|
|
|
|
|
Prayer Letter 24th Feb!
To everyone!
After being here for nearly 4 weeks life in Africa is starting to feel normal -though I still am overwhelmed by the beauty and hilarity of this country daily! had a week at the start to arrive, settle in and get used to our surroundings with various outings into Kampala (about 30 mins away) and some language lessons.
We have been teaching in the schools now for 3 weeks and it's brilliant! After visiting all 3 schools and prayer and discussion we decided which team members would go to which school. I am teaching with Dave and Rosie in a school about an hour away called Kiti Parent Primary school for 4 days a week. It's a school right in the heart of rural Uganda, its just stunning! We are taking all years for sport, music and art and then taking top class (their equivalent of reception) every morning. A real blessing in the schools is that the Child Evangelism sessions of which there are two a week, one for each half of the school, have been given totally to the three of us - although the subjects are pretty tricky - I gave a talk on Thursday to 300 5-10 year olds on the passage of Abraham and Isaac with the central truth being how God tests us to strengthen our faith - how do you make that relevant to five year olds!?
Sport lessons are just brilliant but it is a real challenge because the class sizes can be up to 70 pupils and having two years at a time for an hour, and one netball or football proves a big challenge for planning lessons! But we are gradually getting used to it and had a brilliant game of `Glod Ball' at the local football field for the whole afternoon last week!
Other highlights have to be going to Jinja and having lunch practically on the river Nile and then having a boat safari afterwards seeing monkeys, water lizards, amazing birds and the source of the Nile from Lake Victoria.
We have also been doing some work with the street kids on Friday evening, Saturday and Sunday early morning. It is run by the church we are attending( brilliant place called Calvary Chapel) and last week had an amazing chat with a guy called Andrew who is 14 and was forced to leave home age 10 because he became a Christian! I gave my testimony last night at a street boys home in Kampala. The poverty was overwhelming and children as young as 7 were amongst them but its amazing to see how God is working in there lives and to think of the work going on here and how we can help - we were told yesterday that it would have been the best day of their lives because we were with them!
The Sunday morning session is a Sunday school for the street kids - the first of which was last week but our team is in two groups so my first one is tomorrow morning which means getting up at about 6 am!
So onto my prayer requests, firstly massive thankyou's for
The end of a cockraoch invasion and the product 'DOOM' living up to its name!
Such a brilliant team, and for the bible teaching we have 4 nights a week.
The welcome we have at the schools and the opportunity to do the Child Evangelism slots (although the topics given are tough)
After chatting to Godfrey who is in charge of the Christains goings on at Kiti we are starting up a staff fellowship next Thursday and have also been approached by some of the older children to run an optional bible study in lunch time!
The opportunity to work with street kids and the amazing people who run the work who we have got to know well (Fiona, Andrew and Valentino)
No illness yet in the team and no friction either, which is great!
And some requests:
That numbers and lack of resources in school wouldn't be such an issue and we could work a way around it.
That the staff fellowship and Bible Study would get off to a good start.
Uganda seems to be similar to how England was 100 years ago in that many people say that they are Christian and everyone goes to church but genuine faith is hard to distinguish.
It would be great if the children at school would question what we say rather than just accept it without really thinking. They all seem to know why Jesus died but it's hard to say whether they fully understand the impact.
Prayer in particular for Anoc, Emmanuel and David who have all shown interest at school in the past few days.
We would be a great asset to the street kids work at the weekends and can build up and develop relationships and would be great witnesses.
It's very hot and teaching sport most days can be really tiring - energy and enthusiasm
Thank you very much for all your prayers and please do let me know your news too, it'd be great to hear from you!
God Bless,
Lots of love, Sarah xx
|
