Holding onto Hope.....

Doctor Moses at Bbira...

Thanks to everyone for being so patient and waiting so long for me to post here on my blog. It is a rather long, tedious process as we are on dial-up here at the guest house.

Anyhow, the past two weeks have been just great. The Ugandan people who I have met have been warm and welcoming to us Muzungu's (white folk).

As it's pretty much impossible to recap the past two weeks, I will fill you in on a bit of what happened yesterday. After breakfast we went out to Bbira. The Clarks sponsor several children and this was Nancy's first chance to meet her "kids". As we rounded a corner in the village, a group of young children came running for us, smiling and asking to be picked up and held. One little guy, Dennis, took quite a liking to me and kept hugging and kissing me over and over.

Around lunch time we went to the house of Dorothy (one of the Clarks sponsored children). Dorothy's mom, Mama Gertrude (her biological mom) invited us inside to have lunch with them. She is 33 and has Dorothy and a son, Jacob. Now that she is a Watoto mom, she has six other children as well. Years ago, Gertrude's husband left her and their two small children. When she went to her family, they turned her away and told her to make her own way. She didn't know what to do and told us that she had considered killing herself and her children. Of course she knew that this really wasn't a solution and believed that God would save her from her situation. Someone from her church knew about Watoto and ever since then, they have been a part of the Watoto family. Gertrude, in addition to being a Mama of 8, has also taken on many administrative responsibilities within the village. Recently she had to hand over these additional responsibilities to others as she developed a "brest sickness", which I would suppose could be cancer. Please keep this great woman in your prayers...

After lunch, I was ready to go on a search for the Bulrushes babies who had "graduated"to Bbira. I found that some of them were resting, but I got to meet Doctor Moses, Rachel, Sarah, Sharifa, John, Timothy, Innocent and my dear little Hope. Hope was glued to her Mama Ruth's side when we arrived and wasn't interested in having her picture taken. I decided to sit on the steps and chat with some of the kids and Doctor Moses, and when Mama Ruth put Hope down, she made a beeline for the stairs and crawled up into my lap. What a moment for me!!! She just snuggled right in and gave me a big hug. It was wonderful and I could hardly believe that this little face I had only seen in pictures was gazing up at me. After a few minutes she fell fast asleep and at that point, I broke. There have been so many things that I have seen and so many stories that I have heard since arriving in Kampala. It was only at this moment though that the tears came. The tears were short-lived though. Hope and all the other beautiful children I met yesterday have a great home and a wonderful village to live in. It is truly a place of beauty, promise and love.