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For those who aren't on our mailing list, here is our second newsletter of the year. Be sure not to miss the 4-minute video report from the courageous pioneers who went on our first cross-cultural exposure trip to Kaabong District.
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No, this post is not about someone wanting to get married! This post is about what Walter and Milly have been working on for the past month, in our 6 pilot schools, where we want to try out different sustainable solutions to empower parents to keep their girls from dropping out of school due to menstruation. We are currently in our 8th year since EI alumnus, Tom, restarted the pads ministry in Pader. Previous to Tom's time, the girls were taught how to sew their own sanitary pads. However with the very short times given to the team by school administration, combined with the fact that sewing is not everybody's forte in life (including the author of this post!), what we found was that many, or even most, of the pads made by the girls were not fit to actually be used. And so Tom, with his engineering mind, worked out a manufacturing process which has been used for the last 6 years to produce and distribute as many pads to as many primary-level, menstruating girls as possible, at the lowest possible cost. Sustainability, however, has for a long time been our primary concern with the pads ministry. Emmanuel International will not be in Pader forever, so how can we ensure that girls are still accessing what they need during their menstruation, even without our assistance? Previous attempts at convincing school administrations and parent-teacher associations to purchase pads never gained any traction. What are we supposed to do?
This year, we've paused distributions in order to work on a solution to this problem. And we're doing it together with the parents. Walter and Milly are guiding groups of parents to think about what we can do to assist them to be able to provide pads for their girls in future. Solutions may include trying again to train the girls to sew (this time with more follow-up and focused teaching time), training groups of mothers to sew the pads, training parents who are already trained tailors to mass produce them and showing them where to get higher quality materials, and continuing to produce them ourselves with our own local tailor and making them available for sale at schools, whereby the money collected in the first year is saved to buy what is needed for the next year. Interestingly, our office just received a visit yesterday from a Pader man who opened a skills training centre, and one of the things they do is make high quality sanitary pads at a very affordable rate. Helping them to market their products may be yet another approach. Which is the best solution? We don't actually know! So this year is going to look quite different for the pads ministry - with a smaller number of schools, using different approaches in different schools, and then comparing after a few months to see what has worked and what has not. Our goal remains the same - working together to keep more girls in school and build a brighter future for Uganda! You may remember from our February newsletter about how friends from Africa Inland Mission (AIM) came to visit us here in Pader a couple months ago. They told us about a small team of Ugandan men, who are originally from the southwest of Uganda, and have been living as long-term missionaries in Kaabong District, which is in the far northeast of Uganda and is part of the Karamoja region. Karamoja region is one of the key places that our team has been praying for since God gave us the vision of raising up cross-cultural missionaries to unreached people groups in 2018. They work mainly among the Ik and the Dodoth people groups. And these Ugandan men - Timothy, Ian, and Mark - are passionate about mobilizing others to go to the nations through hosting exposure visits. Here is a picture of Ian and Timothy (left to right). Mark is currently on a Sabbatical year back in Mbarara, Uganda. Among our team, we have 3 staff members interested in becoming cross-cultural missionaries in future. And each of these 3 staff members attend different churches here in Pader. So we had an idea - what if we send each of these 3 staff members with their spouses, together with one or two other people from the local congregation where they attend, so that our staff gain real-life exposure in cross-cultural ministry, and so that others will also catch the vision and become champions to bring cross-cultural missions into the consciousness of the congregations to which they belong. God could use such champions to mobilize many, many others. As we write now, one team (led by Polycarp) has already gone and come back, and the second team (led by Concy) is coming back tomorrow. A third team (led by Walter) will likely go in late May. Below are some pictures received from the first two teams. We invited Polycarp's team (Polycarp, Rachel, and Sharon) to come and share with us about what they saw and experienced. It was easy to see that the trip impacted each of them deeply.
They were visibly shaken by the conditions that these other tribes live in - with water scarcity, virtually no food, and in constant fear of neighbouring clans coming to raid and steal their livestock. Yet they were also very surprised at how welcoming the communities were to them - not at all like they had been taught to think about the tribes in Karamoja region. Polycarp commented that the very harsh living conditions have made people open to the gospel, because they are looking for help. They were all deeply touched by the teaching that Timothy and Ian did with them each evening, which was drawn from the Xplore course. Rachel said, "What we're doing in salvation is not even a half of what God wants us to do." She emphasized the point which struck her deepest, that we as Christians often miss the "so that" clauses that accompany God's promises and blessings in the Bible. If you read God's promises of blessings in the Bible attentively, you will notice that each blessing is followed by a "so that", which calls us to be a blessing to others. She said, "Whatever we have is not for us. It is a blessing to share with others. The salvation we have is for others also to enjoy. And yet there are many millions of people with no access to the gospel. [In Kaabong] people are crying for a single church to reach there." She went on to say how she couldn't even imagine how people are born and grow up with nobody to tell them about Jesus. "People in the villages are asking, 'God, what am I doing in this world?'". Sharon said the course taught her to "forsake everything you have. Just follow God." She continued, "Even if you die while on God's work, it's not bad even. Even if they kill you, you will just feel happy that you've done what you're supposed to do in this world." We look forward to hearing from Concy's team (Concy, her husband Peter, and Grace) after they come back tomorrow, and we hope to share a video with you soon so you can hear some of their passion yourselves. But for now, join us in praying for these teams, that as they come back, God will use them mightily to share what they have seen and heard, so that whole congregations will catch the fire that they are carrying in their hearts! And pray for Timothy and Ian, to have endurance, wisdom, and to be protected physically and spiritually all their days. |
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October 2021
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