Team 14 news....

A lazy late start today was appreciated by all..  Breakfast, western style, cereal and toast, than getting ready for church.
Church was an African celebration of music, movement and prayer, followed by a sermon by our very own AB.....  on love.
Corey, Helen and Rob spent some time in with the kids in Sunday school teaching them songs and giving them  stickers...
Lunch at Suubi house was followed by relaxation for some, playing with kids at Village of Hope for others and then some went for a walk up Monkey mountain to check out the day time view.
Late afternoon, we headed off to check out where the River Nile begins.  The Nile begins it 9000km journey to Egypt right here in Jinja, so we went to check it out, went for a short boat tour to see where it meets Lake Victoria. We then ran the gauntlet through all the souvenir sellers, some of us not coming out of that unscathed, and a few shillings lighter.
After that we headed off for a relaxing evening at 2 Friends (one of our favorite restaurants) in Jinja.  Great food was enjoyed by all and we nearly sold Carly (one of our team members) to our waiter for 90 goats and 10 cows!!
Tomorrow, we get serious again and add to the great work we did last week on house 9.  We're all a bit tired now, but looking forward to what the next week will bring!!!
As usual, check out the pics for a visual impression........

Team 14 in theVillage

This has been a very busy week,
for our visitors and the village
occupants...but we thank God
we are through.
We started by opening the
container and sorting
clothes
out in different sizes
thanks to Hellen for the
great work she did.
After the sorting,the
distribution started with
the new children and
thier mothers.
They got dresses,tops,
jackets,trousers,....andTHEN
a whole lot of under gaments
given to us by Sam's sister.
Each child in village at least got
a pair plus the mothers

who also recieved nice looking
aprons each given by Hetty
our beloved friend.

It was a joyous moment.
On friday, Hellen, sam ,and i
went joy pri  school for parants '
day to see the progress of our
children in mid term tests.
As we were doing all that, the building
group was busy with its work
and they are now at window level.

Team 14 update...

It's day 8 of our adventurous trip and it was jam packed full of fun!
We began the day at "Welcome Home" which is a children's orphanage - younger than the Village of Hope. As we arrived, Mandy, the director, showed us around the home and shared with the story behind how "Welcome Home" came about. Minutes after meeting the children, we were flooded with hands reaching out, ready to play. The team broke up into three groups, and spent an hour with each age group before rotating.

To start off, my group was in the older toddlers area and we had an amazing time with them!! We danced, played cars, drew pictures with chalk and pretended to be kids as we swung on the swings. It is amazing how much fun these children can have with a piece of chalk, and a toy car - the simple things.
Our next rotation led us to the baby room - they were beautiful!! Besides getting peed on numerous times, it was a great experience. The children wanted to be held and loved, they didn't need anything else. We met a beautiful little boy named Oscar who is now three years old. This little boy is suffering from Hydrocephalus. The team who had gone to visit last year mentioned that he had no interest in playing due to being sick, however today he was up and playing drums, with a massive smile on his face - a true testament to what God is doing in these children's lives through the work of Welcome Home.
Lunch time came for these children and they were all lined up in their chairs waiting patiently for their food. The whole team was put to good use, feeding each of them their lunch. Daniel was proud to finish with the cleanest child - thinking he is now fit for parenthood!

After our crazy morning playing with children, we had the afternoon off to adventure the town and get some lunch. After some interesting meals - of what should have been steamed vegetables, and normal french fries - we came out alive to adventure the night markets later on at night.

As usual, to get a visual idea of our time, check out the photos below!!

                                                            Breakfast on the deck!!!

The Inaugural Uganda HopeBuilders International board meeting

The first meeting of our "Uganda HopeBuilders International" board.
Praise God for these people who so willingly give their time to serve the Orphans and widows of Uganda!!!

More team 14 happenings..

Today was action stations all around...  The house is up to window stage.  This is one of the milestones in building our houses, so we celebrate it a bit!!  Speaking of celebrating, JaJa (aka John Haartsen - JaJa is Ugandan for Grandad), celebrated his 73rd birthday today!!  We sang in the morning, and Juliette (our Ugandan hostess) sang this evening after supper just before we cut the cakes she baked!!!  Needless to say, we all obliged in the eating!!
Many other jobs happened at Village of Hope today too...  The mothers received new aprons, the children new underwear, all the bare steel work windows and doors were painted in a couple of coats of red oxide, the huge septic tank is on its way to be built, and even parent teacher interviews at the school were attended!!!
So, a short post tonight with more pictures....  you know what they say... a picture paints a thousand words......

 

Sams report of team 14 stuff...

Yesterday while everybody else was at prison, I thought I would be more useful spending time with the kids at Ron and Anne's new school "Jinja Christian School." In the morning I was in primary one, the equivalent of our prep. At the time they were doing maths and English so I had a great time counting by fives with bottle tops, acting out sentences at the front, and helping the kids do some spelling in their book. I was able to really help some kids with their counting and spelling.
After lunch is when the kids do more social activities such as sport, singing and games. I was in the P1 room and one by one the kids came in to do some individual testing and assessing. I had a set of twenty-six cards, each with a letter on the them, which I would show them, and if they were able to identify the letter they would receive a tick, if not, a cross. It was really interesting to see where the kids were at, and lots of them have a big potential. It was great to be there.

Today after lunch Helen, Ivan and I were able to distribute some new clothes to all the kids in the village. Most of them have not got a good pair of undies, so were able to give them a new pair of underwear each. We also had lots of new clothes to give to the new kids in the village. Hetty Van Leeuwen, a previous Hope Builders goer, was kind enough to make a lovely apron for each of the mothers. It is great to see all the new kids with their good clothes, and everyone kid in the village was extremely thankful for their pair of undies. A special thanks to Jasmine Staunton for providing the undies. 

A couple of photos from Sam...

Team 14 day 5

What an amazing day we had today!

Started off with a half day of hard work, which saw another course of bricks laid, the painting completed on House 7, as well as the rendering team smashing out the last of the mud/poop mixture on House 8. After a quick lunch at Suubi House we cleaned up, donned our HopeBuilders shirts and headed towards the Jinja Prisons.

5 of the team were handpicked to visit the Men's Prison whilst the remainder of the team spent the afternoon at the Women's Prison.  The women were so welcoming! Singing and dancing praises to God with such passion before we introduced ourselves with a word of encouragement from the Word.  Afterwards we were invited to pray and share with the women in small groups.  I had the privilege of praying for Jennifer, Sarah and Josephine which was heartbreaking but so encouraging at the same time.  These women were so far from their families, many of whom didn't even visit their incarcerated mothers, sisters, and daughters.  Just the fact that we were willing to love on them by visiting and showing that we wanted to spend time with them really touched their hearts, as it did mine.

God has a way of surprising us with His methods of reaching out to His children.  Today we encouraged these men and women, but we went away just as encouraged that God is working in their lives as well as ours.

Bring on Friday!

Check out the photos below and see that we relax and eat like kings at Suubi House too!!!