Update

Picture

The picture is of the tiger and african wolf that live with us in our compound. They like to play with each other and flaunt their male suppiriortiy around. 

Soccer

I met with all of the Pastor Sam and all of the soccer coaches today. They have had leagues in the past and as a result things are progressing very well. There are already teams formed before we arived so all we have had to do is organize things. There are 8 teams of 10-14 year olds and 6 teams of 14-17 year olds.

Some of the things that came up at our meeting are as follows. 

• Children will be playing immediatly after school and they have not eaten since breakfast. They would like it if there could be a way to feed the playing teams a small meal. In the past they charged 3000 shillings for each player but this was very hard for many to come up with. 
• There needs to be some way to pay for balls. We need creative ideas that do not involve charging the players lots of money
• At the end of the season there will be a tournament. 
• We would like to have a prize for the top scorrer of the league like some cleats or a nice soccer ball. Also winning team gets a ball
•  At the end of the season they will form an all star team to play against Kapelebyong.
• Saturday we will be conducting a refferee and coach training day. Mike will be doing the teaching. I will be providing money to pay for lunch.
• Pastor Sam is going to bible college the second week of August and Mike will take over as the leader of the soccer league.
• Caitlin did some basic first aid training with the coaches to care for open wounds. 
• The first game will be next wednesday.

Farming Training

The Decipler Joseph approached me today with a great idea. There are groups of people all over Kapelebyong and the surrounding area. Joseph wants to gather one person from each of the 40+ goups to come and meet in Oditel. He will train them to use the gardening techniques that Luka and Adam taught the people here. We will be expecting 120 people to meet here on Tuesday. The idea is that they will go back to where they live and train everyone around them. I will be paying to provide lunch for all of them. Joseph will organize a follow up process a few weeks later so that we can ensure that everyone is doing there part in training those around them. I am very excited about this because on Sunday as I was praying I felt very strongly that there would be some community project that would grow and expand to help everyone in Oditel and the surrounding areas. 

Nursery

Back during our first trip when Wil and a few others met with the leadership team for the church here in Oditel Wil asked a question that has sparked a forest fire. He asked them something along the lines of "why is the school system so bad?" Pastor Emanuel, Pastor Sam, Pastor Andrew, and the rest of the leadership at The Center (The church in Oditel) very seriously considered this question after we left. Over that 6 month period they have come up with a solution. They have started a private nursery school (3-6 year olds, very similar to pre-school) all on there own without any of our help. They have a curriculum that was bought from a company in Soroti and currently in the second term of their existance. Much needs to be done to help build up this vision. They would like to start a private christian primary and secondary schools as well, within the next 10 years. When we walked through I counted 30 or so children who are currently attending this. They sang us the ABC's and were able to point at pictures and tell us what was in the picture in both the native language as well as english. We also went and spoke with the government run primary school headmaster. He loved the idea of the nursery school and highly recommended that the church move forward with the plans they have for it. The headmaster informed us that in other areas of Uganda where there are nursery school in place the children are so much smarter and much more likely to continue on with school. Currently this nursery school is just in the hands of the leaders of this one church. I strongly encouraged these leaders that they needed to get all of the surrounding churches in the area involved in this project as well as seek the advice of the headmaster. They liked the idea and would like on member from each church to form a school board. This project has great potential and I really think we need to look into how we can help.

Prayer

We desperatly need your prayers for our team. There have been several times when I have been praying and I was lead to pray for protection of our team from evil spirits. One night Jaynie had a demon enter her dreams and she excersised it out of her dream.... Last night we started praying and I felt that something was not right. The more we prayed the worse the feeling got. I strongly felt that something very bad was on in the horizon. Pray for our team and any attacks the enemy is planning to throw our way... Tonigt we were praying and I saw a vision of huge stacks of firewood all over Oditel. Each was covered in gasoline and the Mission 6 team was walking around with lighters, igniting fires all over Oditel. Pray that we do set fires in the hearts and spirits of everyone we interact with. 

Amelia

Amelia (A teacher from California who teaches in Kapelebyong) has been a tremendous blessing to our team. She speaks teso as well as very good Ugandan english. She has helped in many of our meetings to ensure that everyone is understanding each other. She is a lot of fun and we are all happy that she is in our lives.