Part 3-Lets cut to the chase this is what we are are asking you to support! -

Part 3 - Sharing with you the ongoing work and an exciting new program run by Tuweereza Eden Ministries International !

Here is a list of the 17 current projects/focuses- with - the 18th new project and some mention of the overall context that Tuwuzeera Eden Ministries International operates in:

1/18-Networked planted churches connected to an innovative, African based and centred group of 50,000 plus Christians.

(They are scattered across scores of villages and with some outlier groups, congregations and supportive connections into the key urban areas of Jinja and Kampala).

2/18--As part of church planting and congregational support encouraging those groups who just cannot yet afford or have not yet developed to the point where they can have a Pastor.

I attended church recently at the Mt Gambier Church of Christ a great little mainline church with perhaps 25 regular attenders - perhaps less. They dispensed with having a Minister some seven years ago. Yet if this church had say the 200 or 300 or 400 or 500 regular attenders that many non-Pastored congregations have in Africa this policy might change! There is hunger for the preached Word and the leadership that as Richard Baxter once wrote comes forth from the mouth of the Preacher who can say ' I preached as never sure to preach again, and as a dying man to dying men.'

3/18 -Evangelisation and outreach e.g. to temporary fisher folk camps on Lake Victoria to dozens of hamlets, villages, localities markets etc.,

The dynamic is constantly changing but the spectrum of lifestyle, need and any help you care to give towards this work of preaching will increase its capacity.

4/18-Teaching and development of pastors.

This task is not one that the Ministry can undertake at the moment in any systematic way except if you count the Apostolic model of providing plenty of lived work experience for anyone who feels they have a call to this great work and test this calling out!

However scholars from Harding College, graduates of the volunteer education programs and people who have gained some degree of material security and/or spiritual assurance and have been blessed to undergo some form of training then have been formally called to the Ministry grace the ranks of many of those who now decide to put themselves and their ministry under the banner of T. E. Ministries International!

5/18 Harding Christian Academy.

This nationally known – Secondary School- is the first stone in our learning focus foundation for the future!. – The network of volunteer teachers is the second as they make up for the lack of material capacity to run schools, classes and get paid and expert teachers!– The new Naklongo Eden Primary School and once it is fully operating it will be the third foundation stone. A mother and model elementary school for a much greater and wider expansion later!

Under Divine guidance and with your help this fourth corner foundation stone will one day soon be added. - That is the dozens of not only new schools that will one day be added but a central campus facility with a teaching hospital, a University, a Bible College, a trades and crafts training centre, and an agricultural development centre!

Harding College is very tangible example, a tried, true and very successful model (much more than a mere theoretical presentment) of this new hope of much wider work ! A new work designed to bring Christian focused general education to a whole region in Uganda to thousands who do currently just do not access to this privilege at this moment!

6/18 Encouragement of Harding Academy students to proceed forth to University, and other training.

Look back to my earlier two articles where I outline my own hopes to start this off by trying to find a 'critical mass' of students from here who will be sponsored to form the nucleus of a proper teaching hospital. Then on from there on to establish our own University pathways beyond this. Then on from there to a full University within a wider learning and development community campus one day! Africa is one of the new centres of world Christianity and in the West thousands of huge college buildings, seminaries, Bible Schools and other facilities lie half empty, closed or in moth balls. Or already have been sold with the proceeds going to add to already huge long -term trust funds held by decaying and dwindling mainstream denominations.

7/18 Naklongo Eden Primary School -

TE Ministries International is sending a vital message – a clarion call of hope to hundreds of small rural localities out there that this one new Elementary School is the first bird-song in the song that it is hoped will fill the air with bird-song. A joyful song that will one day denote a whole 'school system'! A genuine school system built over a whole region or several administrative districts that might one day be able to offer many of the local children a decent and comprehensive education – and more much more than just that! As of now the school lies half finished and its work is currently undertaken by volunteers scattered out in hamlets and localites nearby but it is hoped the launching of the new ministry umbrella may speed its completion and full opening!

