JULY 2013 (from Newsletter No.8)

Welcome to our revamped newsletter of stories from in and around Kamuli written by us and our growing number of Ugandan friends. We hope you like it. Our dear friend David Hey-Cunningham from Australia, on his second visit to us this year, has designed a newsletter template for us and arranged for some of our Ugandan friends to write entries. We anticipate that it will make it much easier to produce future newsletters that will be more readable and more frequent. We have not sent a newsletter for some time as we have been working through various difficult matters plus the usual work load. We have seen many exciting things happen and lives changed. We want to acknowledge God's provision and the wonderful support of Australian friends in very many ways and Ugandan friends who live in and around Kamuli. So, here are a few of our stories! (more to come ..).

Pam’s Corner … World's Tallest Maize!

Ivan, Pam, Solomon, Jack & Paul standing in front of the 3 metre maize in Pam & Allan's front yard. These are some of the people who worked on our successful garden.  This is our second attempt at Farming God’s Way in our front yard. Not bad for beginners! This is a God given tool to increase the yields for African farmers. Farming God's Way involves renouncing witchcraft, handing the land to our Creator and then following guidelines that are able to be put into practice with a minimum of cost locally. This method of farming increases the yield of the harvest in a dramatic way increasing the fertility of the soil and helps prevent soil erosion. The outstanding differences to traditional methods of farming are:. No tilling, No burning, Preparing the land before the rain comes thus getting an early start with planting, Frequent Weeding (especially early), Measuring the distance between holes, Mulching ('God's Blanket) and Adding inputs of ash and manure. Our results speak for themselves. We have strong, sturdy maize up to 3 metres tall yielding at least one good cob per plant. Farming God's Way website is http://www.farming-gods-way.org/ for those who wish to know more on this subject.   We have been privileged to have Chris Sperling of  Equip Canada come and run a workshop and demonstration of this method of farming in Kamuli where we were able to invite 40 local people for intensive training. Small numbers who are committed to change is better than large numbers who are not committed as follow up is imperative for good results, and this is a very big job. We also sponsored 5 Pastors to a 3 day FGW course in Kampala last year and want to send 5-6 key people again this year so that they may be able to do the follow up in their district and also teach others. On the lighter side let's share some differences in English meanings in different cultures. Ugandan schoolboy  "I need money for escort" Pam   "Escort, what does that mean?" Schoolboy "You know, food to have with tea" Ugandan man "You are fat" Ugandan girl   "Thank you" Not in Australia, but here this means you look well, you have enough food and things must be going well for you. You can see there can be great hilarity over language differences and many other things.

Prison Ministry by Kisige Paul

The author of this article Paul is the one holding the blue cap. Paul is sponsored in high school in Kamuli town by one of our Australian friends. Here is Paul with his father, some brothers and sisters and neighbours in his home village. The storys about the prison ministry being led by Allan & Pam during the privious Sundays. Last Sunday.  It was such interesting and amazing because after pastor Silver had preached, two people became Christians and three more who were once Christians and had turned away came back toe Christ. We went there three people namely:- Ronald, Silver, and I but God used us to do his work and heal the sick and give Salvation to his people. More privious Sundays.  Many Sundays Allan & Pam always preach especially Allan and about fifty or more people accepted Christ through Allan and Pam plus company with the almighty God. May God bless each and every one who help the prison ministry to go on smoothly in Uganda particularly Kamuli district.

Helping People Generate Income by Christine (A group called Tent Makers in Orange NSW makes zero interest loans to selected village Pastors to start businesses to help support them and their families. We helped to arrange a loan and purchases for a pastor we know, Ps Nelson, for solar panels, battery and other equipment to run a phone charging and hair shaving service. Yes, many Ugandans have cheap mobile phones and no means to charge them! On this particular day after the solar installation we were delivering the head shaver. The article below is by Christine who lives with us.)

Christine trying the new head shaver on a volunteer. The power is from a battery charged by solar panels, with the power from the battery fed through an inverter to change it to mains standard AC. On Friday 7th/06/2013 we went to visit pastor Nelson’s place, we went with Pam, Allan and David.  It was such a nice day for us because we enjoyed it a lot.  On that day we took a machine for pastor Nelson because he was going to start a business of phone charging and shaving hair where by here I was showing him how to shave hair, not because I was professional in it but I managed to show him how to do it.  I thank God because I had an idea on it and now I can shave students hair for example Paul, Aisha and Lmulatti.  These students are sponsored by Allan and Pam and so I shave their hair from Pam and Allan’s house. We were served a big meal from pastor Nelson’s house and I was the interpreter of David, Pam and Allan and after that we went and visited people’s gardens for those with practice farming God’s way, this way of farming was introduced to people by Pam and Allan plus Chris Sperling the teacher.  This way of farming has helped people of Uganda in Kamuli in terms of fighting poverty.  So people liked it and they are practing it.  Then after visiting the garden we came back home.  All in all I send greetings to all and may God bless whatever you touch with your hands.

