Mercy Uganda: Team Update--Monday, August 19th

We apologize for the lack of updates and pictures. It seems it has been one technical difficulty after another including power outages. However, we think we are working out some kinks and can send this with great pictures too!

We made it safely Wednesday evening, and were totally beat by the nearly 28 hours of flight time and layovers. We had a great night’s sleep and were ready to get busy on Thursday morning.

Thursday morning was our first opportunity as a team to go and look at the new land that God has graciously provided Mercy Uganda through many generous donors. We planned where buildings would go and what structures would be first. The men then spent a few minutes pounding limbs in the ground to mark where the footers would go for our first structure. We spent the evening planning and discussing details for the upcoming week.

Friday morning the men were taken to the land in a public transportation van/taxi that was hired out as our means of transportation. Once the men were dropped off the ladies were picked up and taken to Calvary Chapel Church in Kajjansi, where we started our ladies Bible study. We had a wonderful group of about 30 ladies and look forward to 7 more days of fellowship with them.

Saturday started out with plans similar to Friday’s, however, we had a minor emergency when Mark had a racing heart Friday night and into the morning on Saturday. This was caused by overheating (we think) on Friday. So Henry Mello, our country director made arrangements for us to take Mark to Namulanda Clinic where he was seen by the main doctor/owner of the hospital. He was checked out and in good shape……cause of attack believed to be lack of sleep, overheating, and too much caffeine. So, decaf, light duty for a couple of days, and valium to help him catch up on the sleep. He is doing MUCH better now and the entire medical event only cost 20,000 Ugandan shillings=less than $10.00.

We also visited our friend Veronica who runs the Comforter Pregnancy Center in Kampala. This is always a blessing and this was a first visit for all but Laura and we all enjoyed seeing the ministry Veronica has and purchasing paper bead necklaces made by the women at the center. This afternoon we had day two of the Bible study and the men were our technical support today.

Sunday was a wonderful day of worship at Calvary Chapel, a time of scripture reading, hymn singing, and hearing the His Grace Revival Choir (Henry’s choir) sing several amazing arrangements. Then Henry’s preacher delivered a wonderful sermon. We also got to see and spend time with 2 of our Mercy Uganda sponsored children, and what an amazing thing to see the change in their lives since being sponsored! God is so good!! Three and a half hours later, we were leaving the church. We had a plan to bake a home made birthday cake and have Henry and Gabriel (our 2 Ugandan ministry team members) and their families over for a birthday party for them (the ones we give are the only ones they have ever had). The power went off before the cake got done, we all ate dinner by candle light and sang happy birthday with candles stuck in one of the potatoes from dinner…..the power came on less than 5 minutes after the guests left to go home so they got carry out cake today.

Today, Monday August 19^th was a wonderful day of ministry work, both in construction and in the sewing and the bible study groups. The men were able to get a lot of the concrete slab poured today, and have some stories to tell about that when we get home. Kristin led the sewing class today and we had 31 ladies show up and two foot pedal control sewing machines. We spent about 4 hours with Kristin and her assistants (Laura and Barb) helping the ladies learn to pin and cut their patterns. It took at least an hour to measure all of the ladies to figure out sizes and then the cutting began. We hope to start the actual sewing tomorrow. After the sewing class, Mercy Uganda is providing lunch for all of the ladies every day this week. After lunch (around 3 o’clock) we begin our daily bible study time. It is an amazing bible study that focuses God’s love for his daughters. We learn about and discuss the stories of different women each day. Laura has been leading this bible study with help and interaction from Kristin and Barb. Barb will be sharing her testimony tomorrow during the class.

We look forward to giving more updates soon. We appreciate all of your prayers and thank you for your support for the work being done here. We came to be a blessing and are receiving such a blessing in the process.

Love in Christ,

Mark and Laura Knetzer, Doug and Kristin DeVries, and Barb Gray