Saturday, March 28, 2009

Heaven had a party

 
Posted by PicasaRejoice with us and the angels in Heaven! This sweet girl, Patricia, gave her heart to Jesus on Sunday. For about 6 months, she has been telling us that she is not a Christian so we have been praying for God to work in her heart. After hearing a Sunday school lesson based on John 3 and the comparison of the Israelites looking to the serpent that was lifted up and the Son of man being lifted up, she decided she wanted to look to Jesus. Praise God with us and ask God to help us as we disciple her. Pray with us for other children who are searching also. Mark and I are both planning on speaking with several even today who are wanting to know more.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Before and After

When we came for our exploratory visit in September of 2007, a little boy, named Solomon, was brought to the orphanage. He was 14 months old and weighed less than 12 lbs. We took the first picture the day that Solomon arrived at GSF. The second picture was taken a few days ago. He is a sweet little boy who gives sheepish grins and is always ready to be picked up and loved. Praise God that Solomon is a thriving little boy!

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

We prayed for a miracle

On January 25 we wrote about baby Catherine who had multiple heart defects, including a hole in her 2-month-old heart. There was no hope given for surgery to be done here in Uganda. We prayed for a miracle and, we have to believe, a miraculous healing was received.

Catherine's mother gave her life to Christ - what greater miracle is there than the gift of salvation?! Soon after, our Directors had a group of doctors in North Carolina willing to donate their services to perform the necessary surgery in the USA. GSF called upon Samaritan's Purse (Children's Heart Project) and the US Embassy for help with logistics. The roadblock: no hospital was found that would accept the charitable case which would potentially incur over a million dollars in hospital costs alone.

We continued to pray for a miracle and, we have to believe, that it was miraculous for baby Catherine and her mother to keep coming to church every week. Many people in Uganda and the USA were praying.

We prayed for a miracle and, we have to believe, it was received at 1:00 a.m. on Sunday, March 8 when baby Catherine, having spent 2 days in critical condition in a local hospital, went to be with the Lord. Her heart is forever healed and she is in the arms of Jesus.

Please keep praying for baby Catherine's family, for her mother to hold fast to her new faith in Christ and for a local community (being grateful for all that GSF tried to do) to be drawn to Jesus all the more. Thank you for praying with us.

I don't ever want to drive a taxi in Kampala

Last week Titus and I (Mark) went to Kampala to renew my passport at the Embassy. I also needed a new battery for our car, so I asked one of our mechanics where we could find one in the city. After stopping at the embassy, we headed toward the part of town where we might find the auto store.

Our challenges began when we came upon a stoplight where the police were not allowing vehicles to move from our direction. I eventually turned off the car, as many others had done while we waited for 15 minutes. I'm sure they had a good reason to hold us up, but we never saw what it was.

The auto store was on a one way street where we had never been. So we had to navigate through a market area to reach the far end of the street, not knowing exactly where on that street the store was located. En route, we ended up winding through narrow streets, avoiding masses of people, bicycles, parked cars and even a huge pool of muddy water that would have swallowed us whole had we not been in a 4WD! I have never seen so many people in one place in this country.

Titus was being great, but the congestion was wearing on us and it became increasingly difficult to figure out where we were on the map. Abandoning all hope of finding the street, much less the auto store, we turned our efforts towards finding a way of escape from this part of the city. We were obviously in the central market and taxi park area. Choices ranged between sitting in traffic vs. driving away from the direction we wanted to go. Which object will move first - the disabled man in a wheelchair bike or the huge bus sitting inches to his left? Would we prefer a faster route of escape behind the truck belching black exhaust, or the "cleaner air" behind the immobile fruit cart?

Twisting this way, then that way, we ended up at a complete standstill behind some taxi vans. Taxis usually have ways of navigating around anything, so I had followed the flow of traffic with them. After sending a text message to Amy asking her to pray that we would be released from this black hole in central Kampala, a man walked up and told us that we were sitting in the line to enter the main taxi park in the middle of the city - that is why we weren't moving. The lane of traffic on our right was moving only slightly faster than we who were totally parked, but another man began directing us to move to that lane. We had to go forward and back by inches, literally, because the traffic was so tight all around us. Finally we got a nose into the other lane and they stopped a bus (a miraculous feat by itself) to let us ease into the right lane.

After creeping along with less and less leeway between the vans on our left and the sidewalk posts on our right (in fact, we left the bus behind because he was too wide to make it through) we finally broke into the open road beyond the taxi park. No sooner had we managed this, then I looked up and... Lo and behold, there was the auto store we were looking for!! I pulled into an open parking space on the street and we went in an got our battery. Success!

Only by the grace of God. I say it again, "Only by the grace of God."

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Update on Joshua


Thanks everyone for praying for Joshua! He is doing well now and back at home. I found this picture of Mark and Joshua taken last month. It is a great shot and I thought everyone would like to see it. We would appreciate continued prayer for Joshua.

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Never a dull moment


Last night, my girls and I were in the kitchen washing and peeling potatoes and carrots when I heard the house mother of the little boy's home yelling through my window. She yelled "Aunt Amy, Aunt Amy, Joshua is dying!" Talk about shivers going up and down your spine and dropping everything you are doing (in fact I left the water running in the sink) . I yelled to Mark and he ran out the door while I started calling people. Fortunately soon after, Mark sent me a text saying, "Everything is fine for now." I let me kids know and went on over there.

Joshua is 2 years old and was being treated for malaria. It is thought that he had a seizure due to the fever from the malaria. Mark took him and the nurse to the hospital last night. This morning they determined that Joshua also has pneumonia so he is the hospital for one more night. Please pray for Joshua as he heals.

A little background on Joshua is that he was found in a nearby city abandoned. He came to the orphanage just a few days after we moved here. He yearns for security and love. We would appreciate your prayers for him in this as well.