An Incredible Day

Today was our second day of ministry and God worked in miraculous ways! After breakfast and devotional time, we went to a slum of Mbale called Namatala to share the gospel and go hut to hut with interpreters for two hours. The Lord provided more interpreters than expected. We broke up into 7 teams of 3, which was a blessing since it allowed us to reach more people. God led us to people that were ready to receive His Good News and He spoke through each person on the team. He used us to reach many people who prayed to receive Christ for the first time! Let’s give the Lord the glory and thank Him for our new brothers and sisters! Ministry was not limited just to unbelievers but we also ministered to believers who were suffering, doubting, mourning, and dying. Through the mighty power of Jesus’ name and prayer, we eased people’s pain, hurts, fears, tears, doubts, and also helped a family recommit their lives to Christ.

Each team was given 3 gospel tracts as a tool for presenting the message. One team was inundated with people who could read English and asked for their own tracts. They were afraid they had run out of their material and people were still coming. A small miracle occurred…they kept finding tracts in their pockets as long as they continued to share the gospel. In the exact words of this team, “this was a type of loaves and fish story and there was even extra tracts which was the baskets left over!” How cool is our God!

After heartbreaking goodbyes at Namatala, we loaded into the vans and drove to Lulwanda. We were blessed to participate in their Friday fellowship time. We sang, danced, and listened to a message from a house mother, Sylvia, about spiritual growth. While the children were coloring and decorating a bag, some of us hid 500 Easter eggs filled with sweets, stickers, rings, and small toys. The kids had so much fun finding all of them and enjoyed their treats. For the rest of the afternoon we had unstructured play with the children which consisted of games, songs, and sports.

Tonight during our debrief, we had worship and encouraged each other. It was intense and emotional considering the hard things that we saw earlier today at Namatala. We broke into our small groups and prayed for protection of our hearts, the people we met today, and for you, our prayer partners.

Thank you so much prayer partners for your prayers! God is working mightily through you! We feel them and the Lord is so present with us here! They are being answered and are moving mountains in Uganda! Please keep lifting us up daily and interceding on behalf of the African people. The Lord is good and worthy of praise!

To Him be the glory,

Morgan and Heather

Our First Day of Ministry

This morning we arose with smiles on our faces, even though some of the team had trouble sleeping due to jet lag. We started the day with an excellent breakfast and several members of the team experienced African coffee for the first time… YUM!

Our first stop was a church in Mbale. We went in order to teach hygiene lessons to children and their mothers of the Namatala village. Our prayers were answered when the translator overcame the language barrier and the women clearly understood the message we were attempting to get across.

While the hygiene lessons were being taught, a mother walked out of the church with her ill and crying infant. The Lord immediately prompted Kelly Elkins to approach the two and ask to hold the baby and suggest that the mother return to participate in the lessons. As she held the child she prayed that he would come to know the Lord early in his young life and that he would grow up in a Christian home. Morgan soon helped out with another crying baby and rocked and comforted him also taking advantage of the time to pray.

The hygiene lessons went great! The children and mothers learned about germs, the importance of washing hands, and how to do so while using very little water. Cathy, Heidi, and Di did an amazing job presenting the lessons and the mothers were very thankful for the information that will keep their children from getting sick. After singing our group song that we have been practicing for weeks, “Love” by Chris Tomlin, Connie presented the women with the prayer blankets specially embroidered with the Lugandan words “O-kwa-ga-la-kwe” meaning “His love.” The mothers were given enough blankets for every child in their family, along with sugar, flour, soap, mosquito nets and flip flops. The overjoyed mothers expressed their gratitude with loud trilling noises made with their tongues, and headed back home with all their new gifts balanced on their heads.

We headed to Lulwanda Children’s Home and even those of us who were returning from previous years were not sure what to expect. With a heart full of joy, Chrissy got out of the van and began to look for the children she had been exchanging letters with for the past year. She went to the schoolhouse and within a few seconds, the children ran from their rooms and hugged her. Tears began streaming down her face. A child embraced her and wiped the tears from her cheek saying, “It is okay. God loves you.” The rest of the team shared equally moving experiences upon being welcomed with such love.

The rest of our time at Lulwanda was spent getting a tour of the Home, meeting the new staff members, and playing with the children. We only spent a few hours at the orphanage, but we all look forward to having the next week to disciple and to love on these kids.
As far as our team, everything is going very well, and we are looking forward to hut-to-hut evangelism tomorrow. We are so thankful to have such powerful support back at home. Hope all is well in Texas! We miss y’all! J

God Bless,

Chrissy O’Rourke, Kelly Elkins, and Rebecca Marshall

Praise God the GFUMC 2009 Uganda mission is off to a great start!

