2017 so far. Building a house, visa complications, sheltering women and more sickness.

2017 has been eventful so far, and to be honest I have been a bit tired and even looking forward to going back to Australia for a bit (in April)

I did start off the new year in a positive way! I spent the night under the stars around a fire capturing a timelapse with my new camera.
You can check out the timelapse here ...  https://vimeo.com/197738799

We have continued to run our wise choices for life training with the VOH youth, which has been very positive and we have had lots of good feedback from the young people.
We also had a team from Australia come and visit us, and our dancing boys put on a great performance for them. They even spent quite a bit of time contributing towards the building at the property.

The team also brought some 'days for life' packs for our tailoring girls, which consist of washable sanitary packs for poorer women in the villages.

The progression of the building at the property has been great as well! We are now almost at roof hieght.
It has also been a great oppurtunity for some of our young YSU boys to do some labour and make some money so they can help their families during the school holidays.
The boys also feel very proud in contributing towards building the youth center as well.

Every night I pick them and bring them home around 7 pm. And when I drive over the rail way track I always get this scene. So I had to get my camera and take a shot!

I have finally got Ethan's passport back with a visa in it after about 5 months of waiting.

But it didn't come back without a cost!
It turns out the agent/lawyer I was using to acquire Ethan's visa ended up being a complete conman.

For five months I have been dealing with someone who constantly gives excuses and makes up stories and never calls me when promised and never answers his phone.

He kept telling me that the passport was at immigration being processed.

I finally caught onto his 'shady' character when I had been trying to call him for 2 days, yet he never answered my calls.

After another unsuccessful attempt, Agnes told me to quickly try calling from her phone ... since he would not know the number.
Of course he answered straight away and in a surprised voice tried to make some excuse about his phone being lost in his sofa and only just finding it.

I knew I had to go on a rescue mission to his office in Kampala and get all my documents back. Even if I had to finalize the process of the visa myself.

So with my friend Richard, I went to Kampala and to his office. You would not think the place was so dodgy, because they have a very professional looking office with many workers.
When I got there and demanded all my documents the truth came out. Ethan's visa was actually accepted way back at the start of November, and immigration was just waiting for the $100 US fee to be paid.
This was money that I had paid to the agency back in September. But this agent I was dealing with had obviously took the money for himself and didn't have anything to replace it with.
He kept apologizing and asked if I could give him more time while he waits for another job he was doing to pay him .. then he would pay at immigration.
I knew the man's words were dishonest at this stage ... so I told him just to give me all my documents related to my file and I will go to immigration myself.
He then proceeded to pull out my passport which was in his office desk drawer the whole time.

I grabbed all my documents and walked out.
Long story short, I got in contact with one of his former workers who I was dealing with at the start, and who had been very helpful.
This person was very apologetic and helped me out a lot. They explained to me they also had lots of money stolen from them, from this man ... and it seems there are lots of customers who are disgruntled and unhappy with this particular lawyer and his agency.

This former worker linked me up with someone at immigration who was able to help me get the visa in Ethan's passport (of course for a fee).

Two disappointing things I ran into though. Because the visa was approved long ago, but no payment was being made to immigration, immigration had decided that Ethan had overstayed his entry visa, and I would be subject to a fine. I had to pay a decent amount of money to clear this up.

The other disappointing news was that immigration refused to allow us to apply for a Ugandan visa for Ethan, through his mother being a Ugandan citizen.

Instead they said we could only get Ethan a dependent visa through myself as the father.

This means that immigration has said that Ethan could only have a visa to stay in Uganda, as long as his father had one.

This also means that Ethan's visa expires when my visa expires, which is this July. Now this will involve more running around and trying to renew two visa's for Ethan and myself in July.

Their reasoning to this was that they believed a child belonged solely to the man, and so Agnes as a women has no rights to obtain Ethan's visa under her Ugandan citizenship.

Sometimes arguing with their logic is just not worth the time and energy .... sigh.

But Agnes keeps reminding me that I should be grateful and not disappointed. You never know what trouble we could of got into with this conman. And we have Ethan's passport back with a visa in it (no matter if it doesn't last that long)

We have also ran into a very complicated situation with one of our tailoring girls.

One of our girls has been very badly abused by her partner for a long period of time. She has run away from the man, and is sheltering with us.

