What's Happening at Calo Me Lare?!

Hi family & friends!

Thank you for praying for our Easter services!!! God answered prayer in a big way. The kids & adults enjoyed this wonderful day, & God was glorified!!! Thank you for your continued interest & support. We praise God for what He is doing in the lives of the children at the Calo Me Lare orphanage & the surrounding community. We estimate there were about 75 adults and 250 children on Easter Sunday!!!

Dennis took this picture of our Prayer Walk. Bi-weekly on Thursdays the moms, children & I take a prayer walk around the orphanage grounds. We only walk about 20 minutes. Each child grabs the hand of a mom or I and we start walking & praying. Most of the children do not pray out loud yet, but the moms all do. We hope the kids will take part more as we continue walking every other week.  We pray from a specific prayer list, committing different areas of the grounds & ministries to the Lord in prayer.

We now have 64 children & there are two more homes under construction. When they are finished & children who have lost their parents are found we will add 16 more children. We expect this to take place this summer.

Praise the Lord, this week Dennis & I were able to get our special pass to continue serving here another three months without having to leave the country to renew our visas. Thank you for praying about that. Project Hope also received their NGO (Non-Government Organization) renewal, so we are full of praise to God for working in those ways as well.

Drilling for a new water well began at Calo Me Lare today. Praise God for this donation! Sometimes the moms & groundskeepers have to go to a well at the back of the compound to fetch water in jerricans in the dry season. Please pray that this will be a very productive well.

Dennis has been working hard, planting vegetables in our backyard & at CML. Yesterday we left early in the morning & planted Gnuts (peanuts) & pumpkin seeds with the children. “Digging” (gardening) is what many people do for a living. We want the kids to learn to “dig” so they will have that to fall back on when they are adults. The kids really enjoyed it and many of them already knew how to do it. Children start working early here in Uganda.

Five of our kids performed a short drama in Children’s Church today. They performed really well. When we rehearsed yesterday I asked if any of them would like to pray, and one of the boys said, “Yes.” Then he prayed a very simple & profound prayer, asking God to help them.  I was so thankful to God for this step of faith on his part.

We continue to walk by faith ourselves, knowing God has us here for His purpose. Romans 8:28: And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.

Blessings,

Dennis & Margie

He Is Alive!

Easter greetings! Today is Good Friday leading up to Easter. We’re so thankful that we serve a Saviour who is alive & coming again! Thank you for your prayer support & encouragement. We greatly appreciate & need it.

We are planning a big Easter Celebration at Bungabunga Bible Fellowship. Our worship leader, Vicky, will lead us in some songs of praise & worship. Pastor Fred Musungu is our guest speaker for this special service. We’re planning some special Easter treats for the children. Today Cami, a teenager from our Bible Study & I made 330 sugar cookies. We average about 170 kids on Sunday, but we sent invitations out & expect many more. We are planning for each child to frost his/her own cookie & put sprinkles on it. Should be messy & fun!!!

Today is Good Friday. It is a national holiday as well as the Monday after Easter. Dennis worked at the church today & all of a sudden he heard the children wailing. He asked what was wrong. The mothers had explained what Good Friday means, and they all began crying because of Jesus death on the cross for the forgiveness of our sin.

We have really enjoyed our guest the past few months. Connie Becker stayed with us the month of January. We had a great crusade near the church March 7-10, & Pastor Fred Musungu & family were our house guests during that time. Connie Madden & Jesaca Gibson came for a special trip on March 12-23 & Connie stayed with us. They organized our store room at Calo Me Lare & brought lots of love & good cheer. This is Connie & I in our living room.

 The two new homes are nearing completion, structurally. See pictures below.

Work on the medical clinic is in progress. All the bricks are made on-site, More than half of the bricks have been made. We think it will be 40 x 60 feet. It will be so valuable to the orphanage & the surrounding community.

 The rainy season has started & Dennis has begun planting our garden at home. The white ants (termites) are out, which to the local Ugandans are a delicacy. They may roast them or eat them raw.

We had a great trip to Kampala Saturday – Tuesday of this week. This was our first trip to not get lost once. We took Connie & Jesaca to the airport on Saturday night. We enjoyed worshiping in an English service on Sunday & relaxing the remainder of the day. Then we had two full days of errands, returning home just after dark in the rain on Tuesday evening. We were unable to extend our visas, so we have someone working on that for us. Thanks for praying. We were able to change our airline tickets to return home on September 28^th.

