Thank you to everyone who supported our Fundraising efforts for the Watoto Children’s Village in Uganda. Through auctions, card sales, mufti-days, BBQs, Melbourne Cup lunches and many generous donations we were able to raise over $25,000. All of this money went to purchasing building materials for a classroom which the students and staff built last December.
A group of 15 students from Years 11 and 12 (2010) and 4 staff (Phill and Judy Trick, Stephen and Victoria Edwards) travelled to Uganda the day after Speech Night (4 December) and returned home on the Monday before Christmas. We supported the local builders as we helped them build a classroom at Suubi Village on the outskirts of Kampala, Uganda’s capital city.
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Everyone worked hard and the local builders were surprised at how quickly and efficiently the job got done. One of the highlights of the trip is being able to spend time with the children, whether they are babies in the Bullrushes Babies Home right up to the teenagers who were hanging around on School holidays. A feature of this trip was a number of sporting games we played. Mitch Horrocks was a member of our previous trip (2008) and he had returned to help with some Sport Ministry. Sadly he left the day after we got there but not before he had arranged for us to play 7s Rugby, touch footy, football, basketball and athletics with the locals. We were not too upset that we only won one game as we enjoyed the contest and especially sitting around after the game chatting. One experience will stick with us all as a strapping young man of 16 years of age shared how when he was younger he was forced to be a child soldier in the north of Uganda. You would never guess it now as he had a twinkle in his eye and a real hope for the future. We were also able to enjoy a Safari down at Queen Elizabeth Park and some White Water Rafting which is at the source of the Nile.
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The students took up the opportunities that a trip like this provides. They worked hard for those in need, they spent time getting to know the people and they enjoyed the sites and sounds of the beautiful country Uganda. It was a pleasure to live out James 1:27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world, which is the theme verse of the Watoto organisation. Please continue to pray for Uganda and especially for Watoto, that many lives would be changed and those in need would be cared for.
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