This Week

I pray that everyone has had a wonderful week!

We have had some exciting changes this week!
Randy and I decided to personally foster 2 young girls that are double orphans, and the current care taker was not able to care for them any longer. They are beautiful girls, and seem to be adujsting quite nicely.

Please join us in prayer for their transition into our home.

I also dealt with school fees and supplies this week for John and the girls, I found out that it takes WAY too much money for the children to go to a decent school here.
The total enrollment, uniforms, and fees came to 500,000 UGX, that was just for 3 children. That price did not include, bras, panties, shoes, socks, books, etc. I was astounded! Lesson learned! I think the grand total was between 750,000 and 1,000,000 UGX scary thought.
The children are making such great strides!!! MiMi is walking and dancing everywhere, and Ester is finally trying to stand and make efforts to learn to walk, Joahn is excited about school and the twins are walking everywhere! God is so very good!

This was our week in pictures!
What you all do not see, is the sweat!!! It is dry season and so very hot right now, the workers keep telling me one more month before the rain, I am already counting the days.

Blessings,
Angie

The Power of God, Love and Prayer

MiMi is a beautiful child, she was removed from her father because of the intense abuse she suffered in his care. One of the problems with MiMi was her inability to raise her head, it was permently lowered, it was very hard for her to lift her head and look at people. It was obvious that they did not allow her to look around and be apart of the family. The workers thought she was nonverbal, but I knew better, I knew she could speak but she was just never allowed to. She now speaks some, and she LAUGHS, oh does she enjoy laughing!!! The sound of it almost makes me cry. She is such a joy!

Look what else MiMi found to do!

Isn't she just precious!?

Todays Trip to Kampala

What a long exhausting, dusty trip!

We left at 7 am. Our first stop was leaving the car with the mechanic for a scheduled oil change.
Ernest picked us up from there and we went straight to Immigration.
There we started yet another hunt for Randys work permit.
We went straight to the supervisor and he said I am late for a meeting just go to room 2. I said so you found it? He said just go to room 2. I felt like we were getting the ultimate brush off, but headed straight to room 2 and they had no idea why I was there, because of course they did not have his permit.

I then went to the next room, talked to a man there, explained the whole thing yet again, (keep in mind everytime you go to a different room you wait in line forever). This man actually FOUND, yes I said FOUND Randys work permit. It was missing the NGO cert so it was sitting in deferred room. Where I suspected it was all along, and a couple different people have looked for it there. This man said because it was not him looking. Now it should be processed within a week or 2.
Praise the Lord!!!

Then we went to pick up the car because then it was already noon.

We have some volunteers coming in February from the UK and they are interested in Prison Ministry. So we headed to the head of prisons to get permission to enter the Mityana Prisons. Oh what a day. We searched for this Ministry for 2 hours. Ernest then called in the middle of our hunt and was asking what kind of tires we were wanting for the van as he had found some at a reasonable price. I was almost in tears and told him forget tires. Please help us get to where we are supposed to be. He met us and had me to where I needed to be in 10 minutes!!!

I had a whole file ready for this woman. She said ohhh You have given me much. But i will choose what I need. She also needs passport size photos of everyone wanting to enter into the prisons for her records, and copies of driving license. We will talk that next Friday on our scheduled trip to Kampala.

Ernest then wanted us to look at these tires, so we did that, told him we do not have the money at this time, but yes those look good.

We hit traffic jam after traffic jam today, and finally arrived home around 5:30pm what a long hot day!
But once again full of many blessings! Thank you Lord!

Prayer Needed!

Randy and I spent today in Kampala once again chasing his work permit. Immigration has completely cleared all the back log and are actually working on 2012 work permits already.

They are now saying give them til Friday to try to find where it has been misplaced. Now they want us to return Friday and if they do not find it by then, they will have us fill out a brand new one and push it through quickly. There are a few things wrong with this scenerio, a. Randys visa has expired and they will not give him a special pass til they try this last attempt. b. Randy is supposed to be leaving the end of February to go to the states to make more funds for HCU.

Please pray everyone that this file is found and that we can get Randys work permit before he is set to leave!
This is very important.

Blessings
Angie

PS
A huge PRAISE!!!! A wonderful family from Canada has donated enough funds for us to be able to finish getting the van completely ready! This will include the fire extinguisher, first aid kit, the windows they asked for, seat belts, the private license, new tires and hopefully getting it lifted off the ground some. Praise the Lord!!!

First Week of the New Year

I have to admit, that the first week of the New Year has been so quiet and relaxing. It truly feels like something so foreign to me to be able to sit and not have a million things to do, that I honestly do not know what to do with the time on my hands. It has been a mini-vacation right here at home.

Please pray for Randy's work permit, we would much rather pay for it and not get a special pass. At this time his visa is expired and immigration said come back next week. We are praying and praying that it is there next week! If it is not there we are going to have to spend long hot days chasing this and having people find it.

The good news is once we get his work permit, we are finished with immigration until we need to renew our NGO later this summer.

Ester has sure been blossoming this week. She is moving more and so very happy. It is exciting to see her grow and finally get a desire to play and interact with everyone. MiMi, oh how she amazes me daily, she is walking more, and so desires our attention. She loves to giggle and play now!

Prayer Warriors, please be in prayer about these items
-that God points us to the perfect land for HCU
-the children continue to be healthy and grow
-Randy's work permit
-orphanage license
-funding

Thanks you all and we pray that you have a Happy New Year, Be blessed!!!!

Volunteering

Hello to all the Hope Center blog readers - this is a post from Benjamin, a volunteer from the states.

I've been here for a month now and have been thoroughly enjoying my time here. Having the opportunity to come here and work with Randy and Angie has been  a great blessing.
I got here a month ago not quite sure what to expect, what kind of work I'd be doing, and what Randy and Angie would be like. Upon arrival they warmly welcomed me into their home and here and I quickly felt like one of the family. I've had a great time spending time in fellowship with Randy and Angie and playing with their kids - whether its an energetic game of soccer or water balloons or a riveting game of phase 10 :)

I've kept busy with a lot if different things while I've been here. I worked with Randy putting together 'pop-bottle solar light fixtures' for village homes. This was a really neat project and very rewarding to see how a collection of inexpensive parts could provide light to many power-less, dark homes in the village. I've also been able to spend time with the children in the orphanage, playing with kids and working with Shamim - a child disabled from abuse before she got here. The kids are a blast - each one with a different personality - I've grown attached to each one. I'll especially miss Shamim.

 I've also been able to go out to some of the villages around Mityana with a group of wonderful brothers from church. They really have a burden for sharing the Gospel in the villages and it was a blessing to join them in their bible studies and sharing of the Gospel. It was an adventure riding the 'death-on-wheels' taxi motorcycles out to the village, but definitely worth it after getting to speak with the villagers and serve them in whatever way we could.
I feel like there's a ton of other things I could talk about with all the different things I've had the opportunity to help out with - but for the sake of not writing a 10 page blog post, I'll leave it at that :)

I'll be leaving shortly - the trip felt way too short. Everyone I've met and worked with here has been so welcoming and fun to work with - I'm already starting to miss them. If you're looking for a place to serve - come out to the Hope Center in Mityana - you won't regret it!

-Benjamin