Wednesday 30 December 2015

Merry Christmas and a happy new year.

Merry Christmas everyone.

It is the end of the year, which means celebrations and feasting and time with the family.

We are doing well! Agnes is getting a lot of rest because she is getting ready to give birth any day/week now (we have been told to expect anything after the 5th of Jan, but the official due date is the 17th)

She gets very tired and uncomfortable, and can be in a lot of pain, so please pray for her.

We also went for our visa interview a few weeks back, which went very well. The Australian man who interviewed us said at the end of it all that we had passed the 'genuine relationship' test, and he couldn't see any issue with Aggie getting a partner visa to Australia.
We thank God for a safe journey to Kampala and a good interview (even though Aggie felt very nervous and thought she did badly ... she actually did fine though)

We also had our annual YSU Christmas dinner here, where we invite many friends of YSU to come and share a meal and a celebration and we look back on the year.

It is always a positive experience looking at all the people who we have touched over the year! Many of the people who come started in our programs and now they are looking after themselves. Even though they have finished, they still come and join us, but instead of participants in our classes, they now come as friends!

We looked back on many of the things that had been achieved over the year. This included.

* A group of tailoring girls who have graduated, and many young women now taking care of themselves through work and small business initiatives.
* A passionate group of young guys who always come for bible studies.
* A talented group of youth who practice and perform hip hop dancing.
* Running two Empower Trauma rehabilitation programs to bring healing to young peoples lives.
* A new Boda Boda donated to us, to help us with out work.
* A new chicken farming structure at the YSU block with 600 chickens now being reared.
* The development of the block of land, including the building of a fence, store room, toilets, chicken houses, solar power, water tanks, two new guards and our new guard dog Spurgeon.
* A weekly fellowship every Wednesday with many people coming to worship.
* Two new babies on the way to join the team early 2016.

Of course there has been hardships this year as well, tensions with people, sicknesses and even deaths of people we love.
But through it all God has been good and continues to work.





Our Christmas day celebration was a nice time with the family as well. Agnes, her sisters, her brother and myself all went to church in the morning and then ate a massive meal of chicken and rice!
We were all very full afterwards and all ended up falling asleep.
We also shared presents with everyone. Agnes' sisters were very excited to get a present (as the were not expecting it)
A simple Christmas gift here can mean so much to someone who has never had the experience of Christmas presents before.








The day before Christmas our youth also ran an outreach. A couple of the young guys had it on their heart to help someone in need. They had found a woman through a friend at a local church, who lived in a nearby village but was doing it tough.
She lived in a very small mud house up on a hill in a remote part of a village.
One thing that she really needed was a toilet. She had no where to go, and so her and her children had to make do with small bushes around the place.
Our young guys really felt like they wanted to build a drop toilet for this woman.
So YSU contributed the money for the materials, and the youth donated their own labor. A few days were spent digging at 15 ft hole, and then a big group of us came to build this woman a drop toilet.
Afterwards the young people all prayed for the woman and her family. A few of the youth had spent a few days there, sharing about the love of Christ to this woman and her neighbors.
And many people around the village were so impressed to see young people giving up their time to go and labor in the sun, for free.
It was a great testimony.
These are the sort of things I love getting behind. Youth initiated outreaches, where local Ugandan youth are the ones helping to build and reach out to others in their own community.








Please pray for us as we expect our new baby soon! We appreciate all of your love and support.
Another thing we request, is if there is anyone who is interested in sponsoring a young woman for the next tailoring class that we hope to get started in February to get in contact with HopeBuilders. It would be great to get people who would commit to sponsoring one of these girls for one year.
It is a $50 a month donation for the course of a year. This pays for teaches wages and all materials and resources to run the class. The young women learn a bunch of valuable skills during this time, including tailoring, business skills, English and Maths.
The young women also get mentored and discipled, and go through various programs including trauma rehabilitation and healing.
At the end of it all they have a bunch of new skills, a tailoring machine and a new outlook on life!
If you are interested please feel free to contact HopeBuilders on info@hopebuilders.org.au
or to my personal email on ooeeluke@hotmail.com

Thank you and God bless you.


Friday 4 December 2015

Schoolies visit and visa interview.

Just a quick update here!

School holidays have just arrived which means 'Busy Busy Busy!'
We have holiday programs, dancing groups, fellowships, Christmas time, chickens, young people popping in all the time, not to mention hopebuilders teams!

It has been good though, it means time goes fast and January and the baby will be here before we know it!

We had the Schoolies Revolution team come and visit us the other day which was great! I shared about some of the vision for YSU, and the team came and prayed for us on the block of land. They also prayed for Agnes and I in the coming weeks with the birth of our baby, which we appreciated from them.

Then the team were treated to lots of dancing performances from our young men and women.
Our tailoring girls shared about what they do, as well as offered some of their products for sale.
Then we had our boys dancing group perform a dance for the Schoolies.

My good friend Solomon also shared a message about following Christ at all costs, and how in the end we never really make a sacrifice because of what Christ has offered us in Eternal life.

Solomon also shared some of his personal testimony which I wrote about here:
http://lukev-uganda.blogspot.ug/2015/07/how-much-would-you-give-up.html

Afterwards all of the schoolies got up and tried some of their own dance moves, much to the amusement and excitement of the Ugandan youth.

The Ugandan youth also got to pray for the schoolies and bless them as well.
Usually we have always done it the other way around ... where the teams come and give a message and pray for the Ugandans and come to bless them!
But I have had a bit of change of thought on how things can be done, mainly because of a great book I have read called 'When helping hurts'.
Instead of having the foreigners always come and do everything to bless the locals, this book suggested flipping that on it's head.
So even though the Ugandan youth had no performance, no prayers or no message given to them to bless them, I believe they felt more empowered by being the ones who had something to offer to the 'Muzungus'.

When I had explained to the Ugandan youth I'd like to do it this way, they were so excited .... it made them feel very valuable!







Agnes and I will also be travelling to Kampala on Monday afternoon so we can go for an interview early Tuesday morning.
The interview is in regards to Agnes' partner visa to Australia. We have no idea what the interview will include, but we appreciate your prayers ... especially because right now it is a difficult time for Agnes to travel with her very large stomach, and her feeling rather sick the last few weeks (although the large stomach is the best proof we can provide of a "ongoing relationship")


We pray it goes smoothly and that this will help in granting Agnes access to be able to live in Australia when ever we please.

We thank everyone again for their love and support.

You can check out our young guys dancing for the Schoolies here:

https://vimeo.com/147750348