Childcare Ministries

In this last week, the international students have been touring and learning about the various ministries that Watoto has to offer.  There is still a lot more that we haven’t even seen yet but it is so cool to see things I have heard about for so long.

 

Last week, we went to Baby Watoto Bulrushes which is a home to about 100 babies from pre-matures to I think 10 months.  Don’t quote me on that one!  Unfortunately, we were unable to touch the babies as they were under quarantine from a spread of hepatitis throughout the home.  We walked by crib after crib that held beautiful children, some on oxygen, some with physical deformities, and all with big beautiful eyes staring at us.  These children were mostly abandoned on streets, police stations, or hospitals.  Some of the babies’ mothers have passed away so Watoto is nurturing them until their fathers can take care of them.  I can’t even begin to tell you the amount of times I have been on the verge of tears this last week.  

On Saturday, we had our tour of the two children’s villages in Kampala.  First we traveled to Subi which is the larger of the two.  The village is up on a hill and is home to about 1400 people which include 1000 children, and the rest are mothers, teachers and other staff workers.  Each village includes a primary, secondary, and vocational school where the children from the village and some children from the neighboring community attend.  In Subi, the homes are arranged into clusters where each house is home to eight children, and one mother.  One of classmates invited us into her home and we saw a few of our new friends throughout the tour.  Bbira, the smaller village, is home to about 1000 people in houses arranged in circles and is located on a flat ground surrounded by a forest.  

  I can’t even describe how amazing the villages are! The more I see it with my own eyes the more I realize how God’s hand has played a major role in the development of this place.  I can’t believe how self-sustaining they are becoming.  They have a large metalwork and woodwork shop so that they can make their own bed frames, windows, doors, etc.  There are even hopes to start selling their products to the community.  Also, because baby formula is so expensive, Watoto researched that goat’s milk is the next best thing to formula, so in Subi, there is a goat farm to provide milk for the baby homes.  

So as some of you might know, I have a sponsor child with Watoto.  I have been told that I will get to meet him while I am here.  The program coordinators will find out the village and house number of this little seven year-old boy and arrange a formal meeting with him.  Anyway, as I toured through both the villages, I was praying that somehow in the midst of these hundreds and hundreds of children, I would get to meet him informally.  I mean that would be so cool right?!  Throughout the tour, many children would come up to us to wave, hold our hands, or give us hugs.  I could never get tired of that… EVER!!  Anyway, I came to the conclusion that I would just have to wait until my formal meeting with him.  As I walked down the path in Bbira, there was a little boy playing on the side of the path and he looked up at me.  I did the usual ‘hello, how are you?’ and asked him what his name was.  He informed me that his name was my sponsor kid's name….. My heart started to race.  “It’s so nice to meet you.  How old are you?”  He shyly told me he was seven.  MIND BLOWN!!  I asked him a few other questions while attempting to really study his face to see if I could recognize him from the one picture I have.  I wasn’t one hundred percent positive it was him until later the next day.  On Sunday, we were at Watoto’s annual Festival of Hope and there was a table set up from the child sponsor department.  I worked up the nerve to ask them if they could look up where my sponsor child was from and sure enough they easily located him with just the first name that I provided them.  He lived in Bbira and I totally met him!!!  I so easily could have walked right past him or have missed him entirely due to the hundreds and hundreds of children that live in the village.  Anyway, God is so good!  I cannot wait to meet this kid again and formally get a chance to introduce myself.  Every Saturday, we will be going to Subi or Bbira to put on Sports Days for the children.  So yes, I will get to see a lot more of my sponsor child!

Anyway, I am just so awestruck by how many people Watoto is reaching and developing.  Again, my description won’t do it justice.  You really need to see it for yourself!  This next week, we have a full week of classroom work to learn more about the Watoto mindset before we get into the outreach side of things.  

Subi Village homes

Woodwork shop in Subi

Classroom in Bbira

Secondary School in Subi

View from Subi

Goat farm

Peace and love

Orientation

The place that I am living now feels like home which has been particularly nice after long days out.  Over the past few days, we have been touring and learning more about Watoto Church and all of its ministries.   I am going to split this blog into two sections in order to not make them that lengthy.  I will begin with talking about the church and the Watoto 360 program.

