Hugs for TUG mission update

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 2^nd 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:

1. Labor force.  God has blessed us with a very, very good team of Fundi’s (experts) and labourers.  All trustworthy and hard working.
2. Communication gaps.  Gotta love 3 languages, English, Kiswahili, and Chugga (the local tribal language).
3. Rainy season slowly beginning to start (makes it tough to get trucks to site (ours gets stuck often) w/ construction materials, etc)
4. 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).
5. Financial Concerns
1. 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:

1. ALL Praises!
1. Complete Healing for our bodies!
2. Breaking ground!
3. 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!
4. I got my local driver’s license in hand recently! Watch out Tanzania!
5. Permit – We received our final permits earlier this week!
6. We love the African people!
7. 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!
8. 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

COPI Mission Update: March 31

March 31, 2012

Saigon, Viet Nam

I was up well before my alarm. I am still bothered by things I saw on Thursday. Today was a light day. We toured a well-run orphanage and an HIV clinic. We were free from lunch on.

Mike and I had lunch, and then we set about our souvenir shopping. I picked up some things, had a “Coca-Cola Lite” (Diet Coke), and returned to the room to dress for dinner. We had a lovely team dinner with awards and speeches, etc. Simmering under this all are several questions: Why does God allow such suffering for children? We have done so little: does it really matter? Did we make any difference? Why does Binh continue to do what she does?

I am baffled by the first question. The second and third must be answered with a yes—it matters and it made a difference to the children we touched. The question about Binh is interesting because there is no one answer, but very many. I think she closes her eyes and she sees the faces of hundreds of children. She sees the workers who care for them in orphanages. They are incredibly underpaid. She sees the stony faces of politicians and civil servants who don’t care about anything, unless you disturb their peace. She sees a spark of hope in a few Vietnamese people who get it -- they understand that orphaned and abandoned children matter.

I needed time after Thursday to get some perspective. I can’t say my mind is at peace. I can say that it helps to talk to teammates! Many Vietnamese people have great reverence for their elders and ancestors: Families really matter here! This makes what we saw on Thursday even more hideous and absurd. TOO MANY children are sold and used and abused. But all of us have a new appreciation for the many parents who accompanied their children to the clinics and listened and watched and learned everything possible to help their children. The two clinics near Da Nang were on a Saturday and Sunday. Almost every child had an attentive parent or grandparent. I need to remember this as I pray for the children Viet Nam.

We leave for the airport in an hour. It will be good to get home.

Signing off in Saigon,

James

COPI Mission Update: March 28 & 29

March 28, 2012

Saigon, Viet Nam

We were up this morning at O’dark thirty. Breakfast at 6:00, and on the bus at 6:40 to travel to a deaf school. The traffic was already bad. When is it not in Saigon? Because of the early start, we had devotions on the bus. Matthew 7:1-5 and the challenge of not judging one another.

We had the clinic up and flying by 9 AM. The Catholic nuns who run the deaf school are amazing. Everything was orderly, even if it was overwhelming. We served 294 patients today between 9 am and 5:30 PM. It took us 30 minutes to break things down and pack the truck and get on the bus. Rush hour. We were back at 7:15 PM and completely exhausted. My roommate Mike settled for the fruit in our room. I went with Raina, Binh, PM, and two of our dentists to a pho restaurant in an alley about 4 blocks from the hotel. The noodles were excellent!

We have our last clinic tomorrow at the youth shelter. These are teenagers picked up for prostitution, pimping, etc., who have been given into the care of the state for their own protection. They don’t choose this lifestyle--they are used by adults. We will see perhaps 150 of them? Christ have mercy!

Please pray for our team’s stamina and cohesion.

Thanks for praying,

James

March 29, 2012

Saigon, Viet Nam

Sold-at-Three

Brace yourself. This is going to be difficult.