Without going into the details, we will keep her while she finishes her course, and we have been in contact with the man, and also the local counselors to address the situation.
It is a very sensitive issue that involves many complex cultural understandings and gender imbalances, while we also have the desire to stay true to doing what is right, and to support the victim here.

Please pray for us as we shelter this girl, and deal calmly, sensitively but also firmly with the local community and local men in the community here.

Although gossiping has already started about us (we are stealing people's wives, we are allowing and empowering women to run away from men  etc)

We feel that we don't want to look back on our lives and see that we were always worried about being gossiped about or wrongly spoken badly about, but rather that we did what was right, stood for justice and loved the oppressed.

We also have to be calm in our 'stand for justice', and not fall into 'hating' the oppressor.

All in all a sensitive situation that we would appreciate your prayers for.

Ethan also got very sick the other week. He started burning up in the night, and by the time we took him to the hospital the next morning, his temperature was dangerously high.

They checked him for Malaria and Typhoid, but it seemed that Ethan had another bacterial infection.
This is the fourth time he has had this strong infection since he was born, and so the fourth course of strong antibiotics ... which is worrying.
We pray that Ethan's immune system will be able to recover.

We spent four restless nights with him, as he barely slept and was obviously distressed. He was also burning up for the first two days.

He is now doing much better and has finished his course of medicine.

We got to celebrate his first birthday the other day as well. We invited many children from the community, and their parents, who we are friends with. And it was a fun day for all.

2016 wrap up.

A late Merry Christmas to everyone!!!

We have been quite busy here as it is school holidays and we have youth at our house almost every day.

We have also begun building on the block of land, and a team has just arrived.
Not to mention we also had the Christmas season, so we were quite busy.

Christmas was spent going to church, eating lots of food, sleeping, then waking up and eating more food.

We also had our YSU Christmas break up, which is always a great time for our youth to celebrate, have a good meal and have their own Christmas party.

Since many of our youth may come from broken homes, this is a bit of treat for them, as they may not get to celebrate Christmas from where they come from.
All the tailoring girls dressed themselves up in some special dresses they had made for themselves.

During the celebrations I gave a Christmas message and also a run down of the year.

These were some of our reflections of 2016.

For Aggie and I the thing that stands out the most for us, and had the most impact in our lives, was the birth of Ethan.

We also had the birth of little Ibra one week after Ethan as well, adding onto the number in our house.

We started a new tailoring class, and were able to see young women begin to find confidence in themselves.

We have run Empower Trauma Rehabilitation two times this year, as well our Wise Choices for Life classes, seeing healing in the lives of our young people.

We have a dedicated group of young men, who use their skills like dancing, drama and music to do outreaches into the community. This group is continuously pushing themselves to learn what it is like to be a follower of Christ, especially in their communities and context.

We have seen some very close friends of ours finish their highschool education, and now begin looking at their career opportunities .. including one who is looking at theological training and one with the aim of becoming a doctor.

We have been blessed with a new car which has helped us tremendously here in Uganda.

At the start of the year Agnes was given a partner visa into Australia, and we were able to spend two months visiting Australia over the winter.

We have had many visitors, including friends, family and teams, come and visit us here at YSU.

We also have experienced lots of sickness. We saw the loss of a 3 day old baby who belonged to some friends of ours.

This really shook us, it taught us to sit in silence with those who are suffering. To realize the fragility of life, and to inspire us to pass on more simple knowledge around maternal health so something can be done about these types of situations.

Children in our own household got very sick, with little Ibra almost dying from septicemia when he was just a day old.
I truly believe his healing was a miracle, the little boy was on death's door when we got him to the hospital, and even the doctors told us they couldn't guarantee that the child would survive.
He is healthy now and a smart little boy, his development is on track and so far there does not look like there were any big side effects from the event.

Ethan spent a few days in hospital on a drip with a severe case of malaria and a bacterial infection.

Little Meshach was also raced to the hospital in the middle of the night, in the middle of convulsions due to a high temperature from Malaria.

But God has kept them and healed them, which we are very thankful for.

Agnes and I also copped a bit of sickness this year with compressed discs in the spine, malaria, pleurisy, tonsillitis and more.

But again, we are feeling good right now at the end of the year.

