Author: rhondajwelch

It’s been a rough week in the sense that there have been people at the door all day everyday. Farmers getting money and seed, I finally last night told our worker that from now on farmers come before 5 in the evening because everyday this week just when we are sitting down to eat they come. They thought it was funny that we eat that early! One man asked if we eat and go to bed! Because they all eat around 8 or 9 and then go to bed. We’ve had no work going on this week so our workers have been by for money or work. One person came and wanted to borrow $150 to buy land because the person selling needed the money for a sick child. We told them we would have to check with the board and usually that ends it! The next day another person came and asked to borrow $150 because someone has land to sell that has a sick child! We told them that we can’t give out loans that they can’t repay. That is so much money here and they all want to borrow and then pay back $1 a month! The best one was the guy who came and said he is making bricks to sell – he is hiring 10 guys to make the bricks for him so could he borrow the money to pay his workers! We had a pretty good laugh about that one! Our farm manager asked if he could have some of our scrap wood – he would pay a little for it – and we said yes. He asked if he could have bricks we have left from the barn and Christian didn’t answer him. Next thing I know, I look out the window and they had the truck half full of our bricks! Christian had to go out and tell them to put them all back, we have other projects to do. One thing we’ve seen, if we give somebody something it seems to tell them that they can come take whatever they want from our property. I know they don’t do that to each other, but we have seen tools, a ladder, Raelee’s toys walking out the gate! So the week has been draining and Christian and Raelee have had pretty bad coughs so they haven’t felt good.

We are excited for Easter. We are showing the Jesus Movie at church on Sunday. We are trying to invite as many people as we can. I was told today that “some are muslim” and might not come. I said, “Well, maybe they will come and not leave as a muslim”! So pray with us that many will come and be touched by the film. So many around the world have.

These cuties were waiting on their mother in choir practice and came and took my hand and walked around with me. I brought them to the house and Raelee gave them each a doll. The boy seemed pretty surprised when he tried to give it back and we told him he could keep it! The little girl had taken hers into the church!

I need to make a PS…                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              After writing this and posting, I was encouraged and reminded that not everyone just wants something from us. Our boda driver that delivers groceries and take out food to me whenever I call, never cheats me and just loves Raelee had told me his Iphone screen had shattered and did I know anyone in America that could get a new screen. I told him there is nobody coming soon and I couldn’t get one mailed. I got my favorite phone unlocked so that I can use it here so I called Richard to bring us a few things and gave him my old phone. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone get that excited over something! Christian said he thought Richard was going to do a dance! It’s a really nice phone, and he really wanted one to use online to talk to his friends, but the battery life on it is pretty short. So, after a week of gimme gimme gimme around here it was a joy to make someone’s day like that!

We played a game last night with Raelee – Tombalo. Everyone has sticks they have to lay according to the card drawn and build a damn. If you get the 4 stick card that has a beaver on it, you lay 4 sticks and have to balance a beaver on top. Raelee was over the moon when she got a beaver to stay without toppling the whole dam! She won the first game. She loves to play it, loves it when we sit down and play games with her. I know the boys used to love it when we just sat and played games although one of them who shall remain nameless liked to cheat! Haha! He grew up to be a very honest young man. Both of the boys are.

Daniel and family are getting ready for a move to Greece with a transfer for a leadership position with Samaritans Purse. We are very proud of him. He is excited but a little sad to be moving away from Africa, where there hearts have been for many years. But he knows Greece isn’t the end, God has many plans for them and for us it is very exciting to see them play out. (And flights from there to here – here to there are cheaper than from here to Niger. Good to know!)

We had rain last night, and lightning, so we had a little curly headed visitor in our bed again. I’ve told her the thunder and lightning will probably last now for at least a month and she can’t get in bed every night because our bed is too small. So she lays in the little spot that my feet don’t reach! Then there is the cat – scaredy cat I call him. He doesn’t like the thunder either so he wants to climb in. I’m thinking we may need to get a bigger bed but Christian says we just need to kick out the bed poachers! I tried to tell Raelee no last night but then I remembered that she won’t be a little girl forever and I don’t want her to think we disregard her fears so I relented! Time goes by too fast when it comes to kids growing up and I have already experienced the lonliness of a mother when her children get too big to hold and too proud to climb in Mama’s bed so I will hold on to her childhood as long as I can!