We were up at 5:45, and showered and ready for devotions at 6:15: The Golden Rule. By 7:15, we were on our way to the Youth Shelter. It changes every day, but this morning, there were 210 kids in the shelter, ages 5-19. In this photo, Bethany is helping a 9 year old I’m calling “Sold-at-Three.” Raina is in the background, looking back at this precious little girl. If it were a crystal clear photo, you would see the tears in Raina’s eyes. Bethany cried as soon as the girl turned away. Why?

Little Sold-at-Three’s parents died when she was two. Her grandmother kept her for a year, and then sold her to a pimp. She was abused as a “prostitute” for 5 years. She is now nine. She has been in the shelter for a year. She still won’t make eye contact with men. An 8-year old boy wouldn’t make eye contact either. I asked about him. His step-father sold him to a pimp when he was 5. He was chained to a bed as a “prostitute” for two years before someone reported the abuse. He has also been in the shelter for about a year. We served 194 of the children today. Every one of them broke our hearts. I have never prayed, “Christ have mercy” so many times in one day!

Today I served as the toothbrush man. Pastor Jeff understands this, because he was the toothbrush man last year. I was only able to do it today. It gives you time to pray for each child.

After the clinic we walked across the street to the orphanage. This was a small one, with only about 100 children. Some of them have incredible challenges. Most are not true orphans, but were abandoned by their parents when their “birth defect” became obvious. We toured the rooms and some of us wept inconsolably. I took no pictures.

We got home after 8 PM. This was our most difficult day. Some of what I saw will never be forgotten.

Tomorrow we will visit the Good Shepherd orphanage and the HIV clinic. Christ have mercy!

Stunned in Saigon,

James

COPI Mission Update: March 27, 2012

March 27, 2012

Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Viet Nam

It was raining when we got up this morning and the drizzle lasted all morning. We had a leisurely breakfast, and then boarded a bus to the Da Nang Airport for our flight to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). It was almost effortless. But our bus hit some low hanging telephone lines (no kidding!) and we were caught briefly in a snarl of wires. It broke the windshield wiper on the right side of the window. The driver treated all of this as normal and took out a big wrench and removed the wiper arm.

Our flight was without incident, and we landed in Saigon about 3:00 PM. We are staying downtown in one of the older sections of the Rex Hotel www.rexhotelvietnam.com/en/.

Please pray for our 14-hour day on Wednesday. We expect this to be a big clinic. We start at 6:00 AM, and don’t expect to be back until 8:00 PM.

James

PS – A few folks got the wrong website for our last hotel. I left out an “h.” Here is the correct website. (www.vinhhungresort.com/).

COPI Mission Update: March 23-25, 2012

March 23-25, 2012 Hoi An, Viet Nam

Friday, March 23 was a travel day. We left the hotel at 11 AM and drove into the middle of one of the worst traffic nightmares you can imagine. There is one bridge out of the city center of Hanoi going to the airport. There was a wreck on the bridge, going the direction we needed to go. Can you imagine the traffic stood still for a long time? We had a flight to catch to Da Nang, Viet Nam at 1:30. It didn’t happen. Of course many of the other passengers were also in the traffic snarl, and so they held our plane at a different gate. We finally took off about 3:45. A 40-minute bus ride brought us to our hotel (www.vinhhungresort.com). The resort is beautiful. Most of us have rooms in the back, but we are not spending much time here.

Saturday, March 24 began at 6:15 with devotions in Mike’s and my room. The breakfast buffet was amazing. Have you ever eaten dragon fruit? We left at 7 for a 50-minute bus ride to Dai Loc. We set up our clinic in a school, and served 201 patients. The mayor came to thank us, and asked us to dinner at a restaurant near by. The Hoi An region is famous for a noodle dish called “cao lau.” It is eaten with lemon grass and it is very tasty. The restaurant served us this with rice crackers. Wow! We weren’t back to the hotel until 9 PM.

On March 25^th, 6:45 devotions came too early! We had the same wonderful buffet, and then boarded our bus for our next clinic. We served 170 patients today. Again, the mayor came to thank us. We returned to our hotel about 6:10. Dr. Brock Millet spoke for Mike and I at dinner: “I want some dinner and my bed.” I can add that my back aches from moving the bins of medical and dental supplies.