We are also very excited to see the youth center begin construction ... praying we may be able to move in next year!

God has been faithful this year, as He always is. We have seen him move in our lives, through the hard times and the good times. And we look forward to seeing what 2017 will hold.

So an eventful year with lots done. We continue to thank all of your who have stood with us, supported us, donated to us, prayed for us and more.
We could not do what we do here without your help, support and love.
May God bless you all.

Wise Choices For Life.

We are back from our training in Kampala, and we have gained so much from this training.
We spent one week at the African village resort in Mukono, where we did some intensive training on a program called Wise Choices for Life.

Basically the program wants to address the causes of the many maternal and infant deaths in Uganda, as well as the amount of orphanages and orphans in the country.
The program wants to give local people knowledge and life skills so that they can prevent themselves from falling into the poverty trap, and take care of their own family ... instead of being an aid organisation that comes in to help treat the symptoms of poverty.
You can watch a video here to get a bit of a taste of the program.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNiCJwm1kqQ

The program is very dense with a lot in it. It covers topics and issues like relationships, marriage, parenting, unfaithfulness, abuse, life skills, reproductive health, family planning, antenatal and postnatal care, abortion, STD's, causes of maternal and infant deaths, increasing population, environmental issues and so on.
The program is delivered from a Christian world view, and discusses what our loving Father God wants for His children in the areas of relationships and health.
So many of the issues we deal with here in our communities is touched upon in this program.

Although a lot of the medical information was not entirely new to me, I think the the main things I got away from this program was it's intended focus, and the way it gets the information across.

I have already said that the program aims to give local people knowledge and skills to prevent them from needed help from aid organisations or NGO's. I find this a great approach. So much of the work we do at YSU feels like patch up work .. or healing / restoration work.
This is vitally important, but sometimes we think 'How can we reach people so we don't have to help someone who has gone through hell and back and needs healing, and instead help them in preventing these traumatic things from happening to them in the first place"
We feel like Wise Choices for Life is that gap that we were missing, the thing we have been wondering about.

The way the program is set out and given to the local people is the other thing I got from it.
There are many different lessons in the three module's, but throughout all the lessons the information, problems and solutions are learnt through a combination of discussion, debate, drama, music and more.
The program is very interactive and helps local people feel like they have contributed to coming up with the solutions to a lot of their issues.

We are very excited to start using this as a tool for YSU, and we will begin this with our tailoring class starting next month.

We thank the WCFL team and Marg for running this conference! We also thank Emily who helped sponsor Aggie and I so we could attend the conference.
Oh and we should thank Douglas, who left his home at 6.30 am every morning to come and spend the day babysitting Ethan at the hotel, so Aggie and I could go through the conference undisturbed.

Thanks everyone.

Quick update

Just a short update!

We have enjoyed the last few weeks here in Uganda, with both Andrew my pastor coming to visit, and then my mother and my auntie coming for a week.

I know my Mum loved every moment with her little grandson, and we spent most of our time together and enjoying taking Ethan out.

Ethan has been enjoying swimming a lot, he loves the water so much. He is very active and is standing by himself now. We have to be careful and make sure certain things are out of his reach. He has broken a glass or two in the last few months.

Agnes and I are off to a full weeks seminar training in mukono tomorrow. We will be staying there for the week, while we learn how to be facilitators of the wise choices for life training seminor.
This looks at healthy families, issues around maternal health, problems encountered with child birth and child rearing etc.
This will be a great training for us, because Agnes and I often joke and say we feel we are becoming community health workers when it comes to women and their babies.

Even a few weeks ago I had a call in the middle of the night for one of our young tailoring girls who gave birth a month ago. She was worried because she thought the baby was sick.
It didn't sound too serious and I was almost ready to go back to bed, but I knew I would feel horrible if something happened.
Farouk and I went and checked the baby on the boda boda, she seemed fine, she had just fed and didn't have a temperate.
But since she was staying in a small room by herself, and she was a bit scared being this is her first child (she is quite young) she came and stayed in our spare room at our house for the rest of the night with the baby .. so she felt like people were close encase something was wrong.
She took the child to the hospital in the morning, and it seemed that the child had septicemia. Which is quite serious. Although the child never had any type of temperature.

We look forward to learning all that we can during this training.