For all that want to see me in a pic, here is my hand! lol

She got the beaver on successfully!

Ready for crops to be stored!

We’ve been pretty busy here, getting the “barn” finished and over seeing the guys putting a ceiling in the building we are moving into. Then there are the farmers getting ready to plant before the rains set in. The Chairman has been very supportive and has even had meetings with the farmers to re-iterate the goals and help them to understand the importance of the chance they are getting. So join with us in prayer that everyone has a great harvest and we have open doors to bring the gospel and form relationships.

We are now in the planning stages of getting the chicken farm going, so we plan on staying busy! When the guys are done with our ceiling, there is a huge cleanup that will have to be done in our building. And I made a mistake of painting some of the walls before we decided to have that put in so now they are pretty messed up and will have to be painted again! Christian has had to stay on the guys, they are professionals but we have found that here that doesn’t always mean they do a professional job! We wanted the ceiling to be as high as possible and it started out really good. But when they started outside of the bathroom they dropped about 15 inches! It was really noticeable and they apologized and said they would do it right on the other side, which would have been worse! Luckily they were still putting supports and mesh up so they took it all down and re-did it. It has the first layer of concrete and has to dry so then the put the layer on the inside and smooth it out. Probably still have 1-2 weeks before that is all done.

One of our workers daughter died last week – the second worker that has had a child die since we’ve been here. And one had a very little one die by drowning in a hole that filled with water just before we came here. It’s a rough life here, even though they live with disease, poverty and sickness they aren’t very educated about them. They don’t realize that malaria does not go away by itself and many die because they don’t get treatment. Because of the fear of Dr’s and hospitals they don’t have their children immunized and even though they can get vitamins for free they don’t do it. It’s sad and we are trying to change that little by little by doing whatever we can by educating the ones that come to us and by taking them to Dr Nelson. He has given us a lot of help and advice. Out of all the people that were screened for cataract surgeries, there were 4 that were eligible for a procedure that could be done here at the hospital but only 2 would go. The 2 that were eligible for cataract surgery won’t go out of fear. It makes me wonder why they even came to be tested. Our driver has been sick and today he went to Jinja to the hospital for some MRI’s and tests and they came out okay but the Dr is still concerned and wants to do a scope of his throat to rule out any cancer. But Indianga just wants to take the medication the Dr gave him for inflammation and see if it goes away. This has been going on for some time now so we think he should have the scope. At least he isn’t putting all his faith in the witch doctor! He told us if he doesn’t feel better in a week he will go for the test. We are going to talk to Dr Nelson and see what he says about it. In the mean time we pray. For everyone.

Always pray for us, for patience, endurance, good health and open doors to begin relationships and witness about the joy we have found in our Lord Jesus Christ.

…10Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you. 11Do not speak against one another, brethren. He who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks against the law and judges the law; but if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge of it. 12There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the One who is able to save and to destroy; but who are you who judge your neighbor?

James 4:10-12

It is said here that people don’t like confrontation. This means you are not supposed to sit down and confront them. They won’t tell the truth if their life depends on it anyway – most times. It makes it very difficult to get to the bottom of rumors and finger pointing and only getting half the story, which happens a lot. These are the times when we notice the absence of God the most here. We were told yesterday that one of our workers is a very bad man, doing very bad things. We were told which worker, and it was very surprising because he is very friendly to us, has been a hard worker and actually we have been paying him ourselves to work on the building we are going to move into and he has done excellent work.  It was the Chairman of the community that came to Christian yesterday to tell him this, and we respect him, most of the community it seems respects him. But we never really got why this worker is bad, and what it is exactly that he is doing. After Chairman left, we questioned the one that had brought him as to what it is they are accusing him of, but all we got is that he is saying bad things about us, and that he and his family have been very disrespectful  to the Chairman in the past. We were shocked to hear that this man (who is probably in his very early 20’s) might have been saying bad things about us. He is more friendly than most of the other guys, was one of the two that came to us asking for a Bible after the Christmas soccer game. He also had just invited us to come to his Church today. The hardest part is, if we confront the young man, we won’t get the truth. How do we take advice to not work this guy, and not have him around if we don’t have proof of wrongdoing? We know that rarely we get the whole story on anything the first (or even the second time!) We respect the Chairman and believe he respects us but that doesn’t mean we do everything he says although it seems he really does have the best interests of the community and he has been the Chairman for many, many years but how do we know this isn’t about his anger toward this guy and his family? That’s part of the Chairman’s job, to hear complaints, to diffuse situations and to keep the peace.

