chance to recover). They've set up their page on JustGiving - check it out here. The events will all be in the North Wales / Manchester area on the 5th September, 10th October and 7th November, so if you want to join in the madness, drop me an email.

Do you know someone who can sponsor Shafic?

2009-08-03T21:58:00.003+01:00

We need a sponsor for one of our new lads called Shafic - or Nicholas as he's just changed his name!

Shafic's a wonderfully friendly chap who has proved to be really helpful and willing to get stuck in. Sadly he suffers with a mental health condition. Mental illness is rife in Uganda - you see it everywhere. The tragedy is that so many children and adults out in rural areas suffer such neglect and abuse because mental illness is so poorly understood.

We've been looking after Shafic for nearly a year now, monitoring his progress and making sure we can give him the level of care he needs, and the good news is that with the right medication and support Shafic can lead a perfectly normal life. It's definitely the time to see if we can get sponsorship to get him back into schooling or training, and give him the chance to fly high as a White Eagle!

If you can help or know know of anyone who might be able to help please get in touch.

The return of Timothy R Crow

2009-06-30T21:43:00.001+01:00

Tim has retuned to the UK! The guys in Uganda are going to miss him hugely. Tim has been our youth worker for three years, and what a three years it's been. From being the 'daddy' to the boys through to running community-wide football tournaments and social action projects, Tim has worked his socks off for River of Life, and we all want to say we MASSIVELY appreciate it! Tim's returned to the UK to get married to Sarah, and all things being equal, they'll be returning to Uganda at some point in the future...

Tim's last experience of Uganda was to have perhaps the worst bout of Malaria he's had since being out there, but despite being given the wrong medication numerous times, he finally got the right drugs and was just about well enough in time to fly last friday. I think he's been camping out at The School of Tropical Medicine since then...

Fundraising Update...

2009-06-29T21:51:00.001+01:00

We have a big challenge facing us to raise all the money we need to keep the marvelous ministries of River of Life going, and to increase our impact with the poor and marginalised of Uganda. But we're rising to it! I told you last time about Mark, who's run across the Gobi desert in China. He came in a very respectable 90th - you can see his official finish position here. There's pictures on that site too - it looked like the most incredibly hard endurance race! Mark's well on his way to raising his target of £2,500 - if you haven't sponsored him yet and want to, go to his Justgiving page.

And we've also had our Charity Quiz night on Friday 19th June, which went swimmingly well, and once all the money is in we are expecting to have raised £2,000, which is brilliant. The art work done by some of the older boys proved a big hit - you can still support this event by helping Ivan with some bricks by donating here

Coming up we have a Summer concert of Classical music and Jazz on the 7th July, and there are rumours flying around that some crazy folk are going to be attempting what they're calling a 'Try-Athlon' - Bike, Hike and Swim...

And don't forget the 10/10 walk - put 10th October in your diary - for the biggest sponsored walk we've ever done. We'd love as many people as possible to be involved - there'll be more details nearer the time.

Jjunju Fred and Liz get married!

2009-06-14T18:08:00.001+01:00

Jjunju is one of our first, joining River of Life back in the early 1990s and being supported through school and university - but we'll tell his full story another time. For now it's all about the wedding! It was THE event of the year to be seen at in Masaka's buzzing social circuit (judging by the number of uninvited guests that turned up!), and we celebrated the wedding of Prince Jjunju Fred Paul Mark to Liz in style!

First came the kwanjala, the formal introduction of Jjunju's family to Liz's family, hosted by Liz's parents. Apart from having to push-start the pick-up that carried all the gifts, the ceremony went really well. Jjunju was dressed in a barkcloth robe and crown befitting his rank as Prince and Liz wore a whole series of beautiful dresses. There was dancing, singing, eating, more eating and still more to eat, before we all left and got lost taking one of Jjunju's shortcuts, driving up a rough track which turned into a footpath (and leading a whole load of other cars into the same predicament...) trying to avoid Kampala's notorious traffic jams. Thankfully we had four-wheel drive, otherwise we'd probably still be there.

Then two days later came the wedding itself, a fantastically exciting affair at River of Life church! Everyone worked really hard to decorate the church and Duncan & Mary's garden, where we had the reception under marquees. Church was packed, Liz looked radiant in her wedding dress, and Jjunju enjoyed!

Of course, we wouldn't leave you without some photos of the happy couple - Check out our slideshow of all the photos here!

Come to the Charity Quiz Night!

2009-05-29T17:42:00.007+01:00

On Friday 19th June we're having our first ever Quiz Night, with comedy, a top DJ, an African Art Sale and even a chance to build the boys home (out of lego). It's being held at the John Alker Club in Flixton, Manchester - click here for directions

It promises to be a top evening of great entertainment, so come on down! If you can't make it, we're selling barrow-loads of bricks for £1, or 6 barrow-loads for a fiver, so you can still support the event! You can even buy them online through this special JustGiving page - click here. We're still fundraising to finish the boys home, with the next phase being the toilets and washrooms, and then the extra bedrooms and bed-sit for the house-mum, Mama Kat.

