Operation ARK hits the streets once more!

May saw Operation ARK reach its fifth anniversary, as Tim and Gerald ran around like headless chickens organising over 100 youth from local churches, hitting the streets of Nyendo and Masaka...

Ready for action!

The point? To clean the filth, spruce up people’s houses and shops with a lick of paint, and give out boxes of food to some of the neediest families. Once again we were very well received, although having arranged with the Masaka town clerk to clean the centre of town on one afternoon, we discovered he had become worried about the possibility of publicity about “local volunteers doing what paid street cleaners should be doing”, and in a fervour of activity organised his staff to sweep, scrub and polish as if the Queen was about to visit, on the very morning before we arrived!

We have since decided that any time we feel the town is looking a bit shabby, we will simply tell the town clerk we want to come the next day with our army of youth to clean, safe in the knowledge that in a fit of panic he will then quickly mobilise his street cleaners to do it instead!

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

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

Who do you call for a blocked open-sewer?

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 2

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

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!

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

It's time for Operation ARK once again!

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!

The return of Timothy R Crow

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...

Acts of Random Kindness 2009!

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

Actions can speak louder than words!

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!