On Thursday, we had our very first official day in Watoto 360.  Early in the morning, our driver, Abeh, drove us to Watoto Central Church.  It looks like the majority of our class sessions will be held at Watoto Central in a room right beside where the children’s choir rehearses.  OH MY GOSH!!!  They are sweet little treasures!  I was talking to some of my Ugandan classmates, and they said that when they were younger, they also participated in the choir.  The Watoto Children’s Choir travels all over the world with each choir consisting of different children from the Children’s villages.  What an amazing opportunity for kids to travel!

Watoto has five churches in Kampala, north, south, east, west, and central.  Watoto Central is where Gary Skinner, the founder of Watoto, preaches.  There are also churches located in each of the Children’s Villages.  Let me tell you that the Watoto church is alive!  Between all of the different campuses, they are 20,000 members strong.  A regular church service includes a five part-harmony, African version of Hillsong worship band, a hip-hop dance crew, smoke machine, rappers, lots of hugs, people dancing in and out of the pews, and… a DJ spinning beats as the congregation comes in.  Myself and the other internationals are asking our Ugandan friends to teach us to dance so we don’t look like complete idiots every church service.   Besides all of the flashiness, there is a real core to Watoto church.  I like how they use African cultural elements in their worship to reach to the African people.  As I said before there are many different campuses to the Watoto church.  Every week, the different campus pastors meet and write a communal sermon to be preached the next Sunday.  Even though the church is rather large, Watoto is a cell-based church, meaning that every individual church-goer is a part of a cell or small group.  The small groups consist of a maximum of 10 people that meet once a week to study the Bible.  The coolest thing that I have encountered at Watoto Church so far was at the youth and young adult conferences that have been going on this last week at Watoto Central.  We attended a few of the incredible sessions on both Thursday and Friday with the guest pastor, Earl McClellan from Shoreline Church in Dallas, Texas.  Every session we attended, whether it was in the morning or late at night, all the pastors from each of the Watoto campuses were there sitting in the front row and I mean all of the pastors, not just the youth ones!  

As Thursday was our first official day in Watoto 360, it was also the first day we got to meet the entire class.  There are 54 of us in all, 8 of which are internationals, 4 Ugandans who are connected with Watoto Church, and the other 42 are all from the Watoto Children’s Villages.  I will explain more about the villages in my next blog but to summarize, the villages contain children who were vulnerable and in need of some help, whether that mean they were orphans or their parents were unable to care for them.  Ya, powerful!  My fellow classmates are amazing human beings who have gone through a lot of hardships in their lives.  They also are the most welcoming and loving individuals I have ever met.  In the last three days of getting to know my Ugandan classmates, I have received many hugs, shared many laughs, and have conversed in some deep conversations.  I am so excited to learn from these incredible individuals that I am privileged to call classmates.  

As part of our orientation, we had Gary Skinner, the founder of Watoto, come to our class to speak to us about how Watoto began almost 30 years ago.  It was such a great honor to have him talk to us, especially since he doesn’t share the whole story of Watoto to that many people.  He described his life growing up, what lead him to Uganda, what Uganda was like when he first arrived, how he sometimes feels like quitting, and how he first established a church in Kampala.  The first church they founded, Watoto Central, actually used to be a building in control of the army.  What an amazing turn-around from a place of violence to now one of love and peace.  Gary shared with us how he really didn’t want to have anything to do with childcare ministries whatsoever.  All Gary wanted to do was preach and establish churches in Uganda.  He stated that God had a different plan in mind for him and flat out told him, “I did not bring you here to preach but to look after my children.”  It was then that Gary began the Childcare ministries and Watoto has been growing ever since.  There are two villages in Kampala, one in Gulu and they are beginning to establish a church in southern Sudan.  The cool thing about the whole time he shared with us was that it seemed like the whole story was still very fresh, raw and real to him.  He broke down and cried numerous times as he spoke.  At one point, he asked each group of us to stand up.  When it was turn for the forty-two Watoto graduates to stand up, he bawled.  The whole mission of Watoto Childcare and church is to raise up the next generation of African leaders and those forty-two people are living proof to that future promise.

So yes, I believe I will learn a lot from this amazing organization and all the people that are involved in it.  I am so thankful to be here.  Next blog will be about the children’s villages and other cool ministries of Watoto.

The first few days

I am in Uganda.  I am IN Uganda.  I am IN UGANDA.  I AM IN UGANDA!!!  I can’t believe I am finally here and settled in to my new home.