Thank you to everyone who is praying for us. We pray for you also. “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”

Blessings,

Dennis & Margie

God at Work!

Thank you for visiting our blog! It is fun to look at your comments on Facebook! We appreciate all the prayers & encouragement we have received from so many people. God has answered your prayers!

Dennis became ill around the 15^th of January and tested negative for malaria. We thought he had a sinus infection so he began taking an antibiotic for that but it did not help. He went to the doctor on January 18^th & again tested negative for malaria, but the doctor started him on malaria medication & he was better in a few days. Two weeks later he had the same symptoms & again tested negative for malaria. We went to a doctor we trusted & he prescribed that Dennis take Quinine for a week. Quinine is a very strong drug which causes loss of appetite, ringing in the ears & low blood sugar, but is very effective against malaria. Dennis had a rough week.  He finished the medication Saturday. Today he was able to work at Calo Me Lare all day. We praise God!

Your prayers have sustained us through this time. We had a couple of reminders in one day of God’s promise to us in Genesis 28:15, “I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

On January 19^th the children went to be with their guardians for a week. This might be an elderly grandparent, aunt, uncle or sibling. Four of the children chose not to go, so we tried to plan special activities for them. We took them to the market in Lira. Our social worker, Irene, went with us to translate. Back at CML, Dennis rigged up a Slip’n Slide from a long sheet of plastic which they use for building. He sprayed it with a water hose as the kids slid down it. They had so much fun!!! After the other children returned from their guardians’ homes they all begged Dennis to do it again. This was a great thing to do in the hot weather. We have a video but it would not download to the blog. Our Community Group supports Harriet; she stayed  at the orphanage during guardian week. Here is a cut picture of her. Isn't she beautiful?!

The weather is hot and dry now. Our temperature gauge shows around 90-92 degrees every day. Being close to the equator makes it feel warmer. There will probably be another 40 days of hot, dry weather before it starts to rain. It has been interesting how the trees lose their leaves from the dry weather. The grass looks like it does in July in Oklahoma. BUT our mango trees have been blooming and are beginning to get small mangoes, smaller than marbles now.

Connie Becker was with us during the month of January, gathering information for the school. A pastor friend of ours from Mbale, Fred Musunga, visited us this weekend. It was God’s perfect timing because he preached in Dennis’ place Sunday, when Dennis was not strong enough to do that. We have really enjoyed our house guests and are looking forward to more in March. It is fun helping them experience life in Uganda. If you would like to experience that, join one of our teams & come on over. We'd love to have you!

Again, what would we do without our family & friends who are praying for us. We love you all!

Blessings,

Dennis & Margie

Beginning 2013 in Uganda

Greetings from Uganda!

 We arrived in Entebbe on January 3^rd & in Lira on January 4^th. We are thankful that the time change did not affect us as much traveling east. We had a great time with family! Saying “Goodbye” was not easy, but we are happy to serve the Lord in Uganda.

This is a picture of Christmas in our home in Talala with our daughter Evie:

  We brought a dear sister in the Lord from our church, Connie Becker, back with us. She is gathering information from the teachers at Calo Me Lare, schools & school officials in the area about how school is done in Uganda in an attempt to make our school at the orphanage the best it can be. We want the children to have the best education they can possibly have.

On Saturday, January 5^th, we received the traditional welcome special guests enjoy at CML. As we drove in the gate we were very excited to see the new church building for Bungabunga Bible Fellowship. We were pleased to be a part of the dedication service on the 6^th.  Dennis & Andy cut the ribbon to the new church building & Dennis spoke along with Pastor Emiku Dennis. See pictures below:

Connie Becker brought dolls for the girls & trucks for the boys. They played with them all week. The girls made houses for their dolls from bricks left over from the church construction. The boys built roads. They had so much fun! See the girls from Joy’s house with their dolls. Connie is the Muzungu (white person) in photo.

Achola Molly & her boys show off their new trucks below:

We are enjoying life in Uganda again, although this is the dry & hot season. We have not had rain this week, so the grass is beginning to turn brown. It has been fun to have Connie with us. We came home to almost ripe bananas. Below is a photo of Dennis & our guard Robbin with the bananas they cut down. They should be ready in a week or two.

