Denis starts at Don Bosco, visiting Dan’s family, a training college for Kodet, seeing Derek, Ivan, Robert, and Shaffick, Omoding starting at a salon in Tororo

Good morning friends,

We’ve had a tiring week. On Monday morning we had a meeting with Oswald from JPII J&P Centre to discuss the publicity for our Anniversary Celebration, this was followed later in the day with a meeting with the vicar of St.Stephen’s (Church of Uganda) in Kisugu where we are planning to hold our service of thanksgiving and having a marquee with food, testimonies and performances from the boys.

Tuesday Peace and I, with Jessie driving, travelled to Mbale. We met Tresor and Denis who was starting at Don Bosco that day. On our way we called in on Dan’s family in Kayunga, on travelling to the school to pay some fees for Shila and George, we met them returning as Shila was unwell. George was escorting her. They came back to the school with us and George happily ran back to his class to resume his studies. After meeting with the head we took Shila home and met the dad and Ronny, who had been working in the fields. Esther was out with the younger ones. They were happy to show us Dan’s rabbits and puppy!

We then travelled on and met up with Derek in Iganga who was busy working in the garage; as we had some T-shirts and trainers for him we took him further along the road as we didn’t want to embarrass him in front of his work colleagues. He is fine and doing well.

“He answered, ‘ “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind”; and, “Love your neighbour as yourself…………..and he asked Jesus “Who is my neighbour?”
‭‭Luke‬ ‭10‬:‭27

The next day we invited Kodet for breakfast before travelling to a Technical College we were hoping he could attend, unfortunately he had to have studied up to A Level. They kindly gave us the details of another college that took Senior 4 students. We were near Soronko so travelled on to meet up with Ivan. We had some materials, zips and buttons for him that had recently arrived from the UK. We are expecting more boxes of ‘goodies’ to distribute shortly and another sewing machine as Ivan wants to be teaching other youngsters in the village tailoring. Ivan was fine and came back with us to Mbale to purchase more materials and cotton threads. From here we went to the Technical College, (sadly the road was impassable for the car and we had to walk some of the way!) on arriving we met the head teacher, Hilda, who showed us around with a police officer, also looking for a college for his son, we were very impressed, they were just enrolling students. Kodet wants to do car maintenance and we enrolled him in the course – he will begin shortly.

From here we went to Malaba on the Kenyan border and saw Robert who is always easy to find working in a local shop, we also took him to near where he stays and gave him a jumper, T-shirt and trainers. Following this we went to visit Omoding’s family in the village and found him, his father, stepmother, neighbour, uncle and two of his half-sisters who had arrived home from school. The family are doing well and are rearing ‘broilers’ – there were 100s of them in very clean surroundings – the stepmother is very good at rearing ducks, pigs, goats and now chickens. Peace was given one, which travelled back to Kampala with us! We arranged to meet Omoding’s brother the next day and to find Omoding somewhere to do his hairdressing internship from, in Tororo, he will continue to be staying with the family – this all worked out well, and he begins at the salon next Monday. As we travelled back to Kampala we stopped at Bugiri to see Shaffick who is staying near his mother – please be praying for him he gets very little work and is obviously struggling. I arrived home at 7pm and after Christine and I had a few snacks – I had a shower and went to bed at 8.30pm! We were pleased we accomplished so much!

This Saturday I have the Ladies Fellowship at my home so went out Friday to get some shopping before catching up on emails etc. thankfully Santa has been around today cleaning and tidying up!

Thank you for all your support, love and kindness. Prayers please as we are planning to take in new boys this coming week. Victor and Saviour, with Trésor’s help, have found a room to rent as we hope Saviour will begin his internship at the Speke Resort this coming week with Victor.

Thank you for all your love and kindness.

With love and prayers.

Jane x