Farouk and I also went for a one day camping trip up to sipi falls. The place is beautiful up there. I have also been enjoying my new DSLR camera as well and have had made a short little clip with it that can be seen here.

https://vimeo.com/189791644

If you could pray for rain in Uganda that would be appreciated as well. We have had one of the worst wet seasons in years, and many people have planted crops only to see them die. Often this is their only food and money source, so people are in very terrible conditions right now.
You can read more about this situation here.
http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/Millions-of-Ugandans-in-45-districts-starving--says-govt/688334-3440478-8uj0buz/index.html

Thank you again for all of you who support us rather financially or with prayers!

Hospital visits and the loss of a baby.

Hey everyone.

It has been an eventful week for us here in Uganda.
I guess we were not finished with dealing with sickness, this time Ethan was the one to get hit hard.

All day Saturday he was not himself, he was very grizzly and he refused to eat any food, and he was not breastfeeding. His temperature was going up through the day to around 37.8, but we managed to cool him down again by keeping him naked (it is very hot here anyway)
By night time he was still feeling hot so we tried to give him a dose of baby panadol that we keep here, only to have him throw it all up (along with his dinner of pumpkin which was his only food for the day)

We kept a watchful eye on him during the night, and again he started burning up to around 38.1 during the night. We managed to give him some panadol at around 1 am and he cooled down. But again by morning he was still hot, so we made the call to not mess around and take him to the hospital just to check if he was ok.

On Sunday's our hospital that we go to usually only has a small staff working, as most of the main doctors are away for the weekend.
When we took Ethan in and they measured Ethan's temperature there, he had gone right up to 39. The doctors didn't waste anytime, and we realized it was more serious then we thought when they put all the other patients on hold, and called another doctor to come to the hospital to deal with Ethan, who he said on the phone "was a very sick baby, and this is an emergency".
Straight away they put cool towels on him, and they put a suppository up his bum, of what I suspect was perhaps some sort of paracetamol to cool his temp down.

It took a long time to get the cannula into Ethan's veins (the tube that is placed into someones veins so that an IV drip, or medicine can be put into the body)
It took them four times before they finally got it in, because babies are a bit difficult when it comes to getting the needle directly into a vein.
During this time I had to hold Ethan down tightly while he screamed, and three doctors worked on him.
Agnes couldn't handle watching it so she had to leave the room. Some jobs are for daddy to do.

They got the blood tests back and Ethan had a strong dose of malaria. His body was also racked with quite a serious bacterial infection (which the doctor was actually more worried about then the malaria)
He was also anemic.

So that meant we were in the hospital for three full days and two nights. During this time Ethan was put on a drip and given lots of medicine.
It was exhausting for us, because Ethan is at that age where he wants to crawl everywhere and grab everything. And so trying to keep him from ripping the cannula out of his foot was quite tiring.

His fever peaked during Sunday night, and he was in a bad way again (even while being on the drip and on medication)
The doctor ordered another suppository, because they were worried about Ethan going into convulsions because of the high temperature.
We certainly didn't sleep much that night, about 2 hours or so. It was very helpful to have Agnes' sisters around who are great with Ethan, and who Ethan loves very much, so we could have a break during the day.

We were discharged on Tuesday evening, very tired and happy to go home and shower and rest.
Ethan is still on strong medication (all oral medicines) for at least a week. But he doesn't have to be in the hospital getting injections. We are just to watch him and make sure he keeps eating and his temperature doesn't go back up.

We know lots of people have been praying for us, and One Hope church sent out a prayer request, and we thank you all.
It was a bit of a scary thing, and rather serious from what the doctor told us. But Ethan responded very positively to all the medicine, and by God's providence his little body is well on its way to healing.

On his way up in this last picture (but still having heavy eyes)

Last Thursday morning we were woken up very early by our local pastor here (around 6 am) seeing this pastor calling this early in the morning I already knew something must have happened.

A young married couple that Agnes and I are friends with, and who are quite known in the HB community, had given birth to their first child on Tuesday morning.

Pastor George had called to let us know the baby had died during the night on Thursday.
Agnes and I had no idea the baby was sick, we were even planning to visit the baby that day.

It is devastating news that rocked the whole community.

From what it sounds like, the baby perhaps died of dehydration or overheating. He was not feeding, had dierreah and a high temperature.

