Home At Last!

I am always grateful and happy to come back to Uganda and be with my children, I miss them terribly when I am away from them.  I have such wonderful children from the youngest, Sabrina, to the oldest Sarah.



 Sabrina came to my home about two years ago.  She was living with her Aunt who is very sick with AIDS and TB, and I feared for Sabrina.  I did not want her to get TB.  Her mother also has TB and AIDS and abandoned her to the Aunt.  Neither one is really able to take care of her, so I felt strong I should her in.  She has blossomed so much in the few years.  She is now seven years old and so much fun.  She loves Tinkerbell movies and playing with dolls and her favorite color is pink.
In the picture here is is on my lap.  Not all my kids are in the picture, as some were gone to University.  In the back row is Violet, Mary, Christine (their Auntie), Katie, Sarah and in the front from left to right is Irene, Susan, Goma, Norah, Me and Sabrina, Ssemu, Israel and David.  The ones missing are Beatrice, Brenda, Charles, Henry, David, Kepher, Benjamin and Bumba.  Raising up the children for the Lord is very important to me and with lots of love and compassion that comes from Him.  I am thankful to be able to serve our Lord in such a wonderful way.
 

Mary Mary She is not contrary!

I have another little woman in my home named Mary.  She is such a beautiful young girl, and so full of life for the Lord, Jesus.  She loves to share the gospel with others and cares about everyone.

Mary came to live in the orphanage with me when she was 8 years old.  She had a very rough life as a young child.  She lost her father when she was four years old.  Her mother had left when she was very young for another man.  She did not see her again until she was older. 

She was growing in a home with her two older brothers.  They lived in a home that was made from sticks and mud and it was caving in from two sides.  The Grandfather and Uncles that live there brew liquor on a daily basis and sit around and drink it from long straws until they are totally drunk.  One time there was a two year old that they gave alchohol to until he fell over dead.  They were too drunk to realize what they were doing.

I knew this was no place for a child to grow up, especially a young girl with no mother or father around.  When the house was caving, I took her in with her two brothers.  Mary was very shy at first.  She was always happy to help out, however, in the kitchen or any where.  She likes making sugar cookies at Christmas time and enjoys learning to make new things.

Mary is a very bright young lady and has come to know Jesus as her personal Lord and Savior over the years.  She depends on Him for help in her life, and I believe she will be successful in God's eyes because of her love for Him and her fear of the Lord in a right way.  She often teaches the little ones in the orphanage.

Mary is in her 5th year of high school and actually about to finish it.  I believe she will one day work in a job where she can make a difference for the Lord.  She is only one of the many youth that we have seen changed through sponsorship, love, and most of all - the love of Christ.  Thank God for my beautiful little women of Africa.

 

Esther

We had a little girl in the ministry who was sponsored for several years.  She first got a sponsor when she was six years old.  Her parents were both dead and she lived with her Grandmother.  Her Grandmother was sickly and very poor but did the best she could.

The little girl was called Esther.  She had big beautiful eyes but they always looked sad to me.  She often got sick, usually malaria.  She was small for her age.  By the time she was seven we realized something was wrong to make her sick so much.  We had her tested first for AIDS, but she was okay, then many other things.  After months of trying to find out what was wrong, something we did not even suspect was wrong.  She had syphillis. 

We  began to wonder how she at the age of seven could possible have such a disease.  Was she the victim of sexual abuse from someone in the family?  It turned out that someone she shared a basin for bathing with was a carrier and this is how she got it. 

Esther always seemed to be trying her best to survive.  She got a bad case of malaria and was not strong enough to fight it.  She had to walk like a mile to get to the clinic for her injections and often would not go, even though it was on her way home from school.  She was afraid of injections so much.  The Grandmother was too sick to go with her.  Then the medical officer came and told us that she was not coming regularly for her injections, so we went to find out why and we found out she had passed away trying to walk home from the clinic.

It was a sad moment and to this day when we visit the Grandmother and other children in the home, I go to Esther's grave and cry.  I realize that she was very young and she seemed to love the Lord, Jesus, and believe that she is in a better place.

It is often that kids get sick and have to walk to the clinic, or even continue going to school.  They do not get a chance to rest in their culture.  We do not have a vehicle for the clinic to go and get them or to take them any where.   When there is an emergency then we are called and take them to Mbale town.

The next time your child gets sick, I pray you will pray for the children in Uganda who suffer so much, even in just getting to a clinic.  God bless you.
 

Read It and Laugh or Weep!

