3rd email home

Hello Everyone,

The last couple weeks have been very busy, but that seems to be routine around here.

Some very typically Ugandan things have happened in the primary school ministry. Ryan (the youth pastor) and I are attempting to teach Bible studies in 2 primary schools a week, one on Wednesday and one on Fridays. The school we go to on Wednesday is the one that we had about 300-400 kinds on the first week. The next two weeks that we tried to go, but the kids were practicing for an intercity sports event. So we had no children. Then we went again this week and we had about 300! I taught the younger kids, about 150 of them. With a group that size it was very hard to keep them all interested and under control. I did however have about 30 kids who I could tell were really paying attention and could answer questions about what I was telling them.

The school we are supposed to teach at on Fridays hasn’t been going so well. The Principal is a Muslim, needless to say he is not very open to us being there. He agreed for us to come to the school every Friday but, every week he has had a different excuse about why we can’t preach that day. It happened again yesterday and I was very disappointed. You can be praying that he starts opening the doors for us to come.

I did go to a new secondary school this week with Ryan while he taught. He will continue to teach that one but I am going to start a small girls Bible study with the girls from that school. It will be Thursday after school and I am very excited about it.

I started my small group girls Bible study with the church girls 2 weeks ago. We are going through Proverbs. It is going really well. The girls come to my little apartment and sit on my living room floor (I have no chairs yet) and I give the tea and buns. I have made a question jar, so the girls can ask any questions they want. None of the girls have parents or adults in their lives that have time for them, so they are getting their views on life and sex and AIDS from school. They have a lot of misconceptions but have asked some really good questions. I am having a lot of fun getting to know them and spending time with them. Women’s day was Last week and the schools were closed, so I took all the girls swimming. It was really enjoyable day.

My work permit is going so much easier then last year. Bev has really held my hand through the whole thing and it has been so nice. I don’t think I would have figured everything out on my own, which I would have had to do last year. The sad news is, they raised the price of the work permit from about 150 US dollars to 1,000 US dollars. I don’t have to pay for about another 3 weeks, but it does have me a little stressed out.

I have started being the “creative side” of the youth group. I am coming up with games and fun activities to add to the youth group. None of our youth group kids seem to be friends, no one stays and talks afterwards. The come the sing the listen they go home, there is really no fellowship involved. I am trying to come up with a weekly short game (kind of like a Young Life game) to help create fellowship. If anyone has any ideas I would love to hear them!

Everything is going really well here. I feel like I am a good fit here. I am really getting close with our Ugandan staff here and enjoy working with them. God has brought a great group of people here. In so many ways it feels like home (no offense mom and dad )

2nd e-mail home

Hello Everyone,

Wow the last two weeks have been packed! I am getting settled into ministry and really enjoying it. I am keeping very busy, which is a blessing compared to last year when I felt I always had too much time on my hands. I really feel I am fitting in well here and able to be effective in the work I am doing. I have been doing all kinds of stuff lately from the women’s prison ministry to teaching a women’s Bible study, spending times with the girls, going to schools to teach Bible studies, and helping Bev with the day to day running of the church and its ministries.

The prison ministry has become really one of my favorite ministries. We go twice a week to do Bible studies. The women’s prison is actually a lot nicer then I was expecting it to be. I guess that 4 years ago the conditions in the women’s prison were horrid. All the women were stuffed in a very small room with no beds or even mattresses. Calvary had wanted to get them mattresses, but they knew they wouldn’t even be able to fit enough mattresses in the room. Then a princess from a European country came and visited the women’s prison. She decided she wanted to help and built a whole new prison for them, the place is actually pretty nice now. All of the prisoners have their own beds and there is indoor plumbing. For a lot of ladies who came from villages these are things that they didn’t even have at home.

Life is still hard for the prisoners as the guards treat them horribly. Most of them feel the prisoners should be beaten and verbally abused because of the crimes they have committed. They have gotten this example from the head women’s prison warden who says that the guards should make the prisoners lives hard as punishment for their crimes.

Many of the women’s prisoners have yet to have a trial to convict them; they are waiting for the court to make the time to give them a trial date. We have several prisoners who have been in there for over 3 years waiting for a court date! Two weeks ago a prisoner named Carol was released , she have been in prison for 4 years and when they finally had time to try her case they found her not guilty. It is heartbreaking to hear the stories of these women who haven’t been convicting of a crime but have been stuck in prison with no hope.

There are about 6 children living in the women’s prison. If the mother is pregnant when she comes to jail, or has a baby that is still breast feeding the baby stays in the prison. I think it makes the prison a little more cheerful at times to have the adorable babies at times. On Tuesday when we were doing Bible study at the prison I noticed that one of the babies was really sick. I started talking to his mom and she said he had been sick for two weeks, but that the prison doctor wouldn’t come and treat or refer the baby to the hospital.

If they refer a prisoner to the hospital then Calvary Chapel takes them to the hospital. We take a load of prisoners from the men’s and women’s prison every morning to get treated at the hospital, and then we pay for it. We spend close to 4,000 a month on medical care for the prisoners. Hover, for the last 2 weeks there had been no women prisoners going for treatment. The doctor has decided that because he doesn’t have a clinic in the women’s prison he won’t treat them, or refer them so that we can take them for treatment.

On Tuesday I could tell this baby, Derek, was going to die if we did not get him Medical treatment. But the Prison warden and the Doctor were gone and I couldn’t get permission to take the baby to the hospital. On Wednesday I was headed to apply for my work permit, but I asked one of our staff to go the prison to see if she could convince the guards to let her take the baby to the hospital. They would not. So I went yesterday morning and tried again using the argument that the Baby was not a prisoner, so please just let me take the baby to the hospital and the mom could stay at the prison. I spent over an hour being sent to different parts of the prison to get permission to take this baby, praying the whole time. Finally the warden agreed to let me take Derek to the hospital; she even agreed to let the mother come and a guard to watch the mother. The baby was so bad off that he has spent all night on an IV in the hospital. If the baby had been sent when he was first sick he just would have taken some medication and gone home. It breaks my heart that the guards care so little for the lives of these women and their children.

