Impacted by the Watoto Children's Village

Hi folks!

After a delightfully restful 22 hours of wandering through aiports, relaxing in the plush, extra roomy seats on KLM Airlines (or is it cattle lines), and eating in-flight meals that would make the Cheesecake Factory turn green (and not with envy), Tripp, Harold and I landed safely in Entebbe last night around 8 pm local time.

Harold's and Allen's bags also arrived safely, and we were grateful to see them. We were even more grateful once we realized that KLM kept Tripp's bag. It's a really nice bag, or so he told us. After waiting in line for another hour, the cattle line told us they were optimistic he'd get his bag back sometime this week.

I held my bag extra close on the ride into Kampala, thankful once again for the little blessings.

In the meantime Tripp has no underwear (don't tell anyone, it's a secret) and is borrowing clothes and toothpaste from me. You share a lot on these trips, sometimes more than you want. In case you're wondering, I did offer to share a pair, but not very enthusiastically. Tripp declined, quickly. We guys have our limits on fellowship and sharing.

This morning we met Fred Erisata from Watoto Children's Villages and Pastor Nelson Kyasooka from Grace Fellowship Church, and spent the day touring Watoto's ministry sites that are in the Kampala area. What an unbelievable ministry God has birthed here in Kampala!

Here's the story, as Fred told it. By the way, Fred is a 23 year old law student at Makere University here in Kampala. He is an articulate, outgoing and happy young man who wants to practice international law as an activist for human rights. His father died when he was 5 and then his mother died when he was 8. He was one of the first Watoto kids, and they are still supporting him - all the way through college - which is what family does. Right?

Watoto was started by a small church led by a Canadian pastor. In 1994 this small church in downtown Kampala became convinced that God was calling them into a ministry that went beyond bible teaching, fellowship and worship. The Father birthed a desire in their hearts to reach orphans and widows, in the midst of a country overflowing with ignored orphans and widows.

By the way, they had little money and few resources and no experience.

But they stepped out in faith and rented a house and placed a widow and 8 children in that house. The church could barely afford to feed them, so the widow worked hard to grow food for her and the kids in a little garden site next door.

In time they added a second house and then a third, as God began to provide some support from outside the church body.

In 1996 they decided to send a kids choir from the first village on an international tour to tell the story of the orphans in Uganda. They sent 18 kids and 10 adults. Fred, our tour guide today, was one of those kids who toured the U.S. and other countries in 1996. They've sent 36 choirs on tour since then.

Today Watoto has three children's villages (2 near Kampala and one in the north in Gulu), a babies home, a retirement home for house mothers, as well as other ministries I don't remember.

By the way, they now care for 1,750 children, ages birth to 23 years old. They have 400 staff, most Ugandan, but supplemented by international staff from Canada, the U.S., Australia and other places. They take chidlren who are in desperate circumstances, most of whom have no family or support to live.

Today, we first visited Bbira Children's village, which hosts 828 children, in the midst of a park-like setting, covered with beautiful trees. Then we visited a second brand-new village at Suubi on top of a huge ridge, overlooking miles of beatiful valley.

Children live 8 per home, with a mother caring for each group of 8. Some of the house mothers have up to 2 children of their own (part of the 8 they care for). If the mother has two female children, then she cares for 8 females. If two male children, then all males. If the house mother has a boy and a girl, then she takes both to make up the 8. If no children, then she gets to decide how to arrange the family. It's a great arrangement.

The homes are simple but well-built, clean and functional - with tin roofs and painted mud-brick walls, and nice concrete floors (about $30,000 each to build, add utilites, and equp with furniture and stoves and fixtures). The house we visited had a genuine warmth to it. It did not seem at all like a home for orphans.

Each village has children's homes, a kindergarten, a primary school, a middle school a high school, a medical clinic, a library and computer center, athletic fields, water pumping station, security guards, fence for security. One site was 75 acres and the other was 194 acres. The 194 acre site at Suubi also has a vocational school.