I don't want to go too much into the cause of the death, and say too much out of respect for the people around here that we know (and that many of you reading this blog know)
But Agnes and I feel so heartbroken ... this is a death that could of been avoided. A mixture of terrible advice given to the parents, a lack of understanding on the seriousness of the situation, and a lack of money, or being able to borrow money from people, to take the baby to the hospital, are all thrown into the mix.

All in all, it seems that this death could of been avoided.

The parents are so shattered, and I can't imagine the pain they are going through.

Agnes and I went up to their house at 6.30 in the morning (after the phone call)
I will never forgot that scene. Aggie and I were a part of a handful of the first people to arrive. About 6 of us just sat in their small house with the baby's body laid in the middle, and the mother wept while we all just sat quietly.

I remember the baby looking as if it was a very healthy baby. He didn't look dead, almost peaceful, like a sleeping baby, like he would stir or wake up any second.

The father, who I am friends with, was sitting behind his house by himself, with tears rolling down his cheeks and calmly looking into the horizon he was repeating to me that he knew that the baby was sick, and he had wanted to take the baby to the hospital.

I will never forget that scene. Over the next hour the front garden of this house swelled with local people from the community.
The way people deal with grief here is something that really touches me.
So many people come, and they just sit in silence. That is all. They don't talk or try and give advice or words of comfort.

They just come and sit with the people grieving. They sometimes sit for hours (and even days) in silence, often crying alongside the ones grieving. 

The local community here have a strong faith in the Lord, and the parents, although in incredible pain, have expressed how they put their trust in God.

It is hard to ask the question of 'why?' in such situations. Pain and suffering are real. You live long enough in this world .. your heart will bleed.

And yet taking God away from the equation, because of the 'why?' question, doesn't seem to give people any more comfort.

I find that people who can navigate through suffering very strongly, are people who stand on the foundation of a belief in a sovereign loving God.

As I once heard John Piper quote in a sermon 'Through the deepest possible pain, God is enough. God is enough. He is good. He will take care of us. He will satisfy us. He will get us through this. He is our treasure. Whom have I in heaven but you, and on earth there is nothing that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart and my little child may fail, but you are the strength of my heart and my portion forever '

I have seen this lived out in the lives of people grieving here. Who put all their trust in God, even through the storms of life.
I read a quote on the internet that very day that was moving. It was a quote by the early church. When an infant had died the early church used to say "He passed through this world, without ever being touched by sin, straight into the arms of the Lord"

We have hope that this life is not all that there is. That one day all things will be made new and all sad things made untrue, for those who have faith and belief in the Lord.

So we go through the pain and the storms of life, when people we know and love are taken away from us. But we are anchored in God, who cannot be taken away from us.

Once again we thank all of you who have been praying for us. We love all of you and we thank you for your support.

Empower

Hey everyone, sorry for the delay in writing an update.

Since I last wrote my previous blog we have all pretty much recovered from the sickness we were all feeling.
Except for Ethan getting a nasty rash that has lasted three weeks, we are all feeling on top of it.

If you read my last blog I talked about a few people with serious illnesses.
Thank God that Esther, the women with cancer in her arm, managed to get more medical help, and hopefully will make a recovery.

The young baby that was put on oxygen has also now been discharged from the hospital and is doing better.
Thank you for your prayers.

We recently ran an empower trauma rehabilitation program with our tailoring girls.
It was an interest time, and full of both joys and challenges.
All of the young women expressed how helpful it was for them to be able to share their stories. Many of them forgave people in their life that they had been holding anger towards.
We also had a few of them wanting to surrender their lives to Christ.

The challenging part about empower was the fact that it is very difficult to help someone heal from trauma, when the situation they are in right now is incredibly traumatic.
Without giving away their personal stories, we have some girls that are in rather dangerous, abusive living conditions.
It raises a bunch of questions for us, in what is our role, how do we best support these girls and do we take any action.
Please pray for the young women, for their home lives, for protection, and for wisdom for how we deal with them.

So just a short update for now! It feels like the rains have kicked in, thunder storms all morning and it has not stopped raining yet!
That usually mean lots of power outages as well though!

More sickness and observing suffering and death.

Hey everyone.

I guess we have still had a sick household here at YSU over the last few weeks.
Since I wrote my last blog I talked about how Aggie's back was in a bad shape, and how I had malaria and tonsillitis.

