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.