One of the little women in my life is very special and dear to my heart (they all are!).  However, I will not use her name since some of the kids in the ministry may read this and I want to protect her.  We will call her Lori.  When I first met Lori she was only five years old.  She was always dirty and running every where.  I am not sure in those days I ever saw her run!  She always smiled and no one could know what she was going through.

She always had jiggers in her feet, non stop digging out jiggers!  I always felt so sorry for her going through the digging out but it did not stop her from running and enjoying herself.  Lori always had torn clothes and it seemed that she only had about three outfits.  She didn't care either.  I always envied her attitude about life, and I never knew at that time what she was going through.

She came over to my house often just to get a bath.  She hated the first one I gave her but after that she started to make it a regular thing!!  I think she just liked being cared for!  I always hated putting the dirty clothes back on her after bathing.  Once I gave her some new clothes that I went and bought for her and she went home with them and I never saw her wear them again.  I asked her about it and she would just smile and not answer.  I then began to look into what was going on in her life.

She had lost her father to AIDS.  Her mother left her because she was so sick.  She stayed with the Grandmother on the father's side.  The Grandmother was always sick and she had a husband that was a step-grandfather to Lori.  The Grandmother made her work in the gardens, carry water, cook and do just about everything by herself.  Her Grandfather drank all the time.  He was most often drunk! 

When Lori got sick one time, and I could see the Grandmother was doing nothing to help her and she was going to die from malaria, I took her in and had her treated from my home.  She was happy to be in my home.  I made sure she got good meals, baths and clothes to wear.  She had a bed to sleep in too.  I really loved her so much, but then one day her Grandmother showed up to take her home.  This was after about one month.  She said she was old and sick and needed her at home.  I asked her if she was concerned about the young girl's welfare and life.  She just kept saying that she needed her to help at home. 

I later came to find out that the Grandfather was raping Lori nearly every night when he came back drunk.  She did not tell people anything or show it but she was going through hell on Earth.  I cried and cried wishing I had never allowed the Grandmother to take her back.  I finally got help from the government in getting her removed and put her in a foster home.  She was not raped there but still made to do a lot of work. 

Lori developed such a feeling of unworthiness and life is not worth living by the time she reached her teens.  One would never know she was the same child that ran every where and came for baths!  It took several years of help for Lori and alot of love to help her.  Most of all, however, it has taken the Holy Spirit to heal her.  When she came to Christ and gave her life to Him she changed so much.  She began to do well in school, have a little confidence in herself and not think bad of herself.

Today Lori is in University and I am excited to see how the Lord is working in her life.  I know she will be a real testimony to others who have gone through what she has.  God bless you my dear daughter and may our Lord lift you up even more and bless you so much, Mom K
 

Let the Little Children Come

I am in Tucson, Arizona right now with Momma Jan and we have been remembering so many wonderful stories and some not so wonderful stories of our time together in Uganda.  Momma Jan was with me for around three years in Uganda until she had to come back and take care of her mother. 

One of the times we remember so well was a boy I have already written about.  His name was Junior.  She remembers how we both sobbed at the funeral and how hard it was when he died.  My daughter, Violet, one of my little women of Africa, is Junior's sister.  She really cried and it was so hard for her to watch her younger brother die.  She had already watched her father and mother die, and now her brother.

Violet's Grandfather was involved in drumming for evil spirits in his youth and younger years!  He told me that he feared for us to move the graves that are on the HUM property because he had done terrible things there in worship to the demons and the Devil.  He said it would all come back on him if we disturbed any of this.  My mind races and wonders about what he did!

We were also remembering a witchdoctor that use to live near me and would do his things all night and then put up a flag to mark that this was a place open for business.  He would drum at night to call up the dead and evil spirits to help him do his bidding.  There are things that we both learned about the witchdoctors that just made us sick.  Sometimes when a person does not have money to pay for their services the witchdoctor will ask for the wife to sleep with, or daughter to have sex with and most of these witchdoctors that I know have AIDS. 

A few years ago I witnessed to a witchdoctor that lives near me and he broke down in tears and cried.  He said that he knows that what I am telling him is true but he is afraid of the demons.  He said that he had given his three children to the demons and they had given him nothing that they promised in return.  He really cried and asked God to forgive him.  He really changed for a while, but then went back to his witchcraft.  I asked him why he would go back to something so awful (like a dog returning to its vomit).  He told me the demons were threatening him and he had no means of making money to survive, no education and no one to help him.  I prayed with him but he still refused to really accept Christ in his heart.  His name is Stephen and I ask all those who read this blog to please pray for him.  He only remains with a few children now and one of them is sponsored and comes to AWANA and church all the time.  He is only nine years old and I know he is very disturbed by what goes on in his home.  His wife left him with the two little daughters and she is in church all the time.

