A Miraculous Bundle of Joy

The Baby Unit has been through a tough period recently, with a higher number of babies than normal not surviving. So when another mum wanted to be discharged early (which we have to allow here) with a very sick baby, the Baby Unit team very reluctantly agreed. The mother signed a "against medical advice" form and promise to come back in a couple of days...

Dr Sarah takes up the story:

When she returned, we were all alarmed to see that the baby looked really quite ill.

Over the next day, the baby continued to deteriorate. She needed to be assisted to breathe for up to 10 minutes at a time, had jaundice, extremely high blood sugars, and profuse diarrhoea. Now that we’ve been in Uganda a while, I know what that usually means. The game is up.

But there were people already praying for this little one, and Sarah also prayed that God would do something, because she was certain that the baby wouldn’t survive without a miracle. We all know that God doesn’t heal every time, and sometimes it’s mystifying why one person is healed, and another is not. But this little baby did indeed survive and is continuing to heal – she’s even breastfeeding well these days. Woo hoooo!

It's an awesome story of the impact the Baby Unit is having here. But it also poses a tough question. What about the next time a mother wants to take her baby home too early? It’s nearly always about lacking money, or lacking someone to look after your other kids at home. Whatever the reason, it’s rarely that the mother simply doesn’t care.

Dr Sarah has an answer for the problem:

From now, we’re planning to be stubborn when mothers try to take babies home who are likely to do badly. No, we’ll not handcuff them to the Unit... although, actually, that’s not a terrible idea! But we’ll insist that they stay, and offer to talk to the social worker of the hospital to see if any assistance can be arranged. Not always an easy task when the hospital is really strapped for cash, but we have to try.

Please pray for the Baby Unit team, doing a tough job in difficult circumstances, and thank God for this latest, miraculous little bundle of joy.

30 reasons to smile...

The White Eagle Project Monthly Reports for January and February are now published for your reading pleasure!

With 30 children heading back to school after the long holiday, there's plenty to smile about. But we've also had a Chicken Pox outbreak to contend with and some major Child Protection challenges to deal with.

Read all about what's happening with the White Eagles by downloading the report - please feel free to share with your friends, family, church, school or workplace!

Download the White Eagle Project Jan-Feb 2014 Report here.

The Battle for Prayer Mountain is Won!

The determined gang of land-grabbers who have forcefully tried to steal our Prayer Mountain land have been defeated - at least on paper.

Ever since buying our land for the Prayer Mountain vision (download a copy here) we have been trying to deal with claim and counter-claim from people claiming 'occupancy'. We tried to deal with claims amicably, but no-one could produce evidence of their so-called tenancy. What's more, there was no physical evidence of occupancy - like a house on the land - to back up the claim. And then last November, the 2 or 3 people we were dealing with over about a 1/3 of the land suddenly became 20+ as a gang descended on the remaining 2/3 claiming they had bought 'tenancies'.

Overnight, tree-seedlings were planted everywhere. It became unsafe for us to even go on the land - we were chased off. At one point our pick-up was badly damaged as rocks were hurled at it. We had been flung into a mighty battle for the Prayer Mountain vision.

Now, land is a big issue in Uganda. Barely a week goes by without stories in the papers of court rulings, evictions, and violence relating to land wrangles. Although the law is quite clear, the police are not particularly keen to get involved in civil issues and can be easily 'convinced' to treat even the most laughable claim as legitimate. This has enabled a small army of people to fraudulently claim tenancy on our land, present obviously home-made documents and generally get away with murder (not literally, thankfully, although they’ve threatened it).

We had to act, or we would lose the land. Cue petitions to the President, Police CID HQ, and everyone in between. For the last 3 months we've been in meetings with State House, Police, Lawyers... until now. Now we have the written report from last months final meeting on the hill held by the Director of Lands for State House (the President's representative).

The meeting had gone well enough. The Director had already reviewed all documents relating to the land - although 'documents' is too strong a word for the scraps of hand-written 'agreements' and fake receipts that were presented to her. She told the assembled claimants that they were trespassers, that they had no rightful claim to the land, and that they risked legal action if they continued to make claims. That caused quite a stir. After much shouting, gesticulating and arguing, the crowds slowly dispersed.

Ignorance of the law has very real consequences. Most of the claimants knew very well that what they were doing was fraud. But there were some who had bought fake 'tenancies' from fraudsters who are now on the run. You can not 'buy' an informal tenancy here (or anywhere I imagine) without the registered landowners permission of course - that's just common sense. But in the vacuum created when there is no effective rule of law, the loudest voice rules. And for a while, the land-grabbers shouted the loudest, despite us making daily public announcements to warn people. Some parted with hard-earned cash. In a country racked with poverty, it's outrageous that people can treat each other that way.

There's still some hard-work to do. The report entitles us to the Police protection we should always have been given in the face of aggravated trespass. Most of the trespassers have now given up - the threat of arrest and legal action being enough for them to realise that there's no quick buck to be made here. We expect the last few to give up this week, but probably with a bit of a fight. But then, finally, we can get the surveyor in, re-open the boundaries, fence the land and start developing the Prayer Centre, Church, School and Clinic - the vision that Pastor Duncan had 25 years ago.

If you want to be a part of it, get in touch!

Now, that's integrity!

What would you do if you were the only 'breadwinner' in your home, your father was blind, you didn't know where the next meal was coming from... and you were offered money to do something a bit dodgy, but would at least buy enough food for your family for the next few weeks?

At Synergy, building upon our Godly foundation involves consistently encouraging the development of Christian character in our lads. At the forefront of that is drumming home the importance of integrity.