I struggle between thinking this guy comes and just brown-noses us and than slanders us behind our backs or that we may send off someone who is being unfairly slandered himself. It is a hard situation, and it does consider thought because of the Chairman taking the time to come and talk to Christian face to face about it. I ask you to keep us in prayer for all situations concerning our interactions with the people here. That we have patience and wisdom in our dealings and that we are protected against the slander and persecution of us. We never know what opportunity God is putting before us, what teaching moments or chances for someones repentance and reconciliation.

photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/85755792@N00/16971159048″>Нови и стари митове и легенди за #SEO  този път от +Neil Patel  :-)</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a&gt; <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/”>(license)</a&gt;

February flew by, partly because for two weeks of it we were so very sick! I am happy to say we are all three well. Raelee had to visit the Dr. this morning to get a pocket of nastiness drained from the tip of her finger. We don’t know what she did, she plays so hard, but man did she scream when he was squeezing all that out! I think it shocked the Dr. He just hadn’t had the joy of inflicting a little pain on the pretty princess! Kids down the block heard her screaming! So, other than that, we are good. Just very busy.

One storage building is almost finished, it looks really good. It has taken a little over a month and they still have a little to do on the inside. Christian had to fire the workers while we were sick because no matter what he said do, they wanted to do the opposite. So, they were fired for a little over a week, brought back on one condition and have worked like they were supposed to in the first place!

Our new home is coming together, Raelee’s room is going to be plastered and then we have to paint. She wants aqua with pink polka dots. We’ll see! We also have to get the kitchen done but we have a working (I use that term loosely because we still have to flush it with buckets of water!) toilet!

We signed up 50 farmers to co-op crops. We pay the ploughing cost, good seed, fertilizer and insecticide and then split the harvest. Please be in prayer for us in this venture, at times it seems so overwhelming when thinking of all the factors, namely the weather. We are just at the start of the rainy/planting season and I am nervous! Pray that all the farmers are diligent and our supervisors honest in their work. Our goal is to help these people who couldn’t buy what is needed to farm by themselves, and to teach them to put back some for seed, and to eat or sell. Most are growing rice, most of the people in our village can’t even afford to eat rice so our prayer is to help them for 3 seasons to get on their own feet by saving seed, and money and then let them do on their own. And for us to break even so that we can help even more. Ultimately, it would be so awesome to make a profit that can then be used to do other projects. To help with education, have sewing classes for women and so many other things. I have been asked to teach a skill that can be taught to others and at first I was so daunted by that, wondering what skill I have that I could teach that would be beneficial to women here. Then I happened to see on my Jinja facebook group that a lady was selling her huge stock of jewelry making supplies. I gave all mine away when we moved, thinking that women here wouldn’t need me to teach them, so I was so excited to see her post. We went and I bought all that she had, so many paper beads that she made herself, plenty to help teach someone else. I had started making the paper beads just before we moved, after our son and daughter-in-law brought me a necklace from Africa. So, thank you Lord for reminding me I do have skills that will help someone else along. I’m not sure how much graphic design I can teach in the village! But I have decided to give typing classes – they don’t teach that in schools and it hurts me everytime I see a girl here typing with her thumbs!

We also plan this month to finalize the plans on the chicken houses and make a trip to Kampala to talk with a man that has been raising chickens here for a few years. So, all in all, March is looking like a very busy month!

Thank you for your prayers and your thoughts. We also now have a PO Box so if you are interested you can email me at rhondajwelch@gmail.com and I will give it to you. We have been told that if anything makes it to us it could take a month, but it’s worth a try to see!

It has been a busy week this week, physically and mentally exhausting. and today I know I need to post something but cannot use my first finger on my right hand so bear with me on mistakes I may make. It has already taken me 5 minutes to type this far! Cut my finger and it got infected and a pretty big chunk of dead tissue had to be cut out. But I am good! The pain before they cut on me was unbearable, but as soon as all the bad was out, there was relief!

