Dwelling Places

Well, we have just finished a meeting with Diana Mawaali. Diana is a beautiful young lady (she's 24) and she works at Dwelling places here in Kampala. Apart from being a stunning African woman she also obviously loves God and hads dedicated her life to serving the abandoned children of Uganda. Her job specifically is to co-ordinate all of the volunteers that come here, hence she will be looking after Lorna and myself; I feel that we are in safe hands. She has lots of energy and is very excited about the work we are going to do with the children. She also explained a little bit more about the work of Dwelling places. Please check out their website as their work is vast and what they are doing needs lots of support. It's: wwwdwellingplaces.org

The aim of their ministry is to "rehabilitate and restore street children". They do this in a number of ways but to put it as simply as I can they rescue infants, babies and children below the age of 18. They educate and care for these children as well as counselling them and showing them the gospel. Weird phrase you might think but I actually think it's quite appropriate. For some of these children it is impossible to believe that Jesus loves them or that they were made in the image of God. Their own mothers and fathers do not even want them so why would God? By caring for them, nurturing them and loving them unconditionally Dwelling places forms relationships with these children and very often with the families too.

This brings me to the reason it is not called an orphanage. It is not simply somewhere that looks after abandoned children it concentrates on giving them homes and in the best case senarios restoring broken home relationships. This involves working with the parents too and supporting them and in many cases teaching them basic parenting skills. Remember that some parents are still children themselves, many are as young as 15 and 16. They call this their family empowering programme and it sometimes even involves giving whole fmailies somewhere to live. SO you see the challenge is no mean feat.

We heard from Diana many wonderful stories of saved lives and we are desperate to start out work with them on Monday. We are however, as well as excited, slightly nervous; that we would do a good job.

Ok so what can you do? Yeah you didn't think you were getting off that lightly did you!? So as you know our reasoning for being here is to direct a musical called Peace Child. The musical will be performed by the children of Dwelling Places and over the next six weeks we will be working day and night teaching them and, as Diana put it, "perfecting it and making it look professional". No pressure then! The musical will be performed in the national theatre in Kampala and will hopefully generate some much needed income for the work as well as spreading the gospel.

The children have no costumes though! Diana did not tell us this nor did she ask us to provide them but when I asked she explained that they simply cannot afford them. Nor can they afford to braid the children's hair. Not important you might think but many of the children have lost hair from abuse and/or rough living. We want this production to be something they can be proud of. We want them to be confident and to really bless people with their music. If you feel at all that you could contribute anything at all then please contact us or even the WWW team at St Andrew's church. I do not apoligise for asking on their behalf, they deserve so much more.

Ok I'm getting a bit teary eyed, you know what I'm like. Finally thank you for your support, your prayers and your messages. Keep them coming they make us smile and really do encourage us!!! We will give the hugs you've been sending and more!

Lots of love n then some Erica xxx