January 2023 Newsletter
Happy New Years, Nyayo Family!
We’re so blessed to be starting another new year and we’re so excited to see what God has in store for us! It’s crazy to think that we’re going onto our fourth year of operations! We’ve learned so much over the years and continue to grow as we find better ways to help the kids with their present and future needs. We pray that God continues to guide us through this new year and provide more blessings to our kids of Ibonde and Jinja.
In this newsletter, you’ll get all the updates on what we’ve been up to this past month, as well as the financial report so that you can see how much we’ve raised and expended. In addition to these updates, you can also find more details from what our team did on our mission trip this past October!
January 2023 Giving Report
We are starting to change up our monthly report to include more graphics that hopefully will help you better understand how much money is being raised, for what, and when it is being allocated. We will be starting to show you two main views going forward. First, the revenue graph will show how much was raised by donors and our founders and for what. Second, below this graph will be an Expenditure plan which will hopefully put each month’s donations in context of where we’re at in terms of meeting that project’s goal. As always, we will continue to post a full report with supporting data when you click Monthly Financial Report.
The below is a breakout of how the money raised this month was expended. As you can see, not all funds are expended in the same month that they are raised. We hope this new way we are displaying expenditure will help give you further insight into how we operate.
A few things to note:
Donors completely covered basic needs now for the third month in a row! Extra was actually given too which will be going towards February’s allocation. Whenever we finish funding 2023 Basic Needs for the entire year, we will stop collecting for basic needs and start reaching out to those donors to see what they’d like their funds to go towards for the rest of the calendar year. Once we get back to January 2024, we will then switch back to collecting again for basic needs.
We have 2 more months left to collect for celebratory supplies for January through March birthdays and Easter. Things like cakes and sodas will be bought for the caregivers and kids at both homes for these celebrations. We will then start collecting for the next quarterly birthday party.
The guest house item called out under Tourism is specifically to pay a loan that Gordon took out to cover the cost of doing some upgrades to the bathrooms in the guest house where we stayed at during mission trips. The vision is that this guest house will be used to house tourists that come to Fort Portal. The house is already in good shape and so this is the next project we will be starting to fund in the sustainability category.
One of our regular donors heard about how the caregivers currently do laundry and wanted to contribute money specifically to help start to buy washing machines. Gordon is still pricing this out but we at least have this generous amount to start with once the details are finalized. We are very happy to be able to start helping improve the lives of the caregivers in trying to help make their jobs a little easier.
A special thanks to our regulars and one time givers for this month’s allocation:
Shellie Mitchell, Stacey and Early Sutton, Cayce McAlister, Sebastian and Eun Joo Tarchala, Armin Jahandarfard, Lauren Russo, Lydia Foutch, Josh Cornett, Jordan Anderson, Arman and Leslie Jahandafard, Taylor Sutton, Mahalie and Brandon Todd, Angi Keel, Christan Yarbrough, Anna Barrera, Joyce McConnell, Amanda and Jacob Patterson, Alex Moore, Sierra and Sam Smith, Cindy Dorsainvil, David Phillips, Ryan and Sydney McKenna, and Curran Hyde.
Thank you all, we truly would not be close to meeting the needs and are already seeing the fruit from the sustainable projects. We couldn’t do this without your help!
What’s New?
Updated “Our Kids” Webpage
We have wanted to update our webpage with a page dedicated to the kids who live at Ibonde and Jinja Children’s home. Thanks to the help of one of our volunteers, this was finally accomplished this past month! While we were down in Uganda this last October, one thing we wanted to accomplish was to photograph each kid with name tags to show who they were, how old and which home they belonged to. We wanted to introduce each child to the donors of Nyayo, affording them the opportunity to meet all the kids that they’re supporting at both Ibonde and Jinja. Thanks to a lot of hard work, we were able to add two more webpages underneath the “Our Kids” tab! After hovering the "Our Kids” tab, you will see two pages, one labeled Ibonde Kids and the other Jinja Kids, where you can find photos and descriptions of each kid according to the homes they belong to.
Below are some examples of how you can expect the new webpages to look like!
Nyayo Volunteers
Nyayo continues to grow each year and we also continue to learn new ways of becoming more efficient as an organization. Michael, Gordon and Hunter don’t receive any money for the work they do and sometimes can use some help within certain areas of our operations. We have already had quite a few volunteers help us out with various tasks over these past years which has helped make Nyayo run so much more effectively. We continue to receive help from various friends and family which is an absolute blessing and we wanted to express our appreciation by introducing everyone to our volunteers, who they are and how they help!
