The Father's Love in Action

Praises and Prayer

Pray for Team #6 Jay "Mr Ja" Ferguson and Pastor Steve Rumpf. They will travel to Uganda in July and being planning for the next 3 years for pastoral leadership conferences. They will also be visiting our main school site, the new land and our new cows. Keep them in your prayers for safe travel.
Hoops of Hope PCM will be the beneficiary of a very big program this October in Tyler Tx in coordination with many of the area east Texas high schools. Austin Gutwein will lead the event scheduled for October 23 at UT Tyler. Austin at age 15 has helped raise over 2 million dollars for AIDS orphans in Africa so far. We are excited that he has chosen us to partner with this fall. Area school children from around Tyler will form teams of 6 with each team member shooting 1000 free throws. Stay tuned for more details.
We thank the Lord for our sponsorship program. We are now up to 180 sponsors at our Mbarara site. Wow.....in just 17 months in June of 2010 we are close to meeting our monthly expenses. Once we do, additional resources will be used for infrastructure on the PCM Farm and Cows for the Kingdom projects to help make us more self sustaining.
We thank the Lord for the provision of textbooks...what a blessing this May. Tess and Laura have provided a gift to provide the children with English books, one for each desk of 3. Another donor gave a similar gift for all the other classes. Here are the children expressing their thanks with much joy. The teachers are elated as well. They will start term #2 this first week of June with the first textbooks they have ever used.
Pray for trip #6 as we plan to take a men's trip to work on Emmy's main new church and some playground equipment for the children as a Christmas gift for them. Pray for the Spirit to move those men and women who He wants to be a part of this trip.
Pray for our 3 new cows........and the Cows for the Kingdom program. We have 3 of our 43 pastors with a very nice exotic milking cow and all 3 are pregnant. We ask for prayer for the health of these 3 cows so they will stay well and be able to produce 10-15 liters a day of milk providing our pastors with $ 3-4 a day of income for their families. We now have 18 cows.......all paid for as of June 1, 2010. The pastors are currently undergoing their training and will be receiving their cows later in June we hope. First they must build a pen for their animal which shall protect it from the weather. Our goal is to be able to provide funds for all of the pastors to have such a structure and soon for all 43 pastors to have a cow.
Pray for the new land as we have outgrown the few acres our main campus now sits on. Over 250 people live on this tiny piece of sloped dirt just close to the river. We need a new land to farm and use the crops to meet our overhead expenses. We have found a beautiful land and are prayfully considering how to close this deal so eventually we can start building the school/ orphan home of our dreams.We praise the Lord for an anonymous donor who has helped us secure this land in May of 2010 and now we just need to find supporters to finish paying off the 65 acres. So far we have 9 sponsors who have each purchased an acre at $1000. We owe now just $56000. We are so excited to now stand on the land that will be our future. We will have room for the children to run, plenty of space for the school buildings, a 4 acres banana plantation on top of the hill and a big farm on the back side of the hill for farming to meet our operational expenses.
Pray for trip #5, it is vast approaching next month in April. There will be another crusade, this time in Mbarara for 3 days as well as trips to some of our PCM churches we have never visited. We are so thankful for the prayers on our recent trip. Much was accomplished at the crusade, visiting our 3 schools and visiting many of our rural 43 Ugandan pastors and their churches . So thankful to be able to get there, minister for 2 weeks, and return via 5 flights home to Tyler.
Pray for Pastor Charles. He has become quite weak lately in early 2010 and his HIV infection is causing his weight to decrease. Just two months ago at Christmas he looked incredibly strong. We are so thankful for Charles and his hands that have touched nearly every brick at our school site. Please pray that the Lord restore his strength and give him many more days. We are so joyful to report that Pastor Charles is looking much better and he and his wife Grace were able to accompany us to Masaka and Kampala for 2 nights. They were so encouraged as they stayed in their first hotel ever and rode their first elevator.
We ask for prayer for this journey#4 for Christmas. It is a long one and will include 2 all day flights with an overnight in London. We pray for our 9 fifty pound bags all to arrive safely as they are filled with blessings for our orphan children and pastors. Pray for sleep for us and smooth flights. We are so thankful for your prayers. It was a very smooth trip. Besides the lack of power at the Tropic Inn, it was an amazing experience to be there for Christmas. The power of the Kanoni Crusade surely made up for it.
11/16/09 We praise God for our friends from Longview Texas. The "Sewing Angels" Together they hand made 222 pillow cases for our children at Parental Care School Mbarara. Here is a portion of an email from Annette: In one week's time, we were able to find brightly colored sheets on sale for 75%-80% off and 13 ladies from my church volunteered to work together to make the pillowcases. They made 112 on one day and completed the rest by the end of the week! On Sunday, we told two classes at church about your wonderful children and the pillowcase project. The donated $475--enough to pay for the sheets and to pay for some Christmas coloring books that we want to send to the children and maybe some extra for pillows! Isn't God great? Only He could have completed this project in such a short time!We were thrilled to be there to give these special Christmas presents to the orphans. What a joy it was to see them come forward one at a time to select a pillow case. Check out this link from the Tyler Paper. Sewing Angles . We are thankful again for Mike and Annette. They are hard at work with plans for the children for PCM trip #5.