This has recently really been put to the test in one of our players. Having reached the semi finals of the Tonny Mawejje Cup recently, we were drawn to face a team from Masaka Town. This is a team who had put a lot of money and resources into their push for victory, even bringing in professional footballers from around the surrounding districts, paying big money and giving their players promises of hefty bonuses for every goal they scored and match they won.

To try and give them an edge, they decided to offer our keeper a sizable amount of money, to play below standard and help them win. To put this in perspective it would take our keeper 14 Regional League matches for him to get this amount of money through playing for Synergy.

Not for sale: the Synergy First Team Keeper

Peter is in desperate need of cash. He's the main breadwinner at home due to his father being blind. Did he accept the bribe? No way! “See my manager if you want to give me that money,” he said, and from then on ignored his phone every time they called him. More than that, on the day of the match, he put in an outstanding man-of-the match performance to keep that team at bay with a clean sheet allowing Synergy to win 1-0 and progress to the final where we eventually were crowned champions! Now THAT’S integrity!!

Quite possibly the largest trophy we've won!

Tom discovers there's more to life than football...

Synergy is not just about winning trophies and the silky-smooth skills of sporting excellence, as splendid as that may be. Synergy is about using sport to help young people fulfill their God-given potential, and more often than not that requires some serious one-on-one mentoring.

This month Brian has been doing just that with one of the Synergy stars, Tom*. Tom's a great footballer, and in Uganda schools want great footballers to help make a name for them. He won a Football Scholarship for Secondary School, but unfortunately didn’t have the grades from Primary School to get in. In what might seem a magmanimous act, the school agreed to fudge it and let him in anyway.

The problem is that as Tom struggled more and more with his academic work, the message the school gave him was that as far as he was concerned, only football mattered. He failed the first year, but they let him in to the second. He didn’t need to take his studies seriously. No one cared what happened there. The only thing that mattered was the football - exams, integrity, academic achievement all went out the window. Tom began to value himself as others did - only as a footballer, nothing more.

Brian has been working closely with him and his mum. He’s teaching them that Tom’s worth is far greater that what he can contribute on the football field. His education is important and what's even more important is his integrity - he's beginning to realise that fudging his way through school just to play football is not doing him any favours. He knows, thanks to Brian, that he can really achieve something, even academically, if he puts his mind to it.

So where does this leave Tom? Does he continue on a so-called Football Scholarship where he's not getting the academic input that he needs, or does he go back and sit the Primary Leaving Exam again and go through all the proper academic processes. It's a massive deal to give up the scholarship and repeat years - not least because it means he will be unable to play football for any school team again. But Tom knows it's the right thing to do. He's beginning to see his value as more than just a footballer. And that's what Synergy is all about.

Synergy training - teaching teamwork, leadership skills and more!

*(Tom's name has been changed in line with our privacy policy).

Breaking news! We welcome two new boys to the WEP

This afternoon we've welcomed two new boys to the White Eagle Project, brothers aged 4 and 9. Their short lives have been unspeakably tragic so far, having suffered the kind of betrayal and trauma no child should have to endure.

Join us in praying that this is the beginning of something new, that their lives might be transformed, and that they might "fly high", higher than they have ever imagined. If you want to become part of this miracle-waiting-to-happen by being a sponsor, then please get in touch as soon as you can!

This is a seminal moment for the White Eagle Project. For over a year we've been working hard on meeting all the requirements necessary to complete our registration as an official Children's Home. We've worked on numerous policies, we've recruited new staff and done a huge amount of training, and we've developed the home itself, always on a very tight budgets.

But the hard work has paid off! We were inspected two weeks ago and although there are still a list of advisories to work on, the list is nowhere near as long as it was and they're very impressed with out progress and our approach. So much so they want to use us as an example of best practise, which is tremendous news.

It means that we can now accept referrals from the Probations Office, the local Government office in charge of looked-after children and Children at Risk, and we can step up in cases like those of these brothers.

But we couldn't do it without your support, so thank you! Please spread the word, and let everyone know we need sponsors. Please get in touch by email if you can help - click here. We want to be helping more children to smile like these ones!

Help us Celebrate Children!

At the White Eagle Project, our vision is to see vulnerable children 'fly high'! To do that, each member of our team needs to be an expert navigator to help them chart a route through the skies...

Imagine being confronted by the challenging behaviour of a girl who has suffered the most horrendous abuse from her father. Or a boy who has spent three years on the streets and knows precious little about love. Or the toddler, an offspring of incest, abandoned and ostracised by his family. Those are the kinds of challenges our team encounter each day.

Celebrating Children is probably the best course for training people to work with children dealing with these impossibly difficult situations. It was developed by an amazing charity called Viva, who are all about inspiring lasting change in children's lives. They help to establish networks of people and organisations who are working with children at risk, and inspire and train them to raise their game.

We're absolutely thrilled that the Kampala network - CARNAC - have agreed to come to Masaka and lead the training, and at a massively discounted rate. The training will be held at River of Life Church, and involves an intensive week every month for the next four months. There's coursework and exams and everything - it's the real deal!

Emily, Sarah and Julius did the course in 2011. It transformed them, and has transformed the White Eagle Project. We now have this golden opportunity to train more people! We want at least 12 members of our team - those involved in any children's work within River of Life - to get the benefit of this training. Although it's massively discounted (by nearly 75%) we still need to raise £720 for them all to do it. That's just £60 per person!

If you think you can help by funding half a place, or a full place, or even more than that, please click here to make a donation. It really is going to make a world of difference for our children. We will also be having people from other organisations in Masaka attend - Masaka is going to become a real beacon of best practise for working with children at risk!

Now, isn't that worth a thumbs up?