Lets get ready to rumble!- Uganda style

Today we went to a youth church located in a rural suburb of Kampala. We left here at 9am and took us roughly an hour to get there. We were greeted with a typical, noisey African welcome of cheering and clapping.

The service itself consisted of music and dancing, oh, also a little bit of talking. Pastor Amos got all of the team (even the adults!?) dancing and trying to sing along with him and the children, which is a feat in itself. Throughout the whole service everyone was lauging and smiling, even the children. It was a real pleasure to see all the children dressed up to the nines to praise god, something which they had total dedication to and can look forward to each week.

Minister Joy also spoke and told us of her story, how she came from a poor Korean family and her struggle to forgive her parents. She explained how God spoke to her about the journey, which has ultimately led to her building the church for orphans, who have shown potential of leadership. These children have come from all over Uganda and will go back home to spread the word of God. After this wegave our goodbyes and loaded back onto the bus, making our way to the next stop, along the bumpiest roads in the world! (I've literally had smoother rollercoaster rides, in thorpe park).

Our next stop was the health clinic building, consiting of a dental clinic, general health clinic and soon to be a maternity ward and an eye bus base also. We got told the story of how a 17 year old UK girl, with slight autism, who came out to Uganda on a school trip, asked the question 'Where do the women have their children?' and then 'What are you going to do about it?'. From those questions came all sorts of actions and donations and input by other teams etc resulting in the the health clinic being built and it is now being expanded to provide a wider range of health facilities to the local community, no matter how poor they are.

She has also managed to relocate a family, who she met from her earlier trip to the acholi tribe, who were living in deprived conditions nearer to the clinic. She got to know the family when she helped them moved and managed to set up a fund so that they could send one of their sons to her school in England. This was after a series of tests and assessments to see if he was teachable, due to no previous education and an unknown age.

In other news, we have finally managed to unpack and then re-pack our teaching resources ready for the oncoming weeks lessons for Retrak. This took a couple of hours, and a lot of panicking and thinking we had left things behind!

Written by Heather and Rianne;

H- Hope everyone at home is doing ok, i'm having a great time so don't worry; love to all xxxx

R- I hope you're all doing okay at home without me! I love you all so much, and am missing you loads, wish you could all be here with me, seeing everything i am!xxxx