You can download a flyer about the event by clicking here. If you'd like to buy tickets, please email us by clicking here.

Acts of Random Kindness 2009!

2009-05-18T12:41:00.004+01:00

115 youth, 1 week, and a place who's name translates literally as 'rubbish'... it's Operation ARK 2009! Tim, our Youth Leader has just updated his blog with all the news after a very successful week of clearing, cleaning, feeding, washing - you name it, they did it - with the youth of local churches. Go check out the story here

Healing the divisions of the church

2009-05-04T08:41:00.002+01:00

This week something is finally happening that we have been waiting for for YEARS! We're all extremely excited about it, and full of hope of what could happen...

Back in 2002 Duncan started to pray into why there are so many splits in the church in Uganda - between denominations and even within denominations. Like in many countries first evangelised by Europe, the church had been divided in Uganda right from day one through Catholic and Protestant missionaries. But the famous East African revival of 1936 was also characterised by division. And then the first Pentecostal church which was planted in Kampala in 1958/9 through Elim, also split and another Church was established - Full Gospel. A bitter rivalry between the two broke out, and by 1968 Elim Church split again and Deliverance Church was started. God has worked mightily through these three churches in Uganda, but for the last 50 years, many churches in Uganda have experienced splits and divisions.

In prayer God revealed to Duncan that that first split in the Pentecostal church had brought poison into His Body, the church, and most, if not all, churches in Uganda have been negatively impacted. One of the effects has been that most churches are powerless in the face of the terrible cancer of tribalism and racism. And yet the church, with the healing power of the Holy Spirit, should be leading the way.

So back in 2002, Duncan went to the leaders of Full Gospel Church and said we need to sort this out - and this is why we are so excited! Because 7 years after that fist conversation, and 50 years after the division of the Pentecostal Church in Uganda, in the very church that it all started, Friday will see the last day of a 3 day conference of 300 church leaders devoted to "Total Restoration" - reconciling the past through repentance and forgiveness. We hope and pray that it will have an immense impact as our disunity is transformed to unity and the poison is drained away!

A new look website!

2009-04-09T16:45:00.002+01:00

As you can see, we've done a bit of a spring clean of the website! We wanted to develop some new features to help bring the work of River of Life Uganda alive for all our supporters and visitors. So there's a fresh new home page, with our priority fundraising appeal and the latest news headline.

At first glance the biggest change is the addition of our new gallery at the foot of every page, which we'll keep up to date with little video clips and pictures. We've also brought much more of the latest news on to the site, so that you're better informed with what's going on, and made it easier to subscribe to Crane Mail, our monthly email newsletter.

The thing I'm most excited about is is the new login section, which now shows video! We've put together short videos by the White Eagles to really show the impact your support is having in Uganda. Go and login and tell us what you think!

Actions can speak louder than words!

2009-03-31T10:27:00.005+01:00

James 2:17 says “Faith by itself, if not accompanied by action, is dead.” OPERATION ARK is all about taking the challenge of this verse and putting our faith into ACTION in a practical way.

Operation ARK 2009 is just around the corner! We started this outreach programme last year in May 2008 with 20 of our youth, and it's all about doing Acts of Random Kindness to bless those in our local communities, first and foremost by meeting their practical needs; painting their shops and houses, cleaning their streets, repairing their buildings, helping them with chores and providing food for the neediest families. The only pre-requisite for someone being helped is that they have a need. It doesn’t matter whether they are young or old, Christian or Muslim or even a witch doctor! Our aim is to show the love of Jesus to all that need it. These practical acts of kindness will show our communities the heart of love that Jesus has for them and will help open the door so that we can witness to them about our Lord and Saviour!

In last years Operation ARK we blessed the people of Mabera. Many people were shown the heart of Jesus, some gave their lives to Christ and we even have one lady, who after being blessed, has become a valued member of ROL Church! This year Operation ARK is bigger and better as we unite together with 3 other churches in the local area to hit the streets of Nyendo and bless the community! One of our focus areas for this year is Kakyafu which literally translated into English means “rubbish!” It is a notorious slum known for being filthy in every sense of the word. We hope to re-name it for Jesus!

In order to make Operation ARK as successful as possible there is various equipment and resources we need. Our target is to raise £750 before Operation ARK 2009 starts during the school holiday in May. Please help us bless the community and show our neighbours the love of Jesus!

Some of the things your money can buy:

A-Box-a-Blessing including food for a needy family - £5
Lunch for 50 youth - the Op ARK team - £15
A jerrycan of paint, a brush and roller - £12
2 brooms and a pair of gloves to clean the streets - £2.50

You can donate securely online here through JustGiving. Just let us know it's for Operation ARK in the comments field. Thank you!

Buy some bricks for the boys home!

2009-03-20T12:21:00.003Z

We're still working hard to build the new sections of the boys home. The sitting room, dining room, kitchen and store are complete, but there's still 6 washrooms, the bedrooms and the House Mum's bedsit to build!

