WATOTO, FRIENDS, & A BODA BODA

i have been looking forward to today since last week. i went to watoto church in downtown kampala. it was a bit adventuresome due to the down pour of rain. i barely made it to the taxi stage in town. i had no choice to jump in with the first person and go. :) i made it to church in good timing though. my heart was full as i worshipped with so many ugandan's. we joyfully sang together, had a day of thanksgiving with dedicating babies, as well as the teaching of scripture. i felt right at home! i'm looking forward to building relationships and community there. :)

as i was waiting for the rain to stop i saw a familiar face, phillip! he hosted our team around kampala during the 2 weeks we were here a year ago. it was so fun to see him!! hopefully i will bumped into him again. 

after church i met up with a friend of mine, jill wiebe, again i met here last year. she is from canada and was a part of showing us around to the baby homes. we met at a roof top restaurant at a mall in town and enjoyed catching up. afterwards we headed our separate ways on boda boda's. it was my first ride on a taxi motorcycle!! thankfully i had a safe driver and enjoyed ride. :)

every day i hope to become more comfortable at moving around the city. tomorrow or tuesday i am planning to meet up with a few ROWAN staff after i finish with school. 

missing everyone from home though! would love to hear from you if you get a chance! 

much love,

joy

I wanted to share an email sent to our team about a need for the babies at Watoto. Our team going to Uganda received this urgent plea today. If you know of any way you can help...please let me know! We don't care if it's formula being sent to our houses, donations to buy it or connections to the manufacturers.

Dear team….

At any given time we have several infants in our Baby Watoto homes who for one reason or other cannot tolerate a regular baby formula.

There are specialty formulas on the market that are designed for various medical issues, that we use in these cases. Unfortunately they cannot be purchased in Uganda and so we have to rely on donations from abroad and our current stock is out.

As this can make a life or death difference for a baby, we are appealing to you to help us with this urgent need. If your team has the space and means to bring even a few tins, it would help tremendously. If you have space, but would need us to fund the purchases, please let us know so we can work this out. The formula’s we need are:

Pregestamil – very hypoallergenic and quite expensive formula
Nutramigen or Alimentum – moderately hypoallergenic and moderately expensive formulas
Pediasure – A formula for over 1 year olds who can’t eat a regular food diet or have to be tube fed.

Thank you for all you do for Watoto!

Our teams momentum is building as we are just so excited to go and and I've been so blessed by how our relationships have flourished in the process of preparation. Thank you so much for being a part of it whether in prayer, money or buying T-shirts...little lives now can have big expectations. =)