A few weeks back we ended up taking Ethan to the hospital at about 8 pm because he had a very high temperature and he was clearly distressed.
The nurses really struggled to find a vein to take blood from Ethan, so they actually got the Turkish manager of the hospital to come and get the blood (he seemed to be the one who knew how to get blood from a baby the best)
It was a bit of an uncomfortable experience, as it took about 10 minutes of getting enough blood from Ethan (they took it from his foot) and as he was screaming and kicking, I had to pin him down and hold him still .. Which Ethan hates.
Ethan ended up having the same infection in his throat that I had, and so he was put on lots of medicine in syrup form.

After a week or so of recovery I actually ended up getting an incredible amount of pain in my right chest and back.
I could tell the pain was deep inside, and it felt like my lung. So last Wednesday I ended up going back to the hospital (my second home by now ... all the doctors know us by name)
The lining of my lung was inflamed, and so whenever I breathed in or twisted my body, the lung was pushing against this inflammation and causing a lot of pain.
So back on strong med's and told to rest.

That night I was awoken around 2 am to banging on my door from Beatrice (Farouk and Beatrice live in the same house as us with their children).
I could hear her crying, and also Farouk asking for my help. In my medded up state I was quite confused and got dressed and ran to their room to find Meshach having a seizure in Farouk's arms.

So here is another reason why the new car, which people back in Australia bought for us, has come in handy.
We were able to race Meshach to the emergency section of the hospital in town in the middle of the night.
His temperature was at 40 which caused the seizure, and so he had a suppository put in him straight away to bring the temp down.
They tried many times to get blood from him, but the night duty nurse was really struggling and they could not get any blood from his veins.
He ended up getting pierced with a needle about five times ... and this is Meshach's worse nightmare.
In the car he had been completely out of it and his eyes had been rolling in the back of his head. But by the time they had brought the fever down and tried to take his blood, it took three of us men to pin him down to give him an injection of antibiotics in the bum! The boy certainly knows how to resist a needle.

Meshach ended up spending two nights in the hospital because he had a very strong infection. That infection caused the high fever which in turn caused the convulsions.
It was quite a scary ordeal, and if we had not taken him to the hospital during the night, the sickness could of killed him.
Meshach is such a small boy as well, only 12 kilos at 3 years, so he seems to really get knocked down when he gets sick.

Farouk and I were actually meditating on how God works. Before I got sick with my lung problem, Farouk and I had been organizing to go away camping for that Wednesday night (the night Meshach got sick)
But due to my sickness I had to cancel those plans. As a result Farouk and I were around to rush Meshach to the hospital.
It could of been a lot worse if we were not around when it had happened.
Some people may simply choose to see that as coincidence, or maybe luck. We choose to see it as God's hand.

There has actually been a number of stories and experiences I have had over the last few days that still bring the reality of death and suffering close to my mind.

While in the hospital the next day to check on Meshach, an old pastor was rushed into the hospital in a critical condition.
We were actually in the next room and we could hear the doctors frantically working on him, and the sound of the heart monitor.  We heard the heart beat stop on the monitor, and then the wailing of a woman in grief echoed down the hospital corridors.
It is interesting to note the difference in the culture here. While the sick man was being worked on, the hospital filled up with family, friends and people from the pastors church. They were all waiting around seeing what would be the result.
After the man passed away, the hospital was full of almost 100 people, wailing and grieving and praying.
It was a sombering experience to sit there and watch it all.
Farouk I discussed how there is no escaping death in the end.

In the end all of us will face death.
The only thing we can really do is prepare our soul to meet it's maker. Have you?

In church yesterday a poor young widow who is a member of the church, pleaded with the congregation for help.
She had recently had her arm amputated due to cancer, but the doctors were now saying they needed to take off more of the arm because the cancer had not been fully removed.
The government hospital here said they were refusing to work on her because she did not have the 50,000 that they were demanding (about $20)
The woman had absolutely no money, so she had sold her only bed for about 20,000 ($8) to try and raise some, but she was still 30,000 short.

What a desperate condition to be in.

I was then moved by this woman, when during the offering for the church she was the first one up to place a small amount of money in the offering basket.
It reminded me of the story in the bible of the poor widow who gives a small amount of money (all that she owns) in the form of a single coin.

