updates

Hello to everyone. I must apologize for my drought in updates. I have been very busy with work at Bushikori.

Holiday fun clubs: Bible studies

-Ok so since my aim to come to Uganda was to serve wherever Bushikori needed help, I decided to work on the spiritual growth of the children sponsored by Bushikori Christian Center. I held a seminar for senior students 4 weeks ago as an attempt to encourage senior students in their walk with God and to challenge them a bit before they head back to their Universities. We focused a lot on bringing glory to God in all we do so of course it was a challenging study. We had a guest speaker come in for the day and I ran a Bible study. It went wonderfully and the students gave very positive feedback.

I then started a holiday program for the children in primary 1 thru to senior level 6 (which is the same as grade1 thru to year 12.) Every Wednesday morning I would run the bible club for p1-p3, then Wednesday afternoons were p4-p6. Thursday morning was p7-s3 then Thursday afternoon was S4-S6. All up I taught around 70 children in 2 days, each week. The session started with games such as fruit salad, poison ball and other such kiddie games. For the senior students we did the more mind thinking games or just the general get to know you games such as “have you ever…..”. We then had a singing session and we sang songs such as “he is the King of Kings” and “Jesus loves me” and for the older kids we sang Ugandan praise and worship songs. After the singing we had the Bible study or Bible lesson. Each group of children came with their own challenges that made me work really hard. I enjoyed the challenge of trying to match certain activities with the age groups being taught and working out the level of understanding that could be taught at the different age groups. I can now see how helpful a course in Education would be if you were to take on such a role as teaching children the Bible.

So the holiday program has come to an end this week and I really enjoyed the chance to teach the children new things and to see how excited they are to learn about the Bible. They love the new games and loved playing with real balls (as they are used to kicking around some plastic bags wrapped very tightly to form a ball). I gave out lollies to the children when they answered questions so they were all eager to listen carefully and know the answers J (it was a bit sneaky but it worked)

So now that this program has come to an end I am now in the process of planning the Saturday programs that will run throughout the year. We are hoping to go out to the villages and around the school hostels, rotating from place to place. I am also hoping to begin a Bible study for teen girls in the hope of growing them into mature women in Christ. I have befriended an American girl that is starting a teen girls study through her church and an English girl that may start a study for teen girls in the slums of Mbale. We are hoping to bring the 3 girls groups together every few weeks and let the Ugandan girls grow a network of support as they grow in their faith.

Living with Ugandan People

Last Saturday I moved out of the comfort of living in a Muzungu (white person) home, eating Muzungu food and living near and around other Muzungus. I moved to a slummy suburb known as Bugema. I live with Mary, the Ugandan receptionist at Bushikori. I love it so much. They are teaching me the Lugisu language and teaching me how to cook Ugandan style on little coal stoves. We make posho (ground up maize mixed with water and cooked to make a food that looks and tastes like play dough without the salt. Its very very tasteless and has almost no nutrition value.), Matoke is a type of green banana that is cooked in water wrapped in banana leaves. We also eat pork, chicken or beef stews. I will take some food photos so you get an idea what an average meal looks like. They really don’t understand what variety in food is. You could count on your fingers almost the different food they eat and the variety they eat it in. So everyone cooks the same way. I try to explain how in Australia there could easily be 100 ways to cook chicken and they just don’t get how that could possibly be.

So anyway I live with Ugandan people, I bathe out of a basin filled with cold water (which makes washing hair kind of difficult), I wash my clothes in the same basin. We have a drop toilet/pit latrine that doesn’t have a toilet as such but rather just a whole cut out of the concrete floor so you have to watch where you step.

Our neighbors are a family from the Congo. The father is a bishop and a missionary in Uganda. They are extremely poor and yet they look after their own 6 children, 2 widows with their kids as well as 10 other orphans. So I am surrounded by children that just want to play all the time. I have decided to mentor the Bishops 3^rd daughter who is 12 years old. We are planning to meet once a week for prayer, bible reading and all other fun things that mentoring involves.

There is a little church set up for this bishop so we have praise and worship, prayer and bible teaching twice a day. Im learning some French songs as well as Swahili as the bishop only speaks these languages. I have been trying to remember any of my French I learnt in yr7 at school and all I can say in Bonjour, how are you, and my name is Marianne. So we do a lot of hello’s cos that all we manage in each others language.

Ok so I just wanted to update you all and I will post snaps asap to make reading the posts easier.

God Bless

Lots of Love Marianne