8/18-Volunteer teachers to teach as much as they can to children who would not otherwise have any formal and comprehensive education.

It cannot be underestimated the value that even a drop of learning in a sea of unlearning has. It is the virtuous crown of a righteous struggle of faith wrought against lethargy, unknowingness and all hopelessness. Sir Humphrey Davey the great English inventor was entirely self-educated but knew the value of voluntary community based education efforts. Throughout his life he devoted many of his weeknights to continuing to teach in open, free public demonstration lectures ! In Kyneton where I am now stands the 'Mechanics Institute'- built so it says- (as carved into its roof) in '1854'. At one time the new settlers and the hundreds of thousands of gold diggers who came here from all over the world used this and other buildings built in the then Goldfields to learn to read, write and gain knowledge of all areas of higher learning and technical knowledge. Across the English speaking world the poor were educated mostly by community volunteers and self-effort and by the Sunday School movement.

So it must be with contemporary Uganda! Let us hope the great work that these people do is appreciated! - This especially as most of them have little material capacity to give more than they can already and we appreciate any help anyone can give them in donating funds to get equipment to help them do their work better.

9/18-Other types of female volunteers working in the Muno Mukabi HIV Awareness Family Development Association.

(A vital work that intersects across all areas of personal, family, women’s rights, children’s rights, family life , men's violence issues and etc., It is similar to many similar projects run by many other faith and community groups across Uganda all trying to deal with this ongoing mega-issue of Africa!). Again run almost on the power of the elbow grease of those involved with what very little current external assistance can be gained!

10/18-Cattle husbandry and efficiency project.

(Re-funding is now needed to replicate this successful and previously funded cattle rearing and management efficiency initial/trial project).

11/18-Water supply enhancement awareness project

(Re-funding now needed to replicate this successfully undertaken and therfore trialled well, pipeline and water storage initial/trial project).

12/18-Emergency food store and provision service

(When there is food – the recent rains have eased some of the dire context caused by long rainless period).

13/18-Occasional help with emergency medical procedures

(When the fund re-floats as it regularly depletes ).

14/18-Up to 12 Pastors struggling to support small groups of orphans in rooms and huts built next door to their own small houses and churches or in other ways.

(Not all the other pastors have congregations wealthy or substantial enough in size to even try to support such a work without creating a terrible situation where the support if was started it might have to be withdrawn). That is even if the Pastors are full-time or close to full-time in their work and able to support their own families. Let-alone another 5-10-15-20 young orphans. A few out of the many burden and endanger their own already precarious material situations by providing for such groups of orphans. How many ministers in the West sitting in eight and ten & twelve room Manses, Rectories, Vicarages etc., or in combined parishes with 3-4-5 empty vicarages and or other buildings standing idle can claim to do the same? That is they do this usually out of a very meagre income that they also usually supplement by a part or full-time other job such as teaching or by many hard days a week work fishing or farming or truck driving.

15/18-Linkages to other orphanages and support groups

(Particularly via Muno Mukabi HIV Awareness Family Development Association, the two schools mentioned and the scores of smaller village church groups with their voluntary school classes and support works).

16/18 -Prayerful support of church network members to actively and fruitfully support all positive community developments and activities in their area.

Many key figures among those not called to full-time Ministry, also many of the many volunteers and many of the key leaders- Pastors, preachers, teachers etc., are also contributing to the day to day life of their communities, administrative districts and beyond. There are local government and parliamentary representatives with close ties or who worship with others regularly in Ministry connected services and prayer meetings. There is a general sense of civic and national duty to cooperate with all local and national initiatives for the community development of the nation.

17/18 – Prayerful support for development and nourishing of key leaders and managers to go ahead and materially be able to work full-time as is possible for the work of the Mission

(For without vision the people perisheth).

Yet this work – TE Ministries International - all I have outlined above – and actually much more than this -does not even have the 25,000 USD per annum income that a small decaying suburban mainstream denominational church has! This total income covers all of the works I outlined above not just one of them!