The villages are unbelievably beautiful and well-designed and well-run, from all we could see. Actually, they were stunning. Neat, clean, creative, happy, active, manicured, practical, fun...instead of the misery of livign on the street that all of these kids would have known, if they had survived at all.

We ended the day by visiting the home for babies in Kampala, they care for over 100 babies, premature to 2 years old. We asked where all these babies come from. And they told us the heartbreaking story of many babies in Uganda.

Most come from the "rubbish heaps" where people throw newborns they don't want, or can't feed, or who are deformed or premature. Sometimes people find them in time, rescue them and bring them to Watoto. Sometimes the parents leave them at a hospital and sometimes at a police station. These newborns have no hope of survival, all of whom would have died in the trah, or in a street alley, or in the bushes.

We walked in to the babies home and, oh my. I have three little girls so it's hard to write about it. There were 19 children under 6 months playing on the floor in the room where we were. They were all clean and well fed. Their eyes...always searching yours, wanting to be held and hugged and loved on. So we did.

It was perhaps the most beautiful place we've seen. They intentionally built it to look like a palace so that they babies could come from the trash heap into a palace (like Moses, they say). They have mothers who work in two 12 hour shifts that take care of a cluster of babies. And there are babies everywhere...so beautiful. We got to hold some of them. I sang to the ones I held and several smiled back at me. You could tell they were well cared for. And they are all permanently adopted by Watoto, who will raise them through college or vocational school.

We met a young lady named Annie, from the U.S., who leads the home (since it was built three years ago). What an incredible place.

We had to pry Harold loose when it was time to leave the babies. He may have snuck out of the hotel and already gone back to hold more babies while I was writing this.

I think we could spend our entire week there, just taking care of the little ones that came within hours of dying alone and unknown. But they were never alone for one millisecond of their life, and there is a Father who knew every one of them - even the ones who die before they are found.

There is so much overwhelming demand for a place to take unwanted babies in Kampala that they are presently building a second babies home - for 200 babies.

So here we are. Amazed at what we've seen. Aware that Watoto is a drop in the bucket of the need here. aware that watoto has taken 15 years to get to this place. Not yet sure what God is doing or where He is taking us on this journey...but aware that He is doing something and taking us somewhere - somewhere special - if we will only be willing to go with Him.

Just like the babies, He knows us. He is with us. He has our lives in His gentle hands and He knows what He wants and where He is taking us.

Pray that we will hear His voice and see His movement as we walk forward listening and watching.

So why do I write all that about Watoto, when I am with Four Corners?

Because I want you to know it's possible for a little group of people with a God-planted desire to do the immpossible.

It looked impossible in 1994 for thise group to do anything more than care for 8 kids and one widow in a ramshackle rental house. Now they are nourishing and cherishing 1750 kids to a hope and a future that is much brighter than what most of these kids parents could have ever given them.

I have a sense that we, along wtih Pastor Nelson and his church famiiles, will one day get to hold babies and play with children who were rescued off the streets and out of the trash heaps through the love of the Four Corners ministry team and all of you who are reading this - if we are willing to patiently wait on the Lord and when it is time to leap off the cliff of faith into whatever adventure of trust that our loving Father has for us.

Ask the Lord if He wants you to jump. He told Watoto to jump and they did - with empty pockets and no idea where He was taking them. He has provided everything they needed, when they needed it - through people who were delighted to give.

I hope it happens again. There is SO much tragic need here among the babies and children, but there is also something much greater than the tragedy of hundreds of thousands of orphans. There is infinite hope and joy in a rescuing God who delights in lifting up the least of these, and delights in touching them through those who are the least of these, like me. And probably you.

I hope you know how delighted your Father is with you today, if you are one of Abba's kids. I hope you have had a glimpse of how much He loves you. He loves you just as much as the baby they're bringig in off the trash heap right now.

Grace and peace and love to all of you from Kampala,

Allen Haynes