On Wednesday afternoon, Ryan (the youth pastor) and I went to a primary school. It is the first time Ryan has been to teach a bible study at this school, it will become a weekly things so we went just thinking Ryan would teach and I would go with him and try to come up with ideas for the upcoming weeks on how to make the hour we are their fun and knowledgeable for the kids. We were under the impression that we would have about 30 kids. Well we got there to find that a member of the Ugandan Parliament was visiting the school, and they basically wanted to get the kids out of the area he was visiting. So they sent the whole school to us, all 400 kids!! Well we decided that we would break the group up, and we would each teach 200. I was not prepared to teach at all. But, thankfully, our God is faithful. I took the kids through Romans road, and I a lot of them seemed really interested. The last part of our time was interrupted by the Parliament member wanting to address the kids, so didn’t get to really wrap things up, but seeds were planted. I look forward to going back next week and seeing how many kids we have.

Thanks for all your support and prayers. I am really loving being here right now, but it always helps to know there are people back home who are praying for you.

1st email home

Hello Everyone,
I arrived about 2 weeks ago, and it has been a crazy two weeks.

Last week Calvary Chapel Jinja had it’s first ever open-air crusade. It has kept us so busy, planning for it and then actually doing it. We didn’t have a great turn out, but those who came were able to hear the truth of the gospel.

The week before our crusade Jinja had a crusade lead by a lady called “Pastor Emelda”. She is a classic example of the bad teaching that goes on in Uganda. Pastor Emelda owns 5 Hummers. She has divorced her husband and stole her best friend’s husband and claims that God told her to do it. At one point in her crusade, she told all the people in the audience to hold up all of their money from their pockets so that she could bless them. Then when they did she said “Now I put a curse on your money. If you put your money back in your pocket you will be cursed. The only way you can be blessed from that money is if you put it in the offering that is being passed around.” Every one in the audience give her their money, but they came away later saying that “she robbed us.” This is a country that very much believes in the power in witchcraft and curses, and they really felt there was no way that they could keep their money after she cursed it. On one night she took seven offerings!

Pastor Emelda’s crusade is very typical of a crusade in Uganda, the theme is give to God and God is REQUIRED to give to you. Lots of people in Uganda have just traded their witchcraft for a form Christianity, but haven’t really changed. You go to the witch doctor and give him money and he does what you want, you to Jesus and give Him your money and He does what you want. That is the general thinking; there are a lot of people that profess to be Christians but haven’t changed at all.

Pastor Jessie (the pastor of Calvary Jinja), was able to pull lots of great material from Pastor Emelda and use it to show the truth. He talked about how Jesus said to give to the poor, and if you are giving to a pastor who owns 5 Hummers you are not giving to the poor. He talked a lot about the attitude we should have towards giving and how to give in a Godly manner. Our crusade did verse by verse Bible studies and taught straight from the Word. We have already seen fruit from it and I think that seeds have been planted and more fruit is to come.

This e-mail has already gotten really long so I will just do some quick updates on the other things going on.

I haven’t gotten too involved in the things that will normally be my ministry yet as everything was pretty much on hold while we were preparing and putting on the crusade. We teach 2 Bible studies a week at the women’s prison which I have been able to be involved in. I have really enjoyed going to the prison and getting to know the ladies. They are much more happy and cheerful then I expected. Most of the women in the prison are there for murder, it is sometimes hard to connect what they have done with their smiling faces. I am hoping that their smiles are a reflection of a change they have made because of the gospel being preached to them in prison.

As I am getting to know the girls I will be working with I am learning that relationships with them will be a bigger challenge then I originally thought. Most of the staff here describes the girls as snotty arrogant pre-madonnas. They have been exposed to the gospel and good teaching for several years as they have been living here at the church, so I am not sure what more I can do to help change them. We are all praying about the best choices to make to help them.

I have malaria again. It is much better then last time, partly because I caught it right away. As soon as I started showing signs of it Beverly (the pastor’s wife) made me go to the clinic to get tested, so I am already on medicine and should be on the mend.

The week before I arrived in Uganda, Jinja lost 2 missionaries. One was the 16 year old daughter of the Ochoa family; a missionary family who had been here a little over a year but had been called to Uganda and felt it was their home. The Ochoa family had their own ministries they were involved in but also helped run the Sunday school program here at Calvary. Everyone here was very close to them. Talitha Ochoa was very much in love with God and we are all comforted to know that she is in Heaven. The other missionary was a 20-something man named Adam who worked with a church and a Christian owned café that helped raise money for the church. Aaron was killed in a car accident along with a Ugandan man named Moses who was the manager of the Christian café. George who works with us here at Calvary was best fiends with Moses. Needless to say I arrived at a time of great sadness for Calvary Chapel and for the missionary community in Jinja. If you could be keeping everyone in your prayers that would be wonderful.

It has been great to return to Jinja. I always feel so welcome when I come back. Shop owners who I hardly know have seen me in the last couple weeks and had warm welcome backs for me. I love returning to Jinja because it has such a small town feel to it and I am becoming less and less of an outsider. So many of the locals know me and treat me like a local now too. In a lot of ways it has become like home.

Thanks for all your prayers!!

Megan

It starts

I started this to make it easier for people to read my updates in Uganda. I returned to Uganda on Jan. 26th 2007. My first couple blogs will just be reposts of my updates home.