October 2022 Newsletter
Hello Nyayo Family!
God is good! It’s been about a week now since Mike and I took a group of 6 donors to visit and work with the kids and caregivers of our Ibonde and Jinja Children’s Homes. We left 22 October and returned safely on 1 November! Many obstacles were overcome before our journey even started but our team remained bold and united in the midst of this turmoil which was neat for us to experience. After many prayers, we had a safe and successful journey which will forever have an impact not only on the kids and caregivers but on our team as well!
After many miles of traveling, our team didn’t let jet lag interfere with the hard work and love that was poured into these children of Ibonde and Jinja! The team got involved not only with kids but with the caregivers as well. They learned so much and received hours of hands on experience as they assisted with the daily needs of the children’s home! God guided us and kept us safe through our work and travels, allowing us to give everything we had and we thank Him for that. We truly appreciate all the hard work that was put into this trip from our team of volunteers as well as the hospitality of everyone from the children’s home and how welcomed they made us feel.
We will be sharing photos and details of our trip throughout the upcoming newsletters to give a better insight as to what we did! More about the mission trip can be found below under “Mission Trip 2022”.
October 2022 Giving Report
Donors gave $3,906.95 towards Basic Needs this month! In addition to this, we had other donations that are shown in the graph below. Please click Monthly Financial Report for a full detailed breakdown.
When these next three piglets are purchased, we will be at 27 pigs. While in Uganda, we got to see Abraham’s work for the first time since the creation of the project back in June of 2021. If you recall, Abraham is one of Gordon’s younger brothers, and the originator of this idea to start a piggery. He had already demonstrated knowledge in both construction of the pen as well as proper care of pigs but seeing all he has done for ourselves was quite remarkable. All pigs looked very healthy and are well taken care of. We are very pleased with this investment and look forward to finishing this work soon! We will revist this topic and share more about this project when we get to discussing what we did on Tuesday on our mission trip.
With last months donation toward another cow, the herd will now be up to 10 heifers and 11 total cows (1 bull)! We can already see the impact of this project as the caregivers milk the heifers daily which will share more in a future post! It’s amazing to see how much God has blessed these sustainability projects and we pray that He continues these blessings as our projects grow! Below are a few pictures and videos of the piggery and cattle projects!
The video below is attempt to try and show you how many pigs this piggery actually holds!
A special thanks to our regulars and one time givers for this month’s allocation:
Christan Yarbrough, Pat and Alex Burgess, Cindy Dorsainvil, Lydia Foutch, Alex Moore, Cayce and Nathan McAlister, Cindy and Anthony McNatt, Taylor Handley, Joyce McConnell, Amanda and Jacob Patterson, Stacey and Earl Sutton, Sierra and Sam Smith, Michael Brost, Angi Keel, Taylor Sutton, Arman and Leslie Jahandafard, Mahalie and Brandon Todd, Lauren Russo, Anna Barrera, Josh Cornett, 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!
Mission Trip 2022
We have decided to document the details of our trip over the next several months’ newsletters by sharing what we did each day of our trip. We have a lot to tell you about and many pictures and videos to share and don’t want to overwhelm ourselves or our viewers with the information. We will also be updating our Mission Trip 2022 page as we go along so we have it all captured in one place. This months newsletter will cover the beginning of our trip and focus on Saturday 22 October and Sunday 23 October.
Pre-Trip Events & Obstacles
Before this trip even began, we ran into a few obstacles. On the 20th of September, just about a month out from our departure, the Uganda Ministry of Health announced an Ebola outbreak within the country. The Ebola outbreak developed as the weeks went on and brought about more cases as well as the lockdown of a few districts. One of those districts was an area that we needed to pass through in order to get to Ibonde Children’s Home in Fort Portal. Although localized, it had us unsettled on what to do. It’s one thing when you accept risk for oneself but totally different when you are leading others into said risk. However, this is where seeing how others in the bible handled situations that were daunting and external to their control is valuable. We actually looked to the Israelite king Jehoshaphat to his words in 2 Chronicles 20:12 when faced with large armies on invading Israel: “We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.” These words could of been ours and we followed his example of setting our eyes on God and praying for guidance in the midst of our angst.
