rothwellsmission: November 2014

Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.
Proverbs 22:6

Brief blog as we have a large team of 14 arriving next week, so will be little spare time!

It has been great having Will here, he has been brilliant teaching Biology, the students have loved his interactive style – and the sweets with a dent in to illustrate the shape of red blood cells! They also had a great time learning how to take and record pulse rate – before and after exercise – lots of jumping around! And yes – both taken from the Uganda Biology curriculum text book – but maybe illustrated in a slightly different style!

Why are we so surprised when our children turn out to be great people - kind, caring, understanding – could it be anything to do with the parents?!

We so enjoyed taking him to Murchison Falls and Jinja – the source of the Nile. And although we saw enormous herds of elephant and giraffe (hundreds), and rhino at Ziwa a few yards away from where they (Stan and Will that is, I was in the car!), which was really impressive, we still haven't seen any big cats at Murchison. However, as Will pointed out, he went to the Serengeti when he was in Tanzania so he wasn't at all disappointed!

It's been great to spend time together at work and at play and the students have really loved having Will here. He has spent a lot of time just chatting, playing football and cricket, as well as teaching, and they and he have enjoyed the time together. He has also done some teaching – and a lot of playing – at The Bridge. He has loved working with the young ones as well and they have clearly loved him as you can see from the photos. He has been so impressed with the work they are doing there with the young children to improve their Maths and English – and now to give them the added skill of computer knowledge.

On Wednesday – the 12^th – Will goes to Entebbe for his night flight home. It's difficult to believe a month has passed. The good news is we will be back in the UK ourselves in a month.

Jerry and Elspeth arrive over the weekend ahead of the team from New Life church in Romsey who arrive on Sunday. It will be great that Will is able to meet them before he leaves, he has heard us talk about them so often so it will be good for him to see them face to face.

We will be spending some time with them and Charles before the end of term to talk about 2015 budgets and a maintenance programme for the holidays, so time now to be serious and knuckle down to some proper work!

O Levels are finished and Senior 4 have left. A bit sad as some of them will not come back. Many have now finished what schooling they will receive, our S5 and S6 classes are much smaller. However a number have said they will return so we do hope so, many of them are real characters and get under your skin and into your heart even though you try hard not to let them!

The rest of the school now have school exams for 2 weeks and S6 have A Levels. At the end of the two weeks there is a week when there is no teaching as the teachers are marking...and marking... and marking, whilst the students wait for results and reports. With classes of 120 you can guess this takes some time.

This is an ideal time for a team to be here and New Life has a wonderful programme arranged from early morning to late evening – worship, teaching (on a theme of Bible superheroes), seminars, sports, film night – and Wobulenzi's Got Talent! There will also be a sports finals day and big meal together before they leave. The students are so excited about it – as are we!

Also a challenge for us as the first big team we have hosted at the volunteers guest house – 14 people for 10 nights. Stan and Will have already been into Kampala for some of the items we can't get locally, and Eva and I are getting geared up for making lots of cake, bread and large meals! Stan and Will have bought a couple of crates of Nile Special just in case they are needed and Eva and I will be doing boda boda runs for pineapples, bananas and avocados every couple of days.

So please pray that we can satisfy the hunger of this wonderful team who have put in so much work to arrange all of this for our students. No doubt many photos in the December blog!

And finally – please pray for the health of our students.

One has had to leave as he contracted Hepatitis B from a member of his family and sadly the risk to the other students has to be considered as they live in such close proximity – and sharing cups and toothbrushes is not uncommon.

We wish we could vaccinate them all, as very few are, but financially it is just not possible, even if they agreed (great fear of needles).

One of the things we take for granted in the UK is vaccination for all – not the case here. There are many deaf children locally as a result of contracting measles, for example.

Please also pray for the students as they travel back to their villages, but before that we pray they will gain so much from the end of term programme the team have for them.

Photos - in no particular order - The Bridge - children, computer lessons, phonics teaching, the quiz, story time.

The school - biology lessons - and a nice message on the board!

Rhino trekking, elephant in the Nile - and a two-headed giraffe!