The past few days Dennis seemed to have Malaria. At first he thought it was a sinus infection & began taking antibiotics. Although he tested negative for Malaria three times, he has had the symptoms & the doctor recommended that he begin treatment. When he began treatment he improved quickly. He was able to preach this morning although he could not stand for the entire worship time, which is customary in Africa. He is resting this afternoon. We appreciate your prayers for a full recovery.

Again, we are grateful for your interest, support, encouragement & prayers. We are so blessed to have faithful prayer partners. May God bless you abundantly in 2013!

Blessings,

Dennis & Margie

Christmas at Home

Greetings to all our family & friends!!!

We have had a wonderful time in Uganda these past 7 months & have definitely seen God at work in so many ways. We are home for a Christmas break & can't wait to see everyone!!! We arrived Friday night & were greeted by our family members who live here. Then Saturday night we were with our Loewen extended family. Sunday we shared in our church, Discovery Bible Fellowship. It has been good to be home & so much fun seeing everyone! We plan to return to Uganda on January 2. We would appreciate your prayers about how long we should stay in Uganda.

We wanted to share a couple more videos with you if it will download. One Saturday in November our keyboardist was playing around on the porch in front of the Admin. Bldg. He started playing some of the songs the Calo Me Lare Children's Choir sings, and this is what they sang:

Sometimes when I'm in temptation, I feel so forsaken
Sometimes I feel so lonely, I think I'm gonna fall
But then God's Word reminds me, He will never never leave me,
He will never never never leave me, no never leave me alone.

Jesus, here I am to serve You Lord, Jesus this is my life, I give to You,
Jesus take it, take it all my Redeemer, Jesus take it all.

It is not uploading, so we will try again sometime. If you would like to see some of the new children who recently arrived at Calo Me Lare ( the orphanage), go to www.projecthopeworldwide.org. The most recent blogpost was done on Sunday, December 2.

Have a blessed Christmas!

Love & prayers,
Dennis & Margie

 

Uganda Through Evie's Eyes

Thank you again for being involved in our adventure with Christ here in Uganda! We know you are praying & supporting us in many ways. You are a vital part of what God is doing & we know He will reward you.

We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all the saints. -Colossians 1:3-4

 We are so excited to have our daughter, Evie with us for 2 weeks in Uganda with our Missions Team from Project Hope Worldwide & have asked her to do a guest blog for us today. Here’s Evie…

Hi guys!
It's been busy here! We went out to see the kids at Calo on Monday, November 5. It was awesome! They greeted us at the gate and I’m pretty sure every one of the kids and staff gave every one of our team members a hug. They sang and danced and we all walked up to the orphanage with them. They had a big program prepared for us where they did a few skits, sang songs and danced, and every kid introduced himself/herself and told us what grade and which mother was his/hers, and it was all in English! It was really neat! I had my first meal of beans and rice there and it was really good!!! We played on the playground and walked around the grounds with them until they had to go back to school. I don't think I (or any of the visitors) went anywhere without at least one but usually 3 or 4 kids holding their hand :)

The roads here are ridiculous!!!! I just didn't understand until I saw it for myself. I really enjoy driving back home and had hoped Dad would let me drive here, but after seeing it I think I'll be obliged to just be a passenger. There are people everywhere and I don't know how there aren't wrecks and people killed all the time, but the drivers of the cars, bikes, and motorcycles and the people walking all seem to understand each other for the most part, and dodge and veer to safety when they need to. I'm also surprised that Mom and Dad's van is as rugged as it is! The AWD definitely helps, and it sets up a little higher from the ground but there are a lot of times where the road was really bad and it scraped under the van. Some roads are better than others, but there are a few here that I could probably walk on faster because Dad is constantly dodging and almost stopping for potholes in the road. BUT, they fixed the road that we take to the orphanage yesterday!!!! It has made a world of difference and everyone enjoys the drive more now! Pray that it stays good!

