Letter from Uganda

Through the SMILE programme I recently spent some time serving the Lord in Kampala, Uganda. Last April, I flew with four others to Entebbe Airport in Kampala to spend five months working there with Oasis Trust. 

We were involved with several different projects and worked with a wide range of children, from wee babies in nappies to young men and women of 20. We were attached to the Baptist Church in Kampala and spent a lot of time teaching Bible stories, playing games, making crafts, singing songs, and generally having fun with some local under-privileged children who are sponsored through the Christian organisation Compassion International. 

We did some manual work in Sanyu Babies Home (although hanging from very dodgy scaffolding consisting of random planks of wood and odd bits of furniture to paint a ceiling was not much fun!) and also spent hours playing with and feeding (and changing!) the babies there, who are all orphans. We grew adept at picking up the babies who decided to wet themselves at the exact moment we chose to cuddle them, but apart from that we loved our work!

We were also involved in two projects for street children namely Tigers Football Club and Dorcas Street Children's Home. At Tigers, the two boys on my team played football and taught English and Maths, and also did some Bible classes with around 60 or so boys who live on the streets in Kampala. Dorcas is a residential home where 70 street girl and boys live together in the outskirts of the city, and we visited them twice a week. There we played games, had our hair braided in fantastic fashions, helped to fetch water, did gardening and generally spent time with the young people. 

One of the highlights of our time away was when we threw a party for the girls at the Home, playing pass the parcel, musical bumps, and eating and drinking lots of yummy treats. The excitement when the girls saw the room decorated with streamers and balloons was incredible. It was an absolutely amazing experience and I loved Uganda, the culture, the country, the people. God taught us so much about His reliable love and steadfastness and being so far away from home we really did learn that He could supply all our needs. 

The faith of the people we met was also a real testimony, as although materially they have little, Christian people in Uganda are so very spiritually rich. At the moment I am planning to go back to Kampala for a year to do some more work with street girls and some other projects, and I am looking forward to God using me to further His kingdom in the time ahead. As we heard in every service or meeting we went to, "Praise God! Amen!"

Gill Murphy

February 2002 magazine index