At best TE Ministries International gets as as cash income – one third of want a small mainstream denominational congregation church of 30 regular attenders gives itself by the plate and receives via its drawing rights on the 200 – 500 year old accumulated trust fund income of their particular denomination!

In fact 95% of everything else other than Harding College is maintained by the voluntary activity of people many of whom also have to work 30-70 hours a week in the fields, or in other paid jobs to sustain themselves!

That is if you add up all the small cash that its mostly and usually cashless supporters can give it. And too if you add what the 10% of its supporters can give who do earn wages or salaries for the Western like tasks and roles (roles for which they are paid between 5% and 25 % of the salary paid in the West for similar roles). ...

And now also 18/18 The International Sponsorship Program:

Part A of 18/18 The child sponsorship program very long stay in sponsor's home program which operates alongside it.

Part B of 18/18 The young adult sponsorship much shorter stay -in same home at same time as the child sponsorship program

Whereby childless couples living in well-off material settings (in Western countries on the whole) will agree to sponsor for a very long -term stay in their home of a primary school entrant age child who :

1.-Has no supportive network of family.

2- Would otherwise spend their childhood living in an orphanage and most likely not be able to proceed through to any final stage and maximised educational opportunities beyond being taught by church volunteers in some basic reading and writing if less fortunate. Or maybe attend a full programmed school if particularly talented and fortunate. Unlikely, however to ever have the chance to undertake any further edcuation or sit for any major internationally recognised or nationally mandated Ugandan Secondary School qualifications. In 95% of such situations elementary education is all that could ever be hoped to be provided.

3. Are a likely if female to be reclaimed by relatives unable to materially provide for them up till then . Then possibly (in some cases) sadly put to work as a worker or in some instances perhaps treated (as some- many- might see it) like a servant until their formal betrothal/marriage takes place that is once they reach marriageable or betrothal age ( say anywhere between 9 and 15 years).

4. Then unless finding it to be a very nice family that they are arranged into marriage into they may well be required to work for their intended ones family (at times to pay off for or as a substitute for not bringing with them a bride price or dowry etc.). A Cinderella like life for the rest of their lives! .If the marriage produces a male heir and everyone doesn't die of HIV-AIDS and the husband continues to favour her over his concubines or other wives or does not prove to be less than supportive (even if nominally a solid Christian) then the situation may stabilise. That is of course despite whatever the girls dreams and hopes might have been for her life! And/or if the male child is perhaps softened by a Christian life and also if once this son is married his wife or wives (if he decides to still have multiple wives) do not pick on her or gang -up on her. Then this person (who by then may be aged between 28 and 48) and considered 'very old' in local culture may be allowed 3-4 hours off every Sunday and a few hours off during the week to go to church and/or visit her own relatives (who very likely have died anyway) .

If these relatives are still alive by then they probably don't want to see her as they didn't or couldn’t visit her much or materially support her anyway from early infancy until they reclaimed her from the orphanage.

That is to be either 'sold' as a bride or 'rescued' from being an orphan so as to be 'lucky' enough to become the subservient servant-wife of her new husband's family. Without the formal support of some older people from her own family side she is often then subject to ongoing undue pressures and bullying (as many widows are) (if she becomes one).

Or she is picked on or exploited (in any case) as it is known by whoever might bully her that she has very little chance of anyone else ever backing her up. As had her own parents might have done had they been alive. Then they might have backed her up and seen to her welfare (possibly). But that is only if they stayed alive and/or remained in a situation able to provide material and spiritual governance, oversight and support for her. Many children are given up or abandoned or find themselves in the care of older female relatives who find it very hard to cope and turn to groups like TE Ministries International for some degree of help with bringing their charges up. Others have only very distant relatives and connections and there is even less chance that unless they can be of some productive value to those who have some connection with them - that these people will be able to be fully support them throughout their childhood.

Anybody who returns to Uganda who comes from this sort of background after sponsorship will ,of course, have their Sponsors to act in this role as a mentor and guardian and supporter. If they are a girl and (if they marry) the Sponsors may well be able to help them have a happier and more positive marriage than many orphans otherwise might have. That is due to the asymmetry that occurs when there is no strong, powerful active family of origin or mentor watching their back!