Let that be a lesson to us in wealthy nations.

Of course, everything in me wanted to get up and reassure the woman and give her some money and help her out and let it be done.
But I actually felt moved to wait, I wanted to see the church body come around and support her. It could be easy for me to just give the money and let it be done with, but I may be stepping in the way of a God given chance for the church to be a blessing to this woman, and in turn be blessed back by God.

Sure enough our pastor got up and called for the church to do whatever they could for the woman. And so people got up and placed the small amounts of money that they had, in a basket to help her.
Aggie and I knew that we would help top the bill (we are in fact the wealthiest people in that church) but it was moving to see the people in the church, who are also very poor, coming together to help each other.
In the end the remaining 30,000 was collected by the members of the church, and this woman will now be able to get her operation.

Aggie and I did make a decision that we will get her a new bed, since she had to sell her old one.

It was a beautiful reminder that the poor do not always have to rely on the rich from wealthy nations. That they are not totally helpless, and that the body of Christ can always come together to help each other, even if that particular body is very poor.

The desperation that people feel, and the reality of their situation still hits you though.
And another reminder of the pain people go through was about to come.

Near the end of the service another woman from the church who we know, came rushing to talk to the pastor. She had left her baby, who is only a few months old, in the government children's hospital, to ask for help from the congregation.
The child is in a critical condition and needs to be placed on oxygen.
It can be so frustrating here in Uganda, in a government hospital were things are meant to be free, they were still refusing to treat the baby until some money had been paid.

When we inquired what was wrong with the baby, they couldn't say. Another aspect of government hospitals here is that they just treat you without giving you a diagnosis, or I should say the doctors know what is wrong with you, but they don't have the time to explain that to you ... only to treat you.
Often the dignity of the patient is not thought of, there is no thought to explain their condition to them, or to even explain the treatment they will be getting.

Aggie and I were able to contribute something to help the situation because everyone in the church had just used up their money to help the woman with the amputated arm. Our pastor told us this morning that as soon as they reached the hospital and were able to pay for treatment, the doctors started working on the child.
There is still a high chance that the baby will die.

All of these events and stories just help to remind me of the fragility of life. Suffering and death is real.
We may try to paint a picture of living happy adventurous lives on social media, but the reality is we will all go through suffering, we will all see people we love die, and we will all die ourselves. It is not just the poor in other countries, but all of us.
And so I reflect on my life and all that is given to me. Yes the Lord gives and he takes away, but through it all we can praise Him because of the great promises of hope He gives us. And because He Himself entered into our suffering and chose to identify with us.

I am thankful and grateful of so many things. Things that I recognize are not my right! but purely grace.
I am thankful to have access to money and a support system in Australia who would always help my family and I if we were in need. I am grateful for educated human minds who create modern medicine to treat diseases that would of killed us a few hundred years ago.
If I was living a hundred years ago I am sure my family and I would be dead 10 x over.
What right of it was mine to be born into an era of sophisticated modern medicine?
I am grateful for access to that modern medicine and that my family and I are supported enough to get good medical treatment.
I am grateful for a car, so if there is an emergency late in the night I can easily rush to the hospital.
I am grateful for my life, for my health and for my families health.
I am grateful for the local church here, who can come around a sick woman and help raise money for her treatment.
I am grateful for getting sick, so that I was around to help drive Meshach to the hospital on Wednesday night.
I am grateful for the poor, who continue to inspire me with their tremendous acts of faith, courage and love.
I am grateful for a sovereign God, who works all things for the good of those who love Him, even if we cannot understand what He is exactly doing during our moments of pain.
And I am grateful for salvation, that purchases for us access to God and His kingdom. For the hope of the new heavens and a new earth, where every tear will be wiped away in the presence of God.




YSU:
I know I have not given much of an update on YSU, so here is a short one. We are doing well with our tailoring girls, they continue to be committed and love learning. Our house is always full of young men who we are discipling (especially with the holidays on) and we love sharing our lives with these young men.
We are preparing for an empower trauma rehabilitation program with the tailoring girls next week, so please pray for that.
Ethan will also be going for his dependent visa this month, so we also pray for smooth interactions with the immigration officers who will make the call.
Thanks everyone and God bless.