So we're continuing the Alternative Gift List to help raise the money. You can buy Iron Sheets, Bricks, Bags of Cement, Windows, Doors, Toilets, Sinks for the White Eagle Boys, and get a beautiful certificate to give to the person you want to give a gift to. We can make them for any occassion - Birthdays, Anniversaries, Thank yous - anything!

Just click here to email us for more information - a link to download the leaflet and order form will be posted here soon!

The newest members of the family...

2009-03-05T11:31:00.001Z

We've just taken in an abandoned girl who was 8 months pregnant... i say *was* because this week she gave birth to a wonderfully bouncy baby boy! Tim's written all about it on his blog - check it out here

Kelen and Kelvin are doing well, and the other girls in the Girls House are really impressing us by getting involved and making Kelen feel part of the family.

It's quite a big deal to support Kelen and Kelvin as you can imagine, so if you would like to help, click here to get in touch!

Happy New Year!

2009-01-09T10:29:00.004Z

We're sorry we've been a bit slow to keep this up-to-date, but a new year is always a good time to make new resolutions, and ours is to get better at this! We returned to Uganda just before Christmas having spent 4 months in the UK, visiting friends and supporters, attending conferences and also taking a break at the insistence of our trustees.

Whilst we were in the UK our team here have done a great job keeping things running, but as you might expect we returned to a fair few challenges which have kept us busy since we got here.

January is a massive time of year for us. It's the main holiday - the equivalent of our summer holiday in the UK - the LMC Cup of Uganda football tournament gets underway (watch Tim's blog for updates on that), we set the budgets for the coming year and analyse the expenditure for the previous year, and of course it's the new year - a time to refresh ourselves with the vision, to renew our commitment and to plan for the future!

So, this month we have visiting us two of our trustees, Rob and Margaret - who are going to work with Emily (the White Eagles Manager) on all the finance stuff, Rob's wife Katharine, Rob and Katharine's friend Nick, Tim's friend Josh, our friend Florence, who is coming to get away from it all to write a book she's been working on, as well as our daughter Josephine and her husband and two kids - John, Jonah and Georgie!

We've brought 3 of the girls up from the girls home - Robinah, Judith and Veronica - to help out, and give them a chance to earn a bit of pocket money.

Visiting Nazareth Children's Home

2009-01-09T10:04:00.002Z

One of the ministries of River of Life is to regularly visit an orphanage about a mile up the road from us called Nazareth Children's Home. We've been doing this for about 6 months - taking a team of the White Eagles to help wash, cook, clean and generally help out. Yesterday we visited with 5 of the younger White Eagles - Kisakye, Kevin, Juuko Ivan, Ivan Mukissa, and Teddy.

Nazareth is run by an elderly lady called Josephine, with two helpers - Carolyn and Pross. Between them they're looking after what must be more than 25 kids, half of them under 3, on very limited resources. Babies are often abandoned there - in fact the latest arrival of a healthy looking 4/5 month boy was just yesterday morning.

I was last there in September, and 2 very malnourished babies, Babiriye and Josephine, were really struggling - you can read about it in the November Newsletter. Through some generous supporters we were able to get them on to a feeding program at the local Mission Hospital and we have been providing good milk for them since they've been discharged.

They're hardly recognizable from the babies we met 4 months ago - alert and healthy, it was awesome to sit and play with them. Hopefully they are none the worse for their ordeal and won't have suffered any lasting damage from being so malnourished.

But whist we were there, one of the oldest lads, who has been there for years, suffered an epileptic fit. All I could do was sit with him, pray for him, and hold his head to stop him from bashing it against the wall, and make sure he didn't put his fingers anywhere hear his mouth. Of course there is no money for medication to manage the fits - when you're struggling to feed 25+ kids you're forced to make difficult decisions on priorities.

We're praying about whether we can step up our commitment to Nazareth and provide more ongoing support. It's such a wonderful place - and the kids are so so friendly - it's a real blessing to be there and in the face of such challenges experience real joy.

The Big Give!

2008-12-02T16:50:00.003Z

It's been an incredible two days - a real roller coaster. Monday saw the launch of The Big Give Double Donation - an unprecedented initiative taken by The Big Give and the Reed Foundation to match £1million worth of donations going through the site. Every donation, up to a certain amount, would be doubled until the £1million ran out. With over 5,000 charities eligible, the offer wasn't ever going to last for long!

15 minutes after the launch, the response had been so overwhelming that the Big Give had to temporarily suspend the scheme - until midday today when it all kicked off again. Once the dust settles we'll know how many people were able to donate through the site.

With the current challenges facing River of Life - the double whammy of plummeting exchange rates and high inflation - this could be a really decent boost to our funds as we seek to finish the boys home, get more children at risk into school and take on more community care work through our Mercy Missions.

A big thank you to everyone who made donations!

Crane Mail is launched (finally!)

2008-11-30T17:42:00.003Z

After months of promising we're going to launch Crane Mail - the email newsleter from River of Life - we have finally managed to do it! We hope you like the result...

The December 08 Crane Mail contains links to download the latest newsletter, which was published end of November, as well as drawing attention to The Big Give, and our brand new Christmas Gifts Catalogue, which you can download from the website!