Monday afternoon we all made it to the Houston airport in plenty of time to load 43 50-pound pieces of luggage on the plane and head for Amsterdam. We want to thank all of the friends and family who came to the Houston airport to wish us bon-voyage. It was a long and tiring trip, but most of us managed to catnap. Rebecca Marshall slept the whole 9 hours, and Smith Leggett didn’t sleep at all! We spent four hours Tuesday morning in Amsterdam Airport, some window shopping drooling over all of the beautiful (and expensive) merchandise made in Holland, others eating and relaxing.

Then we were off on our second leg of the journey, an 8 hour trip from Amsterdam to Entebbe. Upon arrive in Entebbe Airport we were all checked for Swine Flu symptoms, and to our amazement given a clean bill of health. We had our passports stamped with our visa into Uganda, and all the baggage appeared! We were relieved to see the four vans that carried the 22 of us and our luggage to the hotel for our first night in Africa.

Wednesday morning, after beginning the day with worship and a devotion, we drove to the only large department store in Kampala to purchase toys and other gifts for the orphans we will minister to. While at the department store we linked up with 17 year old David Schoultz, from GFUMC, who has been here approximately two months with YWAM (Youth with a Mission) and will soon be leaving for South Africa. David has contracted Malaria, so we gathered around him and prayed for his health and safety.

After a four hour drive through the country side, we arrived at our hotel. The journey was amazing to most of us, to see how the people of Africa live. We saw poverty stricken people living in huts and sheds, walking along the roads carrying everything from water to bananas on their heads. We saw workers in the tea fields, and rice paddies, making bricks, and selling anything imaginable along the road side.

It was a great relief to get to our hotel in late afternoon, get cleaned up and have a wonderful meal. Then we had a great time of praise and worship led by Smith Leggett and Kelly Kerr. We broke up into small groups and reflected on 2nd Timothy 1:7. We all are looking forward to a good night sleep and hope it isn’t interrupted by jet lag.We thank all of you for your continued prayers for our mission trip.

Joann Hopkins and Rob Marshall on behalf of the Uganda Team.

We made it safely and all luggage came!

Thanks for the prayers! In Kampala now & on our way to Mbale.

Our Commissioning

Before church this morning many on our team commented that they can't believe the time is actually here and we are getting on a plane tomorrow to head to Africa!  After today's amazing send off  at Grace Fellowship we believe it and we feel so ready!

We were honored to be commissioned and prayed over in front of the whole church by our senior pastor, Jim Leggett in the first service and by Morgan Pylant, the Connections Pastor in the second service.  We are grateful for the prayers of our church body and of all of you who are following this blog.  We go out thankful and confident that we serve a God who hears the prayers of His people. 

In between services, we were invited to the Next Generation in our Kids Place at Grace. These kids are the children of parents who are serving in one of our services and attending the other. Next Generation  is a special program for them and we can attest it is powerful in equipping these children to be godly leaders. After sharing a little of what we would be doing in Africa, the kids, whose average age was about 8 years old, got up off the floor and split up coming to each of us to lay hands on us and pray for us. They asked us our names and how they could pray specifically and then they prayed the sweetest prayers you could imagine for each of us by name. They prayed for our health, our safety, that God would use us, for our comfort and so much more. It was awesome!

Thank you Kelly Brotherton, Kristen Kershner and the other leaders of this ministry. You are doing a terrific job and we are so blessed to have witnessed what God is doing in and through these precious  kids.  May the Lord bless them and continue growing them up serving Him so powerfully like they did today. 

We will likely not get a chance to post again until Wednesday night when we arrive at our final destination in Mbale. Thank you for your prayers!

There is Love- Okwagala Kwe

"Okwagala Kwe" has become the theme of our mission.   It means "His Love" in Lugandan.  We are going to Uganda to tell as many as we can about His love. We are going to share His love in many ways, even without words. We have embroidered the words Okwagala Kwe on the 300 prayer blankets we are bringing and will explain that the blankets are a gift from Jesus. We pray they will to serve as a reminder of His love whenever the recipient needs comfort.  We have memorized the Chris Tomlin song, "Love" over the past few months so we can actually sing it in church and anywhere else we have opportunity!  Tonya had the lyrics printed on beautiful Team T shirts she gave us. We will wear these on the flights over to serve as a witness to everyone we meet on the long journey to Uganda.

