On the new River of Life Farm

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

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!

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

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?!

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

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?

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...