10 YVVers took part in this mission trip. 9 of us, together with 2 people from other churches, arrived in Jinja on Friday 30th January as HopeBuilders Team 3. There we met up with Kim Rivett and the rest of Team 2 who still had a week to go on the work site.
When we arrived, the brickwork on the first house was almost complete, and almost halfway there on the second house. We joined in with the guys from team 2 and quickly learnt the skills involved in laying mud bricks. Some of our team were dispatched to build the septic tank, the plumbers were given the task of plumbing, the electrician got to do some electrical work, and the rest of us did whatever Bert said!
Over the course of the 3 weeks we managed to see the first house completed, the second house completed apart from the roof and one window shutter (no power for the welder and grinder on the last day), the kitchen / dining/ washroom / toilet block for the two houses completed apart from the roof and the sign installed. All of this was achieved despite several rain interruptions, dodgy electricity supply and frustrations waiting for equipment, materials and labour to arrive.
Church
We visited 3 churches during our stay. All of them claimed to be Pentecostal. The structure of their services was similar to ours, minus the community time, although they managed to go a little longer than we do, a minimum of 3 hours. The first week we managed to strike a visiting US preacher who was having one of her first attempts at preaching. She was good, if a little nervous. The second week we suffered through our own preacher, pastor Ron, and the third week we finally got a message from a Ugandan. In each church there was clear evidence of the Spirit of God being present, particularly during the worship times.
Ugandans, as you may expect, are much more free in their movement during worship than we are. The musical quality may not be quite as good (actually not even close), but they certainly get into it as could be seen from the sweat rolling down the face and neck of Pastor George as he pounded away rhythmically on the drum. At each service we got to introduce ourselves and pass on a greeting. At both the second and third weeks we were prayed for by the churches.
The buildings are really something – no more complaints about our building please.
The orphanages
We made 3 visits to orphanages, twice to the Care4Kids orphanage in Jinja and once to the orphanage run by Pastor Moses in Nakaseta village, about an hour north of Jinja. Each of these visits was really special, with the children making you their friends within a few seconds. They played with us, sat with us, sang to us, and won our hearts. They put on ‘entertainment’ to welcome us and made an impact in each of our lives that will endure. They also gave us inspiration for the work that we were doing in building Village of Hope.
The community
We visited some people in the local community one Sunday afternoon. Without going very far at all, we came across a number of people who were really struggling with life. We talked with them and prayed with them, and gave them some clothes and other stuff that we had, and hopefully gave them hope. Hope is the thing most of the people seem to lack, apart from a decent place to live and a reliable income to be able to feed themselves. There is much need in Uganda, and Village of Hope won’t do it all, but it will help many children to survive.
