STC AFRICA!
The New Land
School Construction
Farewell to Will, Ann, Abby and Lilly
The Boys Singing Goodbye to The Neale Family
The Teachers
There is so much going on at the UJV since the New Year has started! This is our excuse for not updating the blog. But we are realizing how important it is to keep people informed as to what is going on at the UJV. We appreciate your support and prayers so much! We apologize for the delay in blogging! Amy Toyota has agreed to take on doing updates on the blog at this time. So let’s catch up shall we!
Henry and Erica Schmidt from the Supernatural Training Center (STC) in Canada came to Kampala for 1 month early in the year to do the first STC Africa. In four short weeks we experienced the Holy Spirit in many different ways and many hearts and lives were changed. We really believe that God is restoring Africa and going to bring a new sound out of Africa that is going to touch the world.
It was so great to have Luke and Suzanne Jones and the boys come back from Canada. Kathy Reich and Marike Cooke, two volunteers at the UJV have also come back from a Christmas break. The local team really missed everyone who was away.
Will and Ann Neale and their two girls have been at the UJV volunteering for over a year and God called them back to the UK. It was a sad goodbye from the kids and team, they will be missed very much. We are so grateful for all they did here at the UJV. Before they left 2 of their friends Mark and Eleanor Croker came out to visit and help out for 3 weeks. We were so blessed, Mark brought some much needed computer skills and got all the UJV computers, networks, and stuff I don’t understand, straightened out. HUGE blessing!
2008 is a year of build build build for the UJV. We have acquired 35 arches of land to begin construction on to make the Uganda Jesus Village truly a village. Luke is working on plans for the development on the land and is eager to get out and start building. We have a vision of having traditional looking African style homes for the kids and mamas as well have having a church, school, medical clinic and shops. There are two hills on the land that have a beautiful view Lake Victoria and the surrounding fields. We are so excited for the kids to have a place to run and play.
Another dream we have for the land is to plant and grow food for the UJV and eventually be able to sell the produce. We believe in empowering the people here and really want to see the UJV come into a place where we will not be totally dependant of outside donations. We believe it is God’s heart for the UJV to become self sustained as a village. We are looking at many different areas to be able to develop self sustaining businesses with the Mamas and staff at the UJV. Then donations can be used for developing things other projects like the medical clinic, building more homes, and rescuing more kids.
We are excited to have our first new volunteer of 2008 come out. Maria Deardorff is from Boston and will be joining us for 6 months at the UJV starting in the middle of March. We also can’t wait for the team of 8 from Abbotsford to come and work with the kids and mamas for two weeks in the middle of March. Aggie Flam and her team from Global Harvest have watched God’s hand move to provide for them to come! I know God is going to bless the UJV and the team during their time here.
We began building a new school just before Christmas, it is still under construction and if funds continue to come in we hope to have it finished and up and running by the end of April. Eventually the goal is to open the school up to the community children. This will aid is making the school self sustaining as well as a great way to reach the community with God’s love and bring a good educational level to these children.
We are believing God for all the needs here at the UJV. We are in the process of finding a local accountant to add to the team. We really want to come along side the African people to empower them. In doing so we need people to come to help train up the locals in many areas, such as office and computer skills, school administration, health, environmental care, self sustaining businesses, just to name a few.
Please continue to pray for us and tell your friends to check out our blog! We will do our best to keep it updated with the happenings around the UJV. There is so much to tell you! Thanks for all your love, prayers and support. We really do need it!