Pray, these people need the Lord so much and they fear.  God bless you and thank you, K


 

Remembering Benard

I love Christmas time.  A time to remember that our Lord, Jesus Christ was born into this world to die for us and to take the punishment for our sins.  What a loving Lord He is and what an amazing love He has had for us and has for us.  He came into this world with nothing and left with nothing but love!  I cannot understand how anyone can deny Him their love.  He is the most wonderful person in my life and He is my everything.

I cannot say enough wonderful about my Lord, Jesus Christ and I hope that all of you are thinking of Him always too.  He cares about everyone.  He loves me, you and all people, young or old!

As I think of his love and realize that He is the one who put Uganda in my heart and He is the owner of the vision that I have for Uganda and the children there, it brings me to tears.  A country where children are not born with any dreams or hope, but when they learn about Him they have hope.

I remember one such little boy named Benard.  He was only three years old.  He was sponsored by a woman and her husband from Colorado.  Benard lived with his parents, who were extremely poverty stricken.  His father drank day and night and even brewed his own liquor.  He abused the mother on a regular basis, beating her until she would have to go to a clinic for help because of bruising.  He often would hit the little boy as well.

Benard would get up early in the morning to go to the gardens with his mother.  He had a goat from his sponsor and he would take the goat with him.  As his mother worked, he worked side by side with her and tied his goat up near by.  He would often eat something like a raw sweet potatoe for breakfast.  He was a very shy and quiet little boy and very afraid of men.  He was not in good shape at all, he had malnutrition and a big belly full of worms that were eating his food.  He slept in a mud hut with his mother and would get bites all night long from mosquitos and ants.  He had no dreams with such a life.

One morning when he and his mother were out working in the gardens, he felt something disturbing his goat so he went to see what it was.  He saw a big snake and was scared but went over and untied his goat and got a big bite on the ankle.  His mother did not know what to do and she told him to get to the clinic fast.  She sent him on foot while she followed.  She did not know that walking there was the worst thing for him.  He fell on the way and died before he ever reached the clinic.  This snake was a cobra.

We buried him the next day.  His sponsorship money bought him a sheet to be wrapped in, a coffin, and a hole dug with bricks and cement put around the area where his coffin would lay.  I cried so hard and the mother could not stop crying.  She kept saying my little boy, my little Benard.  Wow, even though this was nearly ten years ago I will never forget little Benard and how quickly his little life was ended in the village of Kamonkoli.

Please pray for his mother, she is still struggling with the husband and now resorts to a witchdoctor to help her.  She lost heart and cannot believe that there is a God who loves her so much and cares about her as Jesus does.

 

Memories!

There are so many things that I can remember to write about.  However, when I sit down to write I get this writer's block!  Where do we begin.

When I first went to Uganda the thing that really tugged at my heart was the children, their conditions for living and physical health, the lack of education, the lack of love they receive and care.  I wish I had time to go and hug and give love to every little kid there is and even the big ones!!!

I spent a lot of time giving baths to little kids when I first got there.  I bought this big plastic tub called a basin and would fill it with the big yellow jerry cans and give them baths.  It seemed to me that none of them ever bathed!  There were little critters to deal with also!  Critters like body lice and jiggers.  Jiggers are little bity red critters that dig under the skin - mainly on the feet around the toes.  They have to be dug out very carefully so that you do not break them and cause a bunch more little ones to spread.  They are a lot like ticks.  After they dig into the skin they swell up from sucking blood and they itch and hurt at the same time.

Then there was shaving off hair that was unkept.  The children seemede to really love the care and attention that they never seemed to get.  Even little kids go and get their own water and have to carry it.  Then when they get done bathing they go back and play in the dirt and unfortunately most of them have to sleep in the dirt.  If you consider that the homes or huts they live in are made of sticks and mud with grass roofs and the floors are dirt.  The floors are smeared with cow dung and left to dry to make it hard, but this seems very unhealthy to me.   The kitchens are made of the same and have three stones with fire wood in the middle of the stones for cooking on.

I feel for the children in Uganda and I know that they need more care and more love and I ask for your prayers as I continue to love on them and help them and reach out with them with the love that our God gives to them.

 Every day children die from malnutrition or malaria from lack of care or someone to look after them.  Help Hines Ugandan Ministries to make a difference - checkout our website www.hineskids.

"Religion that God considers pure and perfect is this - one that looks after orphans and widows in their distress and keeps oneself pure before the world."  James 1:27

"Whoever welcomes even one of these little ones in my name welcomes me."  Matthew 18:5