Message
from Duy Beck who is on the Hugs for TUG mission trip in Uganda…
Hi Friends! We’re making significant
progress and are almost complete w/ initial phase.
We came in faith with 5 loaves and 2 fish…please pray that God continues
to meet our project’s needs! www.hugsfortug.org.
If you have “Miles” tickets that you would like to donate, please let us know.
“We must fight”
I was walking with one of the older boys
and he was telling me about how they must ‘fight’ here to do well in
school. They must fight for books (not literally) – but must fight to get
books to read/study, etc. Wow. Such a different perspective.
I want to be a father…
As I was speaking with one of the other
children, he was telling me about the recent death of his father. His
mother had passed away in 1999. It is his desire to be a ‘father’ to the
children….to other orphaned children. He would like to attend seminary
and not necessarily be a pastor, but simply one that cares for many
children. It’s great to see how God has his beautiful little heart at
only 15 years old…
Water, Electricity and the greater need for
Jesus…..
3 of our workers that are staying at the
site witnessed the death of a local village woman (3 houses away) the other
night. She had a kerosene lantern that must have fallen over and caught
her home on fire. Many people tried to save her, but the flames were so
great they were unable to. They watched her burn from the waist down. Please pray that she knew Jesus
and that He would bless us with the funds to dig a deep bore hole (to help
provide water for not only the orphanage, but the entire village) and for the
funds to integrate solar into the entire project.
Breaking Ground for the new Children’s Home
Praise God! The district planner gave
us permission to begin to purchase materials, dig
wells for rainwater harvesting, build
perimeter fencing/entrance gate for security, measure & dig perimeter of
our foundation, build large “store” (covered brick making place, and storage
for materials), and begin brick production. All are complete and we’re
now ready to implement all of our materials! Please pray all goes
smoothly! We are almost done with this phase and have received all
necessary signatures for permitting!
A different type of service
We’re still in prayer about this, but we’d
like to continue to create a ‘Mzungu(foreigner)-Kiswahili’ service that has
both English and Swahili worship, preaching, and format. It can be hard
getting 48 orphans to church on Sunday, so it seems easiest when we hold our
own service in a classroom near Mama’s house. I really miss some of our
great worship from back home (I was blessed to experience some in Nairobi,
Kenya this last Easter weekend as I traveled up north due to VISA
circumstances), and would love to have a service that could minister to our
foreign visitors/volunteers and children. Right now, there is great
worship here – but it’s all in Kiswahili. We’ve identified a good worship
leader, pastors, translators, etc! Pray that God will establish the
organizational structure and hearts to successfully implement!
“Work on the farm” Saturdays
We’ve included a few pics of our first
‘work on the family farm’ Saturday with the children! Similar to Habitat
for Humanity, the families that benefit from the new home contribute the time
that they can as well – obviously age & capabilities dependent. Our children
are soo excited and ask us about ‘Saturdays in Uru (The village where the land
is located)…..they love working alongside us in building their new home – as
long as it doesn’t interfere with school, chores, and other
commitments! We’ve only had a few, but hope to have many more in
the future. We load up our big truck and take as many of the orphans up
to the land as possible to work alongside of us and the workers! Right
now, based upon age/capability, the older children have helped make bricks
(kind ofJ), clear the land, take banana leaves, dig,
pump water….and also just play! It’s a fun time as they also lay under
the banana trees and enjoy mango’s in the afternoon! We’ve included a few
pics of their smiling faces! It truly helps reduce labor costs, allows
the children to be invested in their new home (w/ a sense of pride that they
were a part of building it), and teaches empowerment. Right now, 95% of
the labor force is local – primarily from the surrounding village/community.
Selling the family Cow
My heart hurt the other day for one of our
Fundi’s (expert builders). His parents recently sold their family cow
and, even as a younger man (30’s), he has been supporting his family and now
his brother and children with their school fees. It’s so interesting how
many older brothers and sisters work here simply to support all the needs of
their siblings. Back home, parents seem to always pay for their
children’s education. Here, older brothers and sisters drop out of
University so their younger ones can finish primary and secondary (High
School).
Summer Plans?
By God’s grace, we’ve had interest in
coming to help us out this year. It seems that the U.S. summer would be
the best time (as the rainy season ends in mid May). Lord willing, at our
current pace, we should be able to have the first building complete in by mid
summer (just in time for additional volunteer members to come join us for the
summer!) Hopefully we’ll be able to stay in the first building while we
work on constructing the 2nd and final building! There are
also nice hotels not too far away if anyone wants to stay at those as
well. We might have some medical volunteers coming to climb Mt.
Kilimanjaro at the end of June and then staying to help out a bit! Please
let us know if anyone doesn’t have any other plans for the summer and wants to
come help build a sustainable orphanage! After flights, costs in country
are minimal, especially if you’re working on the land with us! Praise
Jesus for mission members that are coming this summer!
We’re definitely working through initial
issues, but it always adds to the spice of Africa! Prayer Requests:
- Labor force. God has blessed us with a very, very good team of Fundi’s (experts) and labourers. All trustworthy and hard working.
- Communication gaps. Gotta love 3 languages, English, Kiswahili, and Chugga (the local tribal language).
- Rainy season slowly beginning to start (makes it tough to get trucks to site (ours gets stuck often) w/ construction materials, etc)
- No water on the land (we used a manual foot pump machine (looks like a mini-stairstepper) to manually pump water from a local river (and then keep the 3000 L SIM tank in our truck and pump it back into buckets and another SIM that we’ve placed on the land for construction water – but we have had to port drinking water in until the local mama’s have provided for the workers).
- Financial Concerns
- We’re purchasing materials, prioritizing what we need the most at this stage (ie, cement, bricks, stones) so we can beat the initial rainy season, but we are in need of more financial support in order to complete the build.
Prayer Requests:
- ALL Praises!
- Complete Healing for our bodies!
- Breaking ground!
- God blesses us financially. He keeps laying on our hearts 5 loaves and 2 fish!….as we’re purchasing many materials and trusting God deposits at the right time!
- I got my local driver’s license in hand recently! Watch out Tanzania!
- Permit – We received our final permits earlier this week!
- We love the African people!
- Please Pray we can sell our FUSO truck and get a good, reliable pickup to buy basic materials (cement, lumber, etc.) and use remaining funds towards the project. We’ve had several low offers and are praying for a good solid offer. This is really one of our biggest needs!
- Pray that it only rains when we’re not working on the land….Praise Jesus! J
God's blessings,
Hugs for TU.G. 2012
Mission
The Virtua Foundation
PO Box 8549,
Midvale, UT 84047
www.virtuafoundation.com / www.hugsfortug.org