Thank the Lord for the provision of the well and the clean water that is flowing. Never again will anyone die drawing water for the orphans. That is good now that we also learned the river has been having hippos come visit and the park rangers have had to deal with them. Pray now for the bath houses and that we may be able to build them soon. I am so pleased to report that in early October 2009 the girl's bath house is now being constructed........Wahoo!! The boy's bathhouse is up and well under construction in November 2009. The bathhouses are complete and fully functional.
Once the rains come, it will take 4 months for food to be grown by the farmers. The price of food is going up quickly. By about 30%. It is our biggest monthly expense for the orphans. Right now it costs us just 13 cents a meal to feed them a meal, or 39 cents a day for each orphan. Amazing but it adds up quickly. As food becomes harder to find, the price will increase. Praise: Due to some generous donations we have been able to purchase 2 months of food this August for September and October to store in case the price continues to rise. People are now digging for food as of 10/09. The crop won't be ready till February 2010. Pray that the Lord provide the extra funds for us to be able to purchase enough foods for the orphans. Praise the Lord that we have been able to purchase enough food through December of 2009. The price will start to go down soon as the food will be ready in 2010. Praise the Lord that the food price has decreased due to the abundance of food now availble and our ability with the truck to now buy direct with the truck.
Now we need to pray for rain. There has been no rain in southwest Uganda since November 2008. The people are traveling many miles to draw water and sometimes carry it, sometimes putting it on their bikes if they have one. The cattle are starving to death nearly. This land needs rain. Praise: The rain has now started as 8/21/09. What a blessing. HE REIGNS. We are pleased to report as of 10/14/09 that the rain is still falling. We are pleased to announce in March 2010 that the food has grown very well.
We praise you Lord for our "new assistant" Christie Hayes. She is helping us stay organized as we grow and we are so happy to have her with us, me especially. We are so thankful for her efforts to the ministry as she finds time between mothering her three small children. Wahooo Christie!!! If you have gotten anything recently in the mail it came from her. If you do in the future, it will be from her. She will be our technical blogmeister for our upcoming PCM trip #4. We are so blessed to have her organizational ability. It is awesome.
Pray that the Lord reveal a strategy to make Emmy's case known to officials in our country that would help enable a US visa. He has been denied 4 times now, our county says he doesn't have "strong enough ties." They think he is an immigrant waiting to stay in our country on arrival. Nothing could be farther than the truth. We are trusting God that" there is a time and season for everything" (Ecc 3:1). As of 9/7/09 please begin to pray for Pastor Emmy and Sarah for visas to England for the end of the year. Two purposes would be to meet up with some of our US PCM board members in London for a retreat to plan the next 18-24 months. Also, to meet with a team from the United Kingdom and their church. Wahoo.......Pastor Emmy and his wife Sarah got a visa to England. They will come to England, plan with some of our PCM board and then stay in England for a few weeks to visit friends and supporter 10/14/09. Pray for Supermom. It will be her first flight and her first time outside of Africa. It shall be a great visit to the United Kingdom.
Some violence broke out this second week of September in the capital of Kampala as the President Museveni and central government have prevented one of the tribal leader kings from visiting a certain local rally. Here is an email from Emmy that i just received to further explain: Keep us in your prayers because there have started some tribe violence in Uganda. In Uganda we had more than 15 Kingdoms almost and the Baganda Kingdom was the most famous and largest. They are located in central Uganda near the capital. But almost each tribe had their own King. Milton Obote, who was the Prime Minister years ago, fought the King and took over as the President and declaired Uganda to be a Republic Country. But when the current President Museveni came into Power twenty years ago, he re-established the Kings again and now the King of Buganda want to take back even those Parts they had conquered from other Tribes and those people are also saying we have our own king you shouldn't come to take us over. So now violence has started because the Baganda are saying that the Central Government is siding with the others not favoring them. Yesterday the violence was big in Kampala and people burn things and vehicles and killed some. Keep us in your prayers. Lord we pray that this violence come to an end. It could really cause much harm to the people of Uganda and the efforts of so many to help them. Bring your peace to these people. We are happy to report that the violence in Kampala has quieted down. Thank you for your prayers. 10/09
Pray that the Lord reveal a strategy to make Emmy's case known to officials in our country that would help enable a US visa. He has been denied 4 times now, our county says he doesn't have "strong enough ties." They think he is an immigrant waiting to stay in our country on arrival. Nothing could be farther than the truth. We are trusting God that" there is a time and season for everything" (Ecc 3:1). As of 9/7/09 please begin to pray for Pastor Emmy and Sarah for visas to England for the end of the year. Two purposes would be to meet up with some of our US PCM board members in London for a retreat to plan the next 18-24 months. Also, to meet with a team from the United Kingdom and their church. Wahoo.......Pastor Emmy and his wife Sarah got a visa to England. They will come to England, plan with some of our PCM board and then stay in England for a few weeks to visit friends and supporter 10/14/09
Pray for others to come along our orphan sponsorship program: right now we are 50% funded of our operational budget in Mbarara Uganda. We are open to speaking to other churches, schools and groups about sharing this great work with them. We are continuing to get sponsors but need your help. If all of our sponsors could find one more sponsor we would be fully funded!!