Dear Family, How are you?
We have several video clips attached to this blog hope you enjoy them!
We hope this letter finds you all well and at peace in Him. Many are wondering about the work in Uganda after Sister Gertrude passed last April. Be encouraged that her children as well as those that she has trained are carrying the vision of the school and the farm.
I have traveled to Uganda three times this year and would like to share with you: Is it challenging for the children and staff to carry on? Yes, are they doing it? YES!
Our goal this trip: Sister Gertrude asked Stella to take six older girls and train them so that they could help Stella care for the guests and around the school compound to alleviate some of Stella’s heavy responsibilities.
Our team: I was blessed with team members Ashley Flores, NEEPUganda USA social media coordinator, Carrie Duren, longtime volunteer and director of our All Nations Dance Ministry, Carrie also caters and has her own online bakery business. Last minute surprise was my sister-in-law, Angela Baron-Jeffrey, Assistant Pastor of New Hope Baptist Church, Dekalb Illinois and Director of Children’s Services at North Illinois University, specializing in training teachers how to teach children who have suffered trauma.
We started with taking Emmanuel, Clare, Stella and Mercy on a family outing to Queen Elisabeth Park safari. It was wonderful to be greeted by a lone baboon at the Equator and once in the park we saw more than 40 elephants click here for video. Stella had never seen the park, nor elephants! We were happy to share these experiences with her.
Once at Nyamabuga we shared our plan with the teachers and head masters. All were excited that we would train NEEP Jr. Ambassadors who would assist Stella and the teachers to training other students in Hand Washing, Caring for Visitors (table setting, serving and cooking), Basic Nutrition and Spiritual Foundation Principles. These principles included sharing about God, Creation, Sin and Jesus God’s great love toward us.
Volunteers from the US donated bars of soap, candy and gifts for those that answered the questions “correctly” and learned the “Hand-washing Song.” NEEP Jr’s Ambassadors from the US sent Nyamabuga students a video, click here for video and challenged Nyamabuga to a return video, click here for video response. All students and teachers who passed the course received certificates and 20 received aprons.
Stella has special aprons for her newly trained team who will help her when she takes care of the visitors. October 15th is “Hand-washing Day” so we thought this would be a great time for the challenge.
The farm is doing very well, we enjoyed fresh passion fruit juice. The secondary school building is pushing forward. Those from NEEPUganda are making bricks, click here for video and we have a clip of Sister Gertrude’s final structure, click here for video. Emmanuel states that the grain mill needs some additional things to bring enough electricity so that it can run all of the time. He will also be getting us a list of those items soon. Please pray for favor, Sister Gertrude’s son Emmanuel Mwesigye has applied for a Visa to come to the United States, his appointment is October 13. We will keep you posted re the response.
Thank you for your continued support.
Teresa Skinner