Mom and I spent a good part of the day Tuesday walking through the market getting ingredients for dinner that night and looking at all the stuff for sale. It was....different :) At first I didn't know what to think – it’s basically a huge maze, but Mom knew where to go to find what we needed, and she haggled for the right price when necessary! It was pretty overwhelming and HUGE, but I felt safe and everyone was very nice. By the end of the day I felt pretty acclimated and really enjoyed myself. I found some cool jewelry too which never hurts :) We left for a Safari Wednesday morning. We really enjoyed it. We saw a ton of giraffes and crocodiles, Ugandan Cob (deer with weird antlers) Heartabeasts, Warthogs, and Cape Buffalo. We also saw a few elephants and possibly a lion whose head we thought we saw sticking up above the grass, but our guide couldn't say for sure. There were also a lot of cool birds and of course I enjoyed the plants and trees. It's been cool seeing all the plants and trees here that I recognize as tropical plants back home, except here they're about 20 times bigger! I've also enjoyed Mom and Dad's house! It's very clean and nice, seems to suit them well and it feels like home! We had a craft day of sorts with the kids on Saturday. They were fairly good at sharing, and the older kids usually help the younger ones which is neat to see. It was a great first week!

Sunday was church and I LOVED it! The kids definitely outnumber the adults :) I loved their excitement and unbridled joy for the Lord. The dancing and singing was also very impressive and moving! Tuesday afternoon we went hut-to-hut in the village by the orphanage (see picture above). It was an amazing experience! We visited 3 huts and talked with the women there (the husbands weren't home). None of the women accepted Christ but one of the teenage girls did (girl with blue shirt in the picture)!!! Praise the Lord! My mom is doing a new believers class for the kids who have accepted Christ lately and so hopefully she will be able to come to that.

It's much different here, and I didn't expect a lot of things. You have to see it to understand! It's very noisy all day long, and some nights. There are people EVERYWHERE, and it's always busy on the streets. People are also very friendly and helpful which I didn't expect either. I was also surprised to see billboards when I got to Lira but it's pretty commercialized. I saw a sign today for cell phones and it said to "Come celebrate your Ugandanness." Everything is in English so it's fun to be able to read it all, but some of their marketing is pretty interesting to say the least.

I'm finishing this blog by candle light because the electricity is off (it's raining, so it is almost a given that the electricity will be off if it's raining). Life is a little harder in some ways, but the blessings are huge! The people's kindness and joy is infectious and it makes everything worth it!

Thanks for the prayers!!
Love,
Evie, Dennis & Margie

Videos of Uganda

      

Thanks to our Community Group we have been taking a few videos in Uganda. Keep in mind these are unedited videos, but you deserve to see a little of Uganda “on the move”. Before we left home our Community Group gave us this wonderful video camera, and we have just now learned how to share the videos on our blog. As they would say here, "Be blessed as you see some of life in Uganda."

This first video is the street we drive down every day that we go to the orphanage, Calo Me Lare. Note that driving is on the left side of the road. There are many speed bumps to regulate traffic, but that is about it. The rule of the road is “The largest vehicle has the right-of-way.” So we are fortunate to be driving a van.

This video is the children of CML welcoming the first team who came in July this summer. The song they are singing is “Welcome to Lira”. Every time a team comes they greet them at the gate & sing all the way up the driveway walking toward the Administration Building. Then the entire staff & kids perform for the team. They also did this for us when we arrived & Andy & Cami when they returned from their furlough in the U.S.

In this video the kids are performing one of the local dances for the team. The staff also performs. They dress up in costume while wearing their Project Hope Worldwide shirts. It is very interesting and colorful!
 

October 9^th marked the 50^th year of Uganda’s independence. You might be interested in reading online the prayer President Museveni prayed that day. (Google Museveni's 50th Anniversary Prayer if you are interested). It would be well for other nations to follow his lead in recognizing who God is and humbly repenting as a nation. Because it was the half-century mark the local leaders took part in a huge celebration in Kampala, the capitol. October 19^th was the day set aside for local cities to celebrate. Some of the kids from Calo Me Lare took part in this by marching in the parade.

 

Another small team is coming on November 4. We are very excited about this because our daughter, Evie, will be a team member. Pastor Derk Madden, PHW President, Kelley Compton who operates the PHW Office, and Rachel Dunnaway from Oregon (staying for a year) will complete the team.
We plan to be home with family and friends during the month of December and return in January for several months.

Thank you for all your prayers and support. Our prayer & support team is awesome! We thank God for you and pray for you.

Blessings,
Dennis & Margie