The Graduates!

We are excited to say that we have more graduates from University this month.  Stephen Mudangha and Jesca Norah Kataike both graduated from Uganda Christian University.  Stephen majored with a Bachelor's in Agricultural Engineering and Entrepreneurship and Jesca graduated with a Bachelor's in Business Administration/Accounting.  We also have Sarah Sabano, who has been working with us as a Social Worker that went to school at night to get her Bachelor's in Social Work Administration from the same school and Harriet Acham, who graduated with her Bachelor's in Social Work Administration.  We have others coming up this year and are excited to see them finishing because of faithful sponsors.  God bless you all for helping these children to do something with their lives.  Harriet has a widowed mother who has really struggled and the same for Stephen and Jesca (who are brother and sister).  Sarah's parents have many children and have really struggled.  The we have Anton Otimongo, who is graduating with his Bachelors from Gulu University.

Coming up soon we have Sosi Musana, Andrew Nkambo, Harriet Konga, Alice Nawere, Diana Nankoma and Julius Bumba (who we wrote about earlier in a post), Michael Wafula and Fred Gadala with their diplomas which are like Associate Degrees.  We also have Badiru Mukama, Peter Kolokolo, Andrew Muluga, Helen Gwenda, Henry Maleza and Julius Musene who finished in vocational studies.

Most of these young adults are God fearing people who want to make a difference and they will because of the sponsors that faithfully sponsored them through until the end.  Thank you to all of you who care and are a big part of this ministry.

Mudslides of Bududa

Recently I went and visited an area known as Bududa on the slopes of Mt. Elgon.  Mt. Elgon is an old volcanoe with some activity going on at this time.  It is 14,177 feet high.  Mbale sits in the foot hills of the mountain range that borders Uganda and Kenya.

I am always amazed by the disasters that happen.  There are six children who lost both parents in the mudslides so we were asked to check out the children and see how we can help.  The children's father was a Pastor of a Penecostal Church and he was working hard to get everyone to evacuate, but the mudslide turned almost 90 degrees and went over his home while he and his wife were having lunch.  The children were at school.  The youngest is 5 years old and the oldest is 14 years old.  Right now they are staying with their Uncle and his wife, who has eight children of his own.  They are all evacuated and living in a tent in the Bududa area.

The mountain has been splitting in many areas causing these mudslides or landslides.  The day it happened it was not even raining.  There are volcanic rocks all over still blue in color.  A landslide also occurred on the Kenyan side this month, killing over a hundred people.  There were eight killed that are known of in this mudslide.  The last one we visited left over 2,500 people living in tents for a long time and hundreds were killed.  Please pray for all of these people.

The government is trying to get the people to move, but they do not have any funds and they have no where to go, no land, etc.  The government is trying to relocate them and paying the expense but finding it hard as there is over a hundred thousand people living in the areas of the mountain.

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Above and below are a few pictures of the area we visited recently.  You can see the big machines digging and looking for bodies of people who were buried.  Another man lost his wife and one of his children.  Their bodies have not been found and he is left with a four year old at home.  He is beside himself and so upset that he does not think he can manage life.