Travels to Uganda:

Man that thirteen hour flight from Seattle to Dubai was painful!  I kept getting up to go to the washroom, literally just to stretch my arms and legs.  Once I arrived in Dubai, I had a twelve hour layover camping out in the airport.  You wouldn’t have guessed it was the middle of the night at that airport with all of its hustle and bustle.  I still didn’t believe that I would be in Uganda until my gate number was finally posted…. Then I started to panic.  Where in the world was I going?!  I got on the flight and took some melatonin so that I could get a few hours rest before I arrived in Entebbe.  Side note: I had been up for over 32 hours already.  I woke up somewhere in the middle of that five hour flight feeling nauseous and with the chills.  There is nothing like feeling homesick when you actually feel like vomiting and are in transit.  To top it all, I was in the middle seat of the middle aisle, between two guys in nice suits.  I think it was a mix of over exhaustion, airplane food, and nerves that set it off.  I had to keep my eyes shut in order to contain my queasiness.  I just kept praying that I could make it off the airplane, through the airport, and along the 45min drive to Kampala without getting sick.  What a way to enter the country!  The plane landed and praise the Lord, as soon as I left the plane, I felt a million times better.  After I obtained my visa and picked up my bag, I found a guy standing there with a Watoto sign who would drive me back to Kampala.  He introduced himself as Peter and sure enough it was the Peter that I have been emailing for the past year for my Watoto application, which instantly made me feel more comforted.  He took me to the guest apartments that we would be temporally living in before they moved us to our permanent home.  After an hour’s sleep, some of the other students, who were out at church that morning came back to the house and introduced themselves.

First Few Days:

These first few days are essentially for rest and for us international students to get settled in before the program begins.  Friday is the first day of orientation for Watoto 360.  I live with seven other international students and there will be about forty-five Ugandan students as well in the program.  Yesterday, us internationals moved out of our temporary apartments into our gorgeous home!    I tried to attach a video of a tour of our house but it wouldn't load so I will post pictures later. In our neighborhood, there are other compound homes, a slum, a daycare, and convenient store all connected by a red dirt road.  Our family is made of students ages 18 to 25 which consist of three Canadian girls including me, four Americans (three girls and a guy), one Australian guy, and a Ugandan woman named Esther who will be our house mom.  She is so hospitable and caring and I say house mom but Esther would be maybe 30 tops.  I share a room with a really sweet girl named Hannah from Louisiana… who has met Miss Kay and Jayce from Duck Dynasty!  We have a sweet soft-spoken cook named Kayven and a groundskeeper named Solomon.  These past few days all of us have been getting to know each other by playing games and sharing our stories.  It is so incredible that God chose us individuals to be here in Africa for very different reasons.  I will learn so much from living alongside these people.

Esther shared with us a bit about what we will be doing in Watoto 360 and OH MY GOODNESS, it sounds better than on paper!  A little taste of what we will be doing: one week building, one week living in the Children’s Village with a family, one week in Gulu, visiting hospitals, baby homes, people in the slums, and prisons and so much more!

First Impressions:

The funniest thing we noticed was the literal brand names of regular products.  The names make perfectly logical sense such as drinking chocolate (hot chocolate), head sock (toque), and my personal favorite, fat spread (butter).  

I am slowly adjusting to living here.  Some things I find harder to adjust to than others like armed guards in front of homes, and stores or living in minority.  Although there are lots of stares as I walk around my neighborhood, there are also lots of smiles and waves, and small children walking alongside you to chat with you.  Esther told us that we shouldn’t feel uncomfortable by the stares because the people just love having our presence here.

Anyway, that is a little on my life so far.  I still don’t have my own internet access yet so I won’t have much communication in the next few days.  I will try to blog at least once a week and post pictures onto facebook regularly.  Congrats, you read the whole thing!

Peace and love

It's Time for Africa

Greetings from the Dubai international airport! I am currently sitting in a row of lounge chairs with about 15 other sleepy travelers. 

So far  so good!  I have made it to this point after two little connector flights and the awful 13.5 hour flight from Seattle to Dubai.  Now I wait another 8-9 hours for my final flight to Uganda!  It still hasn't hit me that I will be there so soon.  Even being in Dubai is strange. In my opinion, an airport is an airport.  Therefore you can't justify you having been to that particular place.  What I am getting at here is that once I officially leave the Entebbe airport, the reality will kick in.

And one last thing
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Ok and I know this song's named "this time for Africa" however I sing the lyrics "it's time for Africa".  Ask my old roommates..... It kind of was my theme song.... Ha!

Peace and love