Click on the YouTube link (on the right sidebar) to the song performed by Chris Tomlin and the Ugandan Children's Choir in Kampala, the capital city of Uganda last year. The quality of the video is amateur but you can still hear the song and imagine us in the place of the performers! Imagine Smith Leggett leading us with his guitar and the rest of our group singing the African lyrics led by Sarah Hurst.  They make us sound really good!   Maybe after we perform it in church we can upload our version!! 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wbJPPAcmLY

Our Itinerary and Prayer Requests

Please pray as you are led but here are some prompts based on our daily activities.

Monday June 8 through Wednesday June 10

Depart Houston Monday 3:30pm, on KLM to Amsterdam (9.5 hrs), a 4 hour layover and then on to Entebbe (8 hrs). We overnight in an Entebbe hotel and travel on to Mbale by mini buses (4 hours). We arrive at our final destination Wednesday around 8am Houston time. Uganda is 8 hours ahead of Houston. Pray for safe travels, rest and that all our luggage and ministry supplies arrive.

Thursday June 11

Morning: Visit the Namatala village children at a local church and provide for some basic needs: prayer blankets, shoes, soap and toothbrush. Clean Hands, Clean heart presentation of the gospel. Pray that our visit to them will be received as love and compassion from the Lord.

Afternoon: First visit to our main focus group, the 90 orphans of Lulwanda Children’s Home (LCH). These children are b/n ages of 4 and 13yrs old. Pray for relationship building and help for jet lag.

Friday June 12

Morning: Visit the Namatala slum/village.  Sharing the Gospel hut to hut through translators. Pray for prepared hearts, good communication, courage, salvation!

Afternoon: Resurrection Celebration at LCH. Easter-egg hunt with 500 plastic filled eggs. Games/crafts. Fun! Pray for joy in the Lord and understanding of the most important message.

Saturday June 13

Host an All Day Sports/Field Day for 90 LCH kids and the 90 village children partnered with them in The Good Neighbor Program. Distribute prayer blankets and hygiene supplies. Pray for joy, safety, and delight in the Lord.

Sunday June 14

Morning: Worship African style at Bulolelo village church!!! Our group will sing a Chris Tomlin song with some Ugandan lyrics. Morgan and Philip will preach and teach adults while our group will conduct Sunday School around 150 kids. Pray we remember the words! Peace for Morgan and Philip as they share the Word.

Afternoon: Rest at hotel. Pray the team can clearly hear what God is saying to us and pray for restoration of weary bodies.

Monday June 15

Morning: Shop at local market to stock pantry of Gangama Babies Home, home to 50 babies who are under 4 yrs old. Visit the home and assemble a swing set and play with children. Distribute prayer blankets, toys and other gifts. Pray that we would be a blessing to the staff and interact well with the young children. Pray they are not afraid of our white skin!

Afternoon: Vacation Bible School at LCH- worship, crafts, Bible and games. Our message:  Because Jesus loves and chooses me, I can follow Him. Pray the messages would be understood clearly and the children would feel the love of Christ through us.   

Tuesday June 16

Morning: 5 ladies will conduct a Living Water International Basic Hygiene conference for 200 women in Namaje village. Gospel presentation. Pray for clarity of teaching through translators and comprehension of the life saving messages. Pray the presenters would be supernaturally empowered to teach.  The rest of the team will conduct a Sports/Field Day at a local elementary school for 300 children. Pray for safety, order and joy in the Lord.

Afternoon: VBS continued at LCH with the whole team. Our message: Because Jesus is the Son of God, I can worship Him. Pray for understanding and revelation and true worship.

Wednesday June 17

Morning: Visit a public elementary school and teach LWI’s Basic Hygiene lessons with a gospel component to 350 students. Gifts of soap, toothbrushes, flip flops and nylon backpacks. Pray for order, safety, understanding of the messages. Pray that we can split the group into three for easier teaching. Pray for comprehension and salvations and that the children understand the gifts are an expression of love and compassion from Jesus.

Afternoon: VBS at LCH. Our message: Because Jesus helps me, I can follow God's plan for me. Pray for changed hearts and deeper commitments to Christ.

Thursday June 18

Morning: Sight seeing in an area with baboons!! Pray for safety and freedom from fear for some!

Afternoon: Closing celebration at LCH, video recap of our time there (pray the power will be on) saying goodbyes to staff and children (pray for protected hearts,).

Friday June19

Depart early for Kampala, sight see the Source of the Nile on the way. Lunch and souvenir shopping at a local craft market in Kampala. Depart for the Entebbe airport. Fly out at 10:20pm. Pray for safe travel on the dangerous roads and protection while in the city. Pray for a smooth check- in and ability to rest on the flights.

Saturday June 20    Arrive Houston 1:30pm   Safe and sound. Praise God!!