Praises!
First a big thank you to each of you that took the energy to come out, hookup and spend time with us as we visited the USA. We know that life is busy and we appreciate that you took that effort for us!! We did have so many blessings and wonderful conversations with each of you we were able to connect with. There were some crazy things, like covid chopping about 1/4 of our time off the front end of our visit but we were truly blessed by y’all!!
I came back to a fully packed schedule with 40 volunteers here during the month of August. Not all at once thankfully but usually 22-25 at all times with a handful the entire month, all the others from 2-3 weeks. This is the same organizer that was here in January that I mentioned. Gibi, the founder screens his volunteers and looks for those that want to come and make an impact and not just here to party. All of these volunteers were just amazing young caring professionals.
They worked diligently Monday-Thursday taking some weekends for fun, some stayed on weekends. Let me see if I can think of all of the things that they organized and paid for? Painting: the outside of the kitchen, the outside of the boys dorm, painted some murals and the inside of the girls dorm. They hosted mommy time and took care of up to 15-20 babies in the mornings so the mothers could partake in either the gardens, tailoring or hairdressing vocational center or the majority choose to take English classes.
There were many mothers from the DRC/Congo so it posed the challenge of French speaking very little English and the Spanish volunteers with thick accents and some English. It has always been interesting and a delight for me to see and participate in getting through language barriers. I witnessed people use anything from rudimentary sign language to drawing pictures to communicate, to taking hold of someone’s hand to walk and show a reference point. These mamma’s were well on their way after the 4 weeks to feeling accomplished and more confident in their skills.
Each day the volunteers hosted the children in sports competition with each class participating with a new t-shirt that was associated with their class. Shoes, tee’s, and a variety of other apparel was distributed not only to the children here, but within our community here in Gweri. Some definite challenges of distribution in that it gets a little crazy and people can be very creative in trying to get more than is intended for each family or individual.
An attempt to hold a medical clinic was fraught with problems but we will try again. Some of the issues: need to engage more local doctors, better understanding of what might be needed for basic medicines and how to manage the flow for care and a screen process. That might all sound negative, if it does we really look at it like a great lessons learned and will again try in the future.

More Praises & Challenges!!
So that is a summary in brief. So you might be asking yourself what was my role in the activities of the group. Some of you might remember my career while in the work force was technical project management. That skill, project management, can translate to almost anything in life, as well as here! From helping track everything, bringing risk assessments, to budget keeping and more during the planning sessions for the last year including the mock trial in January, that was really what the small team did then.
Here in August it was anything from being a point person, to material pick up, to the transportation to the community visits to, briefings of activities, to cake maker, to photographer, to liaison in some challenging moments. I hosted a dinner for the last 11 volunteers last Friday, I don’t think I can do 25?!?!! It really is everything God has prepared me for before coming here. It was demanding, yet satisfying and one of the most fulfilling aspects of their time here was having the honor and privilege of being able to witness and testify to these young people. I even sent my testimony to a couple of them!
You might be thinking what about Bill?! Bill came back to catching up, more updates and meetings. His is much more cerebral in some ways with what he is working on and wasn’t as intense. He’s working with his team in preparing them to go to the next stage of executing on the training that they have been going through, next up is more live applications. He also had additional insight in how he needs to continue to effectively change material to assist in learning, or in hopes of retention for the culture here.
I told one friend that coming back and the lack of being able to ease into the 9 hours of jet lag may have been good for me, although I don’t know that I would want to do it again nor would I necessarily recommend it! But we are back and fully entrenched back into all the things that God has for us here in Uganda including fully spoiling these two four leggers here. I think too they are pretty happy to have had us return. I think they may have again given up on us coming back. There were definitely stress indicators. Won’t it be wonderful when our worries and concerns are no more ……

Prayers
 Praises, praises, praises for our time in the US!! We did so enjoy the time and fellowship with so many of you. I truly believe that is because you all continued to pray for us and He heard your prayers!
 Pray for another couple of streams of funding for FMLK. This is an ongoing prayer, and we hope that with some of these young adults that there might be some help coming in the future. WE continue to trust God in all things!!
 Please continue to pray as we complete the applications and everything surrounding the 501c3. We still have some undone portions of completing this and I am hoping we have time to accomplish some of these in the next couple of weeks. Coming back to crazy just hasn’t allowed us to tie down a couple of items but we are so close!!
 Please continue to pray for the families I gifted photo sessions to, the sessions haven’t been scheduled yet. I just saw the friend from a distance so believe he must have just returned from bringing his wife & children back.
 Prayer for both of us as we get back into the groove, being honest I am really, really tired right now. Its been two straight months of crazy!! Pray for our health.
 Please pray as we prepare for FMLK NGO renewal next month. Always rough!!

Annual Conference, September 14-16, 2022. Don’t forget to register at tmciworld.com. See you there!

Dear America,

I am composing this email as I am sitting in the City-owned Community Hall awaiting today’s Good News Club in St. Leonards. I am writing to you in reflection and wonder at how God has answered prayer and brought His vision to fruition. We are small in number right now, but God has begun this work that so many prayed into. Last week some college students joined us, and the children really made a connection with them.

Not only are we able to have Good News Club across the street, but our church is forming connections in the school in amazing ways as well. I have added helping with reading club and serving breakfast to my repertoire of skills to build relationships. Our pastor is coaching soccer. Another lady from church is helping with the school garden. This has all happened in the last few weeks as doors have opened in the school in unprecedented ways.

While St Leonards is a 6-week Good News Club, we would love to continue the momentum next year. I know some of you have asked about a special project, and at least one of you specifically about St. Leonards. I am looking to set up a special project fund so that we can have Good News Club and continue to reach the children next year. I hope to even add more school terms. It costs $55/week to rent the building, and we are looking into more advertising options too. The good news is $55 here is the same as $38 in US dollars. If you’d like to be a part of that next year, I will keep you informed as we work through setting up a special project account.

In other news, while the children in St. Leonards learn that Jesus is God who Cares for People, our other Good News Clubs have been seeing that Jesus is the God of Power and Glory by the amazing miracles He did.

There are several upcoming single events as the Spring holidays approach. I mentioned a couple months ago that I would be planning the children’s program for our Tasmanian Bishops Training event in September. The theme this year is having “Unshakeable Faith” in an ever-changing world. Pray that God would gird up our Christian children in their faith through this event.

Also, I am planning an outreach holiday program in the small town of Cressy. We did a Christmas event there last year. This Spring the theme will be all about Space. So, pray that many boys and girls will hear about it and come along.

Prayer Requests:

·         The children at the St. Leonards Good News Club, that they would see their need for Christ and trust Him as their Savior.

·         More children to come along to the St. Leonards Good News Club

·         The children attending the Bishops Training Event to grow in their faith

·         God to bring children along to the holiday event in Cressy

In Christ,

Stephanie

Don’t forget to register for Annual Conference @ www.tmciworld.com Sept. 14-16, 2022