Children and Challenges in Buloba

Happy Independence Day to our American friends! Today we prepared packed five sets of food staples to bless people with and headed out in Jawale’s van to Buloba. The church there meets in a school started four years ago by a Christian man named Henry, who greeted us as we pulled onto the property. Since the government does not subsidize education in Uganda, anyone can start a school, and Henry decided it would be a good use for his land. Though he has not been able to afford to build more than a pair of dirt floored, plank sided classrooms and has no books, he has ambitions to build permanent buildings, run electricity, and even get computers for the children. He had the children sing and dance for us, then gave a speech welcoming us and asking for support.

Two brothers, Benjamin and Fred, pastor the congregation meeting at the school and work as carpenters during the week. They were already believers when Pastor Robert became a Christian in 1997, so they helped him grow in his faith and encouraged him to lead the youth organization they had founded. They told us that Buloba is a village plagued by alcoholism, adultery, and illness made very resistant to the gospel due to the strong Muslim influence.

Pastor Ken and I saw the latter factors as we went out to bless people with the food staples we had brought. We visited a man with some undiagnosed illness, a pair of elderly women who became believers with one daughter but whose other daughter and granddaughter remained Muslim, and a very poor woman who said she wanted to know Christ but feared the response of her Muslim husband. Her son was lame from an infection on his foot so Pastor Peter gave him money for medicine. Then we visited a woman with no family left crippled by chigger bites on her feet, and a woman with a grandson suffering from meningitis who had no money to get him treated.

While we were out visiting homes, Martha and Becca shared stories, songs, and sweets with the children at the school, many of whom were also suffering from illnesses. After saying good-bye to the children we traveled to Robert’s home town to visit Bosco’s mother, who lives in Robert and Sarah’s first home, a building he and Jawale had built. The house is surrounded by Robert’s relatives and near the family cemetery, but Robert had moved away after his relatives persecuted him for refusing to help with pagan burial rituals after his conversion. Now, however, his success as a pastor has made him a hometown hero, and we visited his cousin Balam who is a believer and manages the facility at Fountain of Hope.

We walked to the nearby home of Pastor Fred and were treated to a wonderful lunch prepared by his wife Esther. Their infant daughter Angela Joy was unfortunately afraid of the muzungu ghosts who invaded her home and hid her face the whole time!

After lunch we went to Fountain of Hope, where I played peek-a-boo with some laughing children while Martha and Becca paid school fees for some of the sponsored students, then sorted out and privately delivered supplies and gifts the children had needed. As they were doing that a thunderstorm struck, which was welcomed as a blessing for the crops and a diversion for the kids! We lost electricity after the storm, but it just came back on in time for dinner back here in Njeru.

Tomorrow we will leave early for Ndolwa and we will stay in a guest house tomorrow night, as the potholed dirt roads make travel to the village difficult and time consuming. If you don’t hear from us tomorrow, no need to worry; it just means we may not have internet, or for that matter electricity!

Thanks, once again, for your prayers.

 
Kirk and the Friendly Ghosts