Taking Responsibility by Sajjabi Budhala

Budhala looking smart in his suit. My name is Sayjaba Budhala, born on 11th October, 1991.  I am an orphan at the age of 22 years now. In life I had goals, but I believed for my goals to come to pass, I had to work for people and save the wages given to me. The saving took me one year and for that money I decided to start a pig rearing project.  I believe this project will able one of my goals to come to pass. I am sure if I had my parents it would be hard for me to work and save because I would look at everything from the parents. So I do encourage both orphans and non orphans to develop a heart of working and saving for their goal to pass. Budhala’s pig project; one male and two females waiting to grow up and produce piglets.

Introducing Books to Bezallel Primary School by David Hey-Cunningham

David with some pupils at Bezallel Primary School (across the road from Pam & Allan's house). Pam and Allan were given thousands of books that are stored in the container they brought to Bezallel School. I have numbered and indexed the big picture books donated by an Australian lady who loved and used these books with children in Australia including aboriginal communities. The books have been sorted into Christian, introductory reading, fairy tales, factual information and Australia and are being stored in the school principal, Beatrice's office. I introduced the teachers to the books at their Thursday fellowship here in Pam and Allan's home. Each teacher has been provided with a listing of the books and suggestions on how to use the books. Book reading is rare in Uganda and most of Africa. Pam and Allan want to foster a love of books. This is a beginning. David is a long-standing Sydney friend on his second visit this year.

Allan’s Bit …

Here in rural Uganda we are constantly faced with extreme poverty and need, especially in the villages surrounding the small town where we live, Kamuli, but also in Kamuli, especially certain areas. It is forever ‘in our faces’. Pam & I as Christians are told by Matthew 25:31-46, and many other verses in the bible, that we are to minister to the whole person spiritually and physically. But the problem is so overwhelming how can it be handled? We have finite resources of course so how to decide who to help and who not to? How to say no to desperate people? How to be a genuine help and not do harm by, for example, creating dependency and having people lose initiative. There are many issues in this area that we deal with constantly, too many to list here. We pray constantly for wisdom and over our time here have become a lot wiser. Some examples. We NEVER give a child/young person cash for school fees, we or our friend Budhala go to the school bursa and pay directly; twice recently some deception has been found out this way. Never loan money without being prepared to lose it; loans are very rarely paid back despite promises. A lady came to us for school fees for her children; we got our friend Budhala to speak to her (we can’t speak Lusoga and still have a lot to learn about local culture) and instead spent the equivalent of about $55 to build a stall for her in her village and stock it with tomatoes to start a small business to earn money for school fees. We try to avoid ‘handouts’ and instead look for ways to assist in a way that generates ongoing assistance; promoting Farming God’s Way is an example of this. However with the extreme poverty in the villages we can’t always ignore it and are sometimes involved with ‘handouts’. We recently received a shipment of about 94 boxes from Australia sent by Art Daniel of South Pacific Ministries (our church in Aus contributed to this) including quite a few boxes of clothes. With the help of Budhala the clothes have been distributed to quite a number of people in extreme need, and received with great joy. Below are some pictures describing just one of these clothing donations in a village in a region north of Kamuli. Fred is in his 20's. He had polio early in life and can’t walk or speak and has limited use of his arms and hands. He has a wheel chair that someone had given him and we repaired it about one month ago but needs someone to push it - most of the time he crawls around the ground. We passed on a bag of clothes to Fred from the South Pacific Ministries shipment. Fred was very excited. We promised him clothes some time back and, although he can’t talk, he would tell people by gestures that he was expecting clothes from Kamuli. The day had finally arrived. An excited Fred models some of the new clothes. We also brought a new foam mattress covered with water proof material. The grey blanket and sheet is from the South Pacific Ministries shipment.  Fred has one or two brothers sharing the bed. These brothers care for him. As far as we know the mother is deceased and the father absent. We are not at all sure how Fred and the brothers find food; I think generous neighbours help at times. Above and right. I couldn’t resist throwing in these pics of some of the children living around Fred. We gave a bag of clothes from the South Pacific Ministries shipment to one of the families; they may be wearing some of them. You can see they are quite cheeky and certainly not crushed by their circumstances; however we did have one plead for us to take her with us, and believe there are others who feel the same way. Their prospects for a decent education and for life generally are not good.

These are some of the many stories from us and people with whom we are involved. More coming in the next newsletter …