Happy New Year!

We're sorry we've been a bit slow to keep this up-to-date, but a new year is always a good time to make new resolutions, and ours is to get better at this! We returned to Uganda just before Christmas having spent 4 months in the UK, visiting friends and supporters, attending conferences and also taking a break at the insistence of our trustees.

Whilst we were in the UK our team here have done a great job keeping things running, but as you might expect we returned to a fair few challenges which have kept us busy since we got here.

January is a massive time of year for us. It's the main holiday - the equivalent of our summer holiday in the UK - the LMC Cup of Uganda football tournament gets underway (watch Tim's blog for updates on that), we set the budgets for the coming year and analyse the expenditure for the previous year, and of course it's the new year - a time to refresh ourselves with the vision, to renew our commitment and to plan for the future!

So, this month we have visiting us two of our trustees, Rob and Margaret - who are going to work with Emily (the White Eagles Manager) on all the finance stuff, Rob's wife Katharine, Rob and Katharine's friend Nick, Tim's friend Josh, our friend Florence, who is coming to get away from it all to write a book she's been working on, as well as our daughter Josephine and her husband and two kids - John, Jonah and Georgie!

We've brought 3 of the girls up from the girls home - Robinah, Judith and Veronica - to help out, and give them a chance to earn a bit of pocket money.

Introducing the White Eagle Family Project!

We have some very exciting news to share - this month we have launched a whole new scholarship program supporting 18 vulnerable and needy kids within their families! That brings the number of kids we are helping directly through our sponsorship program to 52, which is a huge milestone for River of Life and alongside the hundreds of kids that we're getting alongside through our youth work and sports ministry, the people we're visiting and assisting through the Mercy Missions, the work we're doing with agricultural development and the links we're building with Northern Uganda, it feels like we've definitely moved up a gear in the first half of 2008. Hallelujah!

Anyway, back to our new White Eagle Families. We've recognised for a long time the need to support families as much as possible - afterall the absolutely best place for children is within a loving family. The strains and stresses of Ugandan life - poverty, sickness, hardship - often stretches the social safety net of the family to breaking point, and children can fall through the gap and end up working on the streets, or in the markets, earning a few shillings a day to supplement the family income. That's the best case scenario - what also happens is that 'unwanted' children - perhaps from a previous marriage, or from a sister who has died - fall to the bottom of the pecking order and are neglected and considered a burden on the rest of the family: often resulting in them running away.

So what better thing to do than to complement our 'reactive' White Eagle work that saves kids from the street, with 'proactive' work that supports parents straining with looking after large families, including nephews, nieces, half brothers and step-sisters by providing scholarships? Thanks to the generosity of our supporters, that's exactly what we've been able to do! The kids are enjoying going to better schools whilst growing up in a loving family environment - fabulous.

Of course there are many more potential 'White Eagle Families' that need our help who we are unable to support (yet!) so if this exciting new venture has tickled your fancy and you'd like to find out more or become a supporter, drop us an email

14 guests to stay!

Our 3 bed bungalow has been host to 14 of the White Eagle Boys recently! With the rest of us here, we've had over 20 people round the dinner table... I'll start from the beginning. I've been back in Uganda 2 weeks now, after our emergency visit to the UK to see Duncan's mum. The night before I was due to fly back another emergency meant I took off to Leeds, instead of Entebbe, to spend the best part of a month with family - Duncan had to return to Uganda on his own and attend to the funeral arrangements for Jjaja Rose. I have to be honest, it's been a really really tough time recently, it feels like we've been through the mill.

But, on the first Sunday I was back, Church was lovely, it was so good to be there. Duncan and I had had a short break in Kampala, and we'd decided this school holiday to spend a lot of time with the kids. So from Wednesday to Saturday morning, 14 of the older boys came to stay with us in our home! Each day 2 stayed and work in Bwala our home and 12 went to work on Kibaya Farm. We have cooked lots of food as they have worked really hard - Tim went with them and took photos which you can see. Also he took some good video footage to make a promotional DVD for this summer - do pray for him in this as it's a lot of work!

Then in the evenings we had a topic, teaching and discussions. The first night was 'integrity' - it was great. The second was 'sex and single life' - I put it together and opened the session but then left it to the men to talk men to men! Then the third night they all went to John's home to watch some football match, so they didn’t go to bed till about 1am - but they were up again at 6:30am. The last night's topic was 'money - good or bad' and finishing with watching the Passion of Christ. And on Saturday morning we had a time of sharing what they got out of the sessions as well as looking at employment and work. They all really worked hard, we are so enjoying this holiday time with them!

You can see how hard the boys work. Here's what it looked like before:



And here it is after! All ready for planting crops and delicious food:



You can read Tim's take on the events on his blog

Thank you to all our supporters, and God bless
Mary

Remember that newest member of the Church?

When we first started this blog we wrote about little Mercy, so-called by one of our elders because of the Mercy God had shown on her life. We found abandoned in a saucepan by the side of the road - she was so thin and scrawny and obviously undernourished back then, it was terrible - we have a photo of her but it's too distressing to post it here. Anyway, she joined the big White Eagle family here and she is getting on so well, we just had to write about her. She has everyone wrapped around her little finger, chatters away in English and Luganda and is a really bright little spark.

A total transformation compared to how she was when she came to us, praise God! Here she is with Tim, after a chapatti making session...

In memorium Jjaja Rose

It is with great sadness that we write of the death of Duncan's mother, known to many as Jjaja or Maama Rose (depending on how old you were). Any of you who have visited Duncan & Mary will no doubt have either met her, visited her or eaten great piles of matooke and chicken at her house on the outskirts of Kampala. We have all been knocked sideways by her death, which was a few weeks ago now, on March 8th.

However, we were so overjoyed that Duncan and Mary were able to get back to the UK a few days before and have a great time with her before she died. Thank you all so much for all your prayers, and thank you to those who made this unplanned visit possible.

Having had some time to recover, we'll be much better at updating this blog thing. Honest :)

Duncan & Mary online (take 2)!

So, after briefly experimenting with 'blogging' at the end of 2006, we're going to now really get into it - at least as much as the power and internet access of Masaka allows! Our trustees in the UK have been working hard to help us communicate with our supporters using all this new technology - the website, email, blogs - and we really hope that it will help our supporters feel connected to the work that's going on out here. We're about to send out a newsletter with all the latest updates, and launch our new website and e-bulletin - it's very exciting! Let us know what you think... In the meantime, let us say a big hello from everyone here at River of Life, and we look forward to 'connecting' with you more!
(written by Rob D (Trustee, on behalf of Duncan & Mary)

One of River of Life Churches Newest Members!

This is one of our newest members here at River of Life Church! It's a little girl called Mercy who we've brought into the project. She was abandoned by her mum and left naked in a saucepan with a lady. This lady wanted to keep her but her husband didn't want her as they could not afford another mouth to feed.

She was brought to us very very malnourished and tiny for her age, but with lots of love and very good milk - SMA which costs 15 pounds a week, (yes 15 pounds a week!) she is now growing and getting stronger.

It was one of our Elders John Lutaaya who called her mercy as she has seen God's mercy on her little life. She has gone from no love, abandoned and ill, to having so much love. All the children pick her up and cuddle her as do all us adults and now she will not let you put her down! She's so sweet!

After her food she talks and babbles away - we reakon she will be a preacher one day!