Monday, March 26 is our first full day off since we left Utah on March 14. I am looking forward to exploring the resort, doing some shopping, and maybe even swimming in the pool. As I write, it is about 70 degrees, overcast, and very pleasant here on the patio of the breakfast buffet. I am looking across the patio at the river, and watching the small diesel ferryboats move passengers from one side to the other. They operate all night, and I finally understand the putt-putt-putt (about 5 putts per second) that I have heard all night for several the last three nights.

Please pray that we get good rest today. We have served 942 people (mostly children) and we have two more big clinics when we arrive in Ho Chi Min City (Saigon).

From Hoi An, Viet Nam,

James

Today our clinic should have been by boat to an island near Hoi An. It has been very windy so the person at the island said the water was too choppy so recommended we not try to come for our safety. We instead went to one of our team member's village. We call him PM. For some reason there are a lot of congenital heart defects but for the most part the kids were healthy with not horrible teeth. The sun was out this morning and then it turned cool and windy by late morning. Some of us pulled out our jackets by afternoon. All the children came very bundled up to the clinic. You would have thought it was 40 degrees just by looking at them. We saw about 180 kids today with half the kids in the morning and the rest this afternoon. They normally have a siesta time around lunch for a couple of hours. Today we were so efficient that we all got a break as well, including the dentists.

Dr Brock, the American doctor, drew attention to some large garden spiders that were high in the ceiling outdoors by photographing them. If any of you know me, you know that spiders are one of my least favorite things. Those spiders on the ceiling were creepy but I knew that they want to stay up there to get bugs and are not coming down on my head. As Mike K. and Co Cuc and Pastor James were moving a table out of one of the rooms to be used in the pharmacy area, there was a huge spider having a ride on the table cloth. It was just smaller than my hand. James tried to kick the spider with his foot and it scurried under the cloth. Co Cuc tried to find it but said it went up into the table. Thankfully they put the table back and didn't use it. They actually closed the door to that room which made me feel better. I couldn't get that spider out of my head all day and thought that any bench that I sat on surely had a huge spider underneath. I didn't check!!

We will have a day to enjoy Hoi An tomorrow. It is a lovely old town. Some of us will tour around the town on bicycles while others are traveling about an hour to ruins called My Son. It sounds like everyone will have a nice day doing whatever suits them. I look forward to sleeping in just a little. We will end our day with a dinner at PM's house with his wife, mother and children. What an honor for the whole team to be welcomed into his home.

Raina

COPI, March 22, 2012

Diamond Hotel, Hanoi, Viet Nam

We arrived by train at 5:30 this morning. Most of us slept better on this trip, mostly because we were exhausted. (We had a 15-hour day on Tuesday, and a 10-hour day on Wednesday.) We had time to check-in to our hotel and get a shower before we went t the Soc Son Leprosarium in Hanoi. This is one of Binh’s favorite places. She loves the children trapped by the government’s decision that lepers and their families must live in a leper colony.

One member of the community had a stroke about 6 months ago. She is wasting away, and hasn’t much time left. Binh asked me to bless her and help give her peace as she dies. What to say? The words of benediction seemed most appropriate: “May the Lord bless you and keep you, may the Lord cause His countenance to shine upon you and be gracious to you, and may He give you His peace.” Binh translated and she began to cry. She thanked me and Binh cried. Wow. I never thought I would be doing “soft Lutheran last rites” in Viet Nam!

We returned to the hotel at 1 PM and we have free time until we go to the airport to fly south tomorrow at 11 AM. For those who are interested, here is all I can find to show our hotel (www.agoda.com/asia/vietnam/hanoi/diamond_hotel.html)

Here are three more photos: One is of our whole team near the China border. The second is Rita watching a Hmong woman weave. The third is some of the beautiful “Black Hmong” we came to serve.

Thanks for praying,

James