Meet Christan!
Christan has been coming to our Nyayo bible studies each week on zoom for the last 6 months or so, and even joined us on our mission trip to Uganda this last October, where she did an amazing job helping out with the caregivers and kids! When she got home from the trip she specifically wanted to help us automate our financial spreadsheets to make us more efficient in our reporting. Christan has a lot of experience and knowledge with excel and took our financial report and started improving it on her own. She has been organizing data to create new visuals as well as creating more automation within our excel spreadsheet. The automation ensures accuracy within our reports and has saved several hours for Michael when he generates financial reports each month. We want to thank Christan for all the hard work she has put into Nyayo thus far and all the work that she continues to put in as well! We truly appreciate her!
Mission Trip 2022
In last month’s newsletter, we talked about how we hung up mosquito nets in the boy’s dorm, lended the caregivers a hand with cooking and laundry, and also went over the various bible lessons that we all individually taught to the kids. Back in 2017, we decided to take somewhat of a “rest” day for us volunteers to be able to see the beauty and unique culture Uganda has to offer. We went to Queen Elizabeth National Park on a safari ride and thought it was an incredible experience, which is why we wanted to give our new group of volunteers that same experience this time around as well. We all had an absolute blast and got to see so many more animals this time around which was a pleasant surprise!
Friday 28 October: Safari Day!
Early Morning Wake-up & Breakfast on the Bus
We all woke up well before the sunrise, at about 4 in the morning and got ready for our safari adventure! We wanted to make sure we got to the national park bright and early because this is when the animals are most active. Winnie, Esther and Rebekah were amazing and ensured we had plenty of food to-go for our couple hour drive to the national park. On the drive we ate chapati bread, listened to worship music and even had the opportunity to make a stop at the equator! Roads can get crowded and are generally unpaved which makes it difficult to drive in certain areas through Uganda, but our driver, Vincent, did an incredible job at always ensuring that we got to our destinations safely and for that we thank him!
Queen Elizabeth National Park Safari
Once we got to the ticket office, we paid for our safari passes and a national park tour guide hopped on our bus to show us the way and give a lot of insight and fun facts on the various animals of Uganda, specifically those in Queen Elizabeth National Park. We saw animals such as buffalo, hippos, elephants, warthogs, baboons, a crocodile, lions and even different types of antelope as well! It was super neat experience and we’re grateful that we had the opportunity to share it with our team!
Lunch & Bible Study
After driving around Queen Elizabeth National Park on the safari ride, we ended up going to eat and had bible study at a restaurant in the Mweya Safari Lodge. It was a beautiful resort that offered us some great hospitality, delicious lunch plates and tasty African tea with incredible views of the national park’s terrain. After our meals, we had a quick bible study of Psalms before getting on the bus and heading back to Ibonde!
Tye-Dye Prep & Dinner
Once we got back to the house, we needed to prepare for the next day’s events of tye-dying! We had gotten Nyayo shirts made for the kids and we were excited to not only surprise them with the shirts but also be able to teach them how to tye-dye! We started to roll-up the t-shirts and rubber banded them in place to make the process easier for the next day. After separating the various sizes into different suitcases, we were fully prepped for our next day of adventures and ended the night with dinner and laughs before heading to bed!
Things We Are Praying About
We continue to ask for your prayers for God’s continued guidance as we follow along wherever the Spirit leads. Prayer is clearly being answered in ways we aren’t even asking for help in. If you’d like to pray along with us, these are things Michael, Gordon, and Hunter are currently praying for:
Blessings for the children and caregivers of Ibonde and Jinja Children’s Home
Guidance for Michael, Gordon, and Hunter as they continue to lead Nyayo
Guidance for others who are helping
Guidance on upcoming projects for the children’s homes
Healing to the residents of Uganda who have ebola and protection for those who don’t have it
Bible Study
Weekly Zoom Studies
Please reach out if you’re interested in joining our bible studies via zoom every Sunday at 7pm CT! We welcome anyone who wants to learn more about Jesus, even if you just wish to keep your camera off and only listen in on our discussions! We like to keep it light and informal as we have casual conversations about the various chapters we read throughout the Bible! We are currently reading 1 Samuel.
Peace and blessings,
Michael, Gordon, and Hunter