We have new solar and it is so nice, Christian and I were both up in the night and amazed and frightened that the fridge and two fans were running. Our old solar wouldn’t do that, and it is quite a treat to have them all running without having to check the solar monitor and turn things off. Although it does come with a little guilt that in the middle of all this poverty we have so much comfort. I try not to let that get to me, and I am so very thankful for it! Cooking should be a lot easier now that I can freeze things.

The doors for the “barn” as Christian calls it have come and the guys should be getting them installed, and putting a second level around the sides of it so that things can be stored top and bottom and leave room for trucks to back in it if needed. We have high hopes for the mill when we get it going and want to have storage for rice and maize ready.

We wanted to help one of our workers who is trying to build a house – what is typical here for most people to live in is about a 5×7 brick or mud “hut” that they sleep in. So when I say someone is building a house, it is usually a little bigger than that and may have a living room and bedroom. But how to help was the question. Christian helped him one day with brick making but we can’t just give out money. So I did something that we hadn’t wanted to do (well, one of us didn’t want it!), I had his wife come and sweep and mop my floors and the floors of the other apartment. So that she could earn some extra money for the house. Well, the grapevine here as Christian says puts the Baptists to shame! Haha! For the next week I have had people at my door everyday wanting to do my dishes, clean my house. It’s exhausting and mentally draining having to tell girls that need school money no. We cannot make up jobs just to pay, but it is extremely hard to tell them that we just don’t have work for everyone. It has made it harder that all this has been happening while the solar is being put in, and the storage building being finished. When I say we just don’t have the money for everyone they don’t really believe me. To them it is me and Christian not wanting to help. The thought is white people have endless money. And they also don’t understand that when we look at the needs, a very sick child has to have higher priority than school fees. I have seen a little hope in that some of the 20ish generation are realizing the mistake and consequences of having so many children when you can’t afford it. It is hard for them though, because the culture demands many wives and children. Apparently that is what makes a man a man, even though they aren’t taking care of half of them – wives or children. Our day guard is 20 and his father has two wives. He says his father has been good to both wives and all his children, but that he doesn’t want more than one wife and he gets a lot of pressure about that. Here, he should already have his first wife. And women have no say in much of anything, nor should they be single. So many are stuck in these marriages because that is how it is. I made a mistake today, talking to the men building a wall in our new home because I wasn’t happy with how they were doing it. And Christian says that I undermined him because 1) they don’t understand what the home means to a woman and 2) a woman shouldn’t voice her opinions, Christian had already told them he didn’t want it like that and they were determined they were going to do it anyway. I would never intentionally undermine my husband, and I understand where he is coming from and it makes me very sad for the women here, to have all the hardship and responsibilities and really no rights or respect. It is extremely hard for me because my husband says I have an opinion on just about everything!

I did pay two girls to paint in the building we will be moving to since I hurt my finger and they painted the side I had left to paint. That was a big help to me and hopefully Christian will get the septic in and Raelee’s room will be finished soon and we will get to move.

Keep us in your prayers and may God bless you as much as He has blessed us this week!

We have a big building empty now since the orphanage moved out. We were going to make it housing for visiting mission teams, but I put in a request to the board to let us move into this building and use the duplex for the mission teams. Reasoning for me is, I can have a bigger kitchen to cook and prepare food for teams and company we might have, including people from the village that we would like to have over for fellowship and bible study. Also a bigger living room for the same reasons. I want mission teams to get a feel of being in a third world country but don’t want to scare them off ever coming back! With the apartments they will still have some comforts, privacy and inside bathrooms! I get more space and a place with an industrial feel which I’ve always wanted. (Well, that or an old barn!) This is the before pics, I am working on painting it, the solar guys are busy putting in plugs and lighting. When they are finished I will probably have help to finish with all the painting. We are trying to decide what we will do for a ceiling – the tin roof is nice when it rains and you can sleep, but you have to yell to be heard when there is a downpour and I think it might drive us insane! Christian has been digging for a septic tank and I am so excited to get a bathtub. Right outside of our proposed bathroom is the rainwater tanks so I will have some running water to fill the tubs. Yes, excited! And very thankful to the board for allowing us to make this move next door!

(The above picture is the backside of the building)