September 2011

WOODLINGS
What a busy, fruitful, fun time we have had since we last shared with you in June. The girls were off school, Fin started up the new role with APP, we had cousins in town, we had the lovely Bear church in town, sadly we lost Jjajja Deborah,we have welcomed the Project Trust volunteers to Uganda, Barbara turned 11, the girls have gone back to school, Absalom turned 10, thats just in our life!! Not to mention 21.5% ination in Uganda, local prices going up each week, teachers strikes, university strikes, rst 100 days of new NRM term seasoned with chaos, new roads being built, too many bus accidents and hope and transformation are just around the corner!! WE love living here but its fragile times. Its always a challenge to know how to respond and live in this context, to be the red letter christians, living what Jesus said. Something really stuck with us over the summer with our visitors coming and going. They said to us something like, We really understand you better and see how your life works here now! We are desperate that each of you understands this but it is not always very easy, 1. To do this via a creative PDF every few months. 2. For you all to come and visit us. However we have the creative PDF and some have come to visit. Our journey here has been one with many changes in direction and we hope we have not left some of you behind with the pace or lack of communication. WE hope that we are all on the same page, somehow, as communicating our life and journey is key to us and to you. Hopefully as you read on the picture becomes clearer, you write down your questions, you send your questions to us and we try and answer them. As the dialogue continues and grows, so does the story and so do each of us. Thank you.

Family Vision
To be a family that loves God, loves each other and makes a difference in this world.

Pictures courtesy of James Daniel

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PROJECT TRUST GROUP

Project Trust
From our last news you will know that we are now country reps for Project Trust. PT is the largest and oldest gap year program running from the Isle of Coll in Scotland. We have 19 gap year students serving in 9 projects in Uganda primarily as teachers in local schools. It was fun to have them in town for the orientation weekend recently and the kids loved have older brothers and sisters to play with. Part of our job is to go and visit the projects over the year they are here so that should be fun and adventurous!! We are like mum and dad to them for their year here in Uganda

Family
Our dearest children continue to provide us with, laughter, joy, entertainment, challenges, patience tests, questions, answers and ideas. AnnaMay is now in year 5, Keziah is in year 3, Savannah year 1, Seth home all year! We had a great summer together with the highlights being our visitors. We had a lovely few days with the Rennisons; Uncle Christopher, Auntie Claire, Stephen and Jon Rennison. The boys then took off to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro and Claire remanded with us to hang out and see some more of Kampala. We then had an amazing visit from the Bear team. We actually stayed with them nearby Cherish and all worked together to do a holiday club for around 400-500 children! They then went off to see some of Watotos work in Northern Uganda It was amazing to have the Bear guys see our lives here in Uganda.

Jjajjas Fellowship
Our dear Jjajjas are all doing ok and enjoying their new business venture of selling rewood and hope to start learning how to grow mushrooms in the next few weeks amongst other ideas. They all also loved meeting the Bear team and enjoyed dancing and sharing together!

Jjajjas group meets the Bear group from our church

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Purpose in Prison
Fin is really enjoying the new role with APP that he does 3 days a week. . He is primarily seeking funding partners here in Ugandan and raising awareness of the work they do. Effectively networking and bringing capacity and value to the work of APP. He has enjoyed building relationships with local church pastors and different individuals and organisations. No day is the same, he is either in the ofce following up on emails, writing proposals or making phone calls, strategizing for the way forward or out and about in Kampala meeting new people and following up on existing contacts. One day at week at the moment is spent working with Foodstep, Uganda. Every week we take clothes and food to support the children at Kampiringisa National Rehabilitation Center for youth. Visits include worship, teaching, basic medical care, vitamin distribution, singing and loving. Once a month Foodstep organizes a party on a Saturday with real meat, vegetables and fruit, music and dance, sports and recreation. In addition we take care of regular hair shaving; distributing sanitary pads and other toiletries; providing school fees for more than 100 children; organizing visiting medical teams and dentists; arranging medical treatment and surgery

Kid praising at Kampiringisa

New set of drums for Kampiringisa

Ephraim
Our dear Jjajja Ephraim is doing well all things considered. He brings life, a beauty full smile and a tenacious spirit with him into our family. All the kids interact with him in various ways from taking him his tea, sitting with him, pushing him in the wheelchair or taking him one of his meals. We all learn something from his life. Lucy continues providing the majority of his care with Mamma Jojo, a neighbour, who helps out 4 mornings a week. Fin contributes to his grooming regularly!
Werner & Nathalie who run Foodstep

Just for fun

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Naomi and baking business

Naomi and her baking business are going really well. We have just released her from duties at home on Tuesday mornings to enable her to develop the business and become more condent in purchasing ingredients, meeting clients, collecting payments and approaching new clients as we look to make sure she can sustain her business and family if we were ever to leave. The goal is to release her more and more from working with us as the business grows. She does really well and is growing in her communication and business school under the lovely wing of Lucy.

invoice number 90

Journey, purpose and the future

The journey goes on and for that we have vision. We continue to enjoy our friendship with Cherish, especially off the back of the team from our church but after discussions there is no formal partnership or time given to Cherish in our work here. We now wrestle with the funding to grow and continue, work permit transfer from Watoto to APP, approval from immigration department and 3 month probationary review at APP all happening at the end of October. We decide then - can we go on or a new chapter starts in January 2012 in UK. We have had some faith building moments, bursary for Anna-Mays LAMDA classes, additional monthly gifts committed over summer, income from Project Trust, income from APP, generous friends and family, amazing summer, amazing community at home with Naomi, a roof over our heads, food on the table each day, life and a fresh determination to have patience and trust in a living faith that translates into working for God, serving others and building hope. Thank you for your love, texts, emails, gifts and updates that keep us connected, inspired, loved up and motivated.

with all our love and appreciation, Fin, Lucy, Anna-May, Keziah, Savannah and Seth

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