We called our travel agent at Golden Rule to see if it was possible to get a refund for our tickets and fortunately found out that our airlines allowed for almost a full refund for passengers up to the day before departure, with only $100 of the trip not being reimbursed. We felt led to to be fully transparent about all of these details with the team and wanted to ensure everyone would feel 100% comfortable and safe on our travels. We reached out to the mission trip team, told them Mike and I were still going, but gave everyone the opportunity to decide if they still wanted to join us. Most of the team decided to continue on with the trip, bringing us to a team of eight. There was something very neat about this and I think God taught us something about how he wants us to lead through this. It didn’t feel like we were leading anymore because those who were joining us were standing side by side instead of behind us. And we walked forward together. We believe this is what perhaps a tenant of servant leadership looks like. A servant is equal to his fellow servants so although it is important to take the first step forward, it’s equally important to allow others to chose whether they will take that step with you. Horizontal leadership versus vertical…you heard it here first! Just kidding, just our thoughts and experiences :)
The next curve ball occurred on the 19th of October, just a three days before our departure. That morning we received an email stating that our flights from Brussels to Entebbe were cancelled. We insured that the country was not locking down (this crossed our minds) and after confirming that it was not, asked for what our options were. Golden Rule gave us two options. One, keep the same price and fly out a week later or two, keep the same dates of travel but increase the price of each ticket by over 400 dollars. Neither option was ideal and had consequences. God blessed us with a generous donor that offered to pay the additional ticket increase for anyone who couldn’t afford it. This allowed us to maintain our same travels dates and even very similar flight times with only a few minor differences, which was an absolute blessing.
There were multiple other small nuisances like, misspelled names on plane tickets, last minute covid test results that were required for travel (one of our travelers didn’t know if she was going to get to come until 4 hours before departure!), and travel visa mess ups. But all got resolved in due time and none prevented us from reaching Uganda. We really tried hard not to not force this trip to happen but we also didn’t want to get in the way of God wanting us there if that were to be the case. Sometimes it’s hard to know who’s trying to steer ship but it is hard to ignore how many doors God opened when we thought they were closed!
By the way, we highly recommend Golden Rule travel agency for anyone planning a mission trip abroad with a group. We cannot imagine going through all of this churn without them. They were a God send!
Saturday 22 October: First Travel Day
Our airlines allowed each person to carry two to three free checked bags, which we took full advantage of. We brought about 20 checked bags of just under 1,000 pounds of bibles, school supplies, adult clothes, children’s clothes, 267 new uniforms for the kids and caregivers, tye dye supplies, various sports balls, about 10 mosquito nets, and other crafts and nick knacks! We will share more about the uniforms in a future post to include how we came up with our new logo design, it’s meaning, and the tye dye craft we did with the kids.
Mike, Curran, Josh, Lydia and Christan took off first on the journey as they departed from Huntsville, Alabama on the 22nd of October at 6:30 AM. Hunter, Taylor and Tay departed shortly after them from Phoenix airport at about 9:45 AM, arriving in Minneapolis for their first stop. Mike and Hunter kept in contact and updated each other on our layovers to ensure we weren’t running into delays or other possible issues as we traveled with separate groups. After departing our layover locations in the U.S., the Huntsville crew landed at about 6:00 AM on Sunday in our next stop of Amsterdam, just a few hours ahead of the Phoenix crew.
Sunday 23 October: Second Travel Day
We all arrived in the early morning on the 23rd and both teams met up and enjoyed nice conversation and breakfast at an airport restaurant. At 11:00 AM, we departed on our final flight to Entebbe, Uganda. We arrived in Entebbe at 10:30 PM and made our way through customs where we presented our passports and visas in addition with our other required documents. After grabbing our checked bags, we were greeted with a warm welcome from Gordon and his brother Joshua. We then walked to the bus that would be our means of transportation for the rest of the trip, and loaded our bags. Gordon set us all up in a nice hotel within Entebbe called Lakepoint Villa. The following link will give you an idea of what the hotel, the bedrooms, bathrooms, and grounds looked like:
https://www.booking.com/hotel/ug/lakepoint-villa.html
We stayed up for a bit and chatted with Gordon while enjoying some African style tea (black tea, fresh cows milk, and lots of sugar) before getting some much needed rest for the night.
That’s all for this month’s newsletter. We will continue to slowly provide updates of each of the remaining days of our trip in future newsletters! We will also be updating our Mission Trip 2022 webpage with this information too. Hopefully this helps paint a picture of what the trip looked like through our eyes.
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 Monday 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 just finished up reading Psalms and will be choosing a new book to study soon!
Peace and blessings,
Michael, Gordon, and Hunter