5. If male there is likelihood that the child as he grows up will become attracted to the material promises of gang life or life in contexts where not necessarily entirely legal or stable circumstances will prevail in their lives. It does not have to be a gang as such. – As the young man may seek out or find that less than scrupulous individuals, smugglers, people evading taxes, cutting corners, Ivory hunting gangs, poachers/ bush-meat exploiters will offer security and employment to them.–

The sort of people who suddenly have someone else’s cow on the back of their truck or and inexpertly or otherwise butchered and awaiting a quick sale to a cost cutting meat seller etc. That is people who might lead these boys into trouble if the formal Police or customs control system comes across whatever it is they are doing! In the West a similar context surrounds the kids who get out of institutions of various sorts and the context is no different in Uganda than it is in Queens New York,,, Adelaide South Australia or in Sofia in Bulgaria or indeed anywhere else around the world . Drugs, alcohol, gambling and the rest can also often creep in at this point too!

7. It is also hoped a young man if offered an alternative to a life as outlined in Point 6 above by being able to lead a life abroad in a Sponsor's home that once they leave that home and make their way in life as an adult that they will start tithing for the Ministry. Also too that they will continue to want to give back to the Ministry in a way that equates with the help that they got both prior to and once they gained sponsorship in the first place.Perhaps volunteering or working on projects or at least being very active givers-back in response to what they have been given. In fact if someone gets overseas and receive training they will be expected to sign an undertaking that they will contribute something back in return for receiving this privilege.

This is particularly so because we must always remember that only a small percentage of orphans will ever find Sponsors and go overseas. We seek to lift out of the most likely of these bad scenarios all of those young men and women who cannot be found Sponsors either as children or later on as young men and women seeking further training and experience overseas.

8. So that we call on those people not able to act as full Sponsors to instead contribute smaller sums and energy and prayer to help us prevent what is generally speaking and of necessity - an unprepared and unsupported type of entry into the lower end of the Ugandan economy- that is for all the rest of those orphans who rely on the organisation for their support !

So that in some meaningful way the means can be found to boost their life chances as well! So that they gain a real experience of love, support and of feeling cherished. That is even for those who don't somehow get Sponsored or get a good education (even if thbey don't) via the Mission's limited resources. And/or don’t get the chance to receive the solid technical training of the type that would ensure that can get steady employment- in a cash earning occupation - or other good occupation - once they become adults.

So that a further key priority for the Mission is to find sponsors who while they cannot commit to take the two people back home with them can commit to programs that will allow the Mission to improve the life-chances for all orphans and children that come under its care.

9. As even with the best will in the world the prospects are limited for any male child that cannot somehow secure an education and/or get a cash paying job and has no traditional or extended network of family to provide an economic cushion for him as he grows into maturity. As it is unlikely that whatever quarter acre garden or hut zone or other property was known to be 'his' as his by right from whoever his father was been has long before been acquired by one means or another by another 'relative' .

10. However for all sorts of reasons these members of the male child's traditional village extended family, kinship group, ancient tribal or sub-tribal moiety, even church congregation. It matters little what support -group that their father or mother or some half remembered and now long dead more distant relative once belonged to. Unless someone from this group regularly visited and kept at least the moral hope alive of a continuing and positive and ongoing relationship.

11. Generally the children who become Sponsored will be the children for whom nothing would have changed from the outlook described above in point 1-10 above!

This simple test will be at the time the Sponsorship becomes available: –

'Is anyone else connected to this child able to provide the level of normal support that this child might expect to get from its own parents or a relative who sees them as more than just someone who has to be readied for marriage (if a girl).? Or if a boy put out to do day labour? Now that they are old enough - and the Mission has fed and looked after them till they were old enough - for this to happen to them?

If the answer is no- then the child will be offered the opportunity of this ongoing placement with a Sponsoring couple.

12. Even so it is also true to say that even with the best will in the world from the informal, small church overseen orphan support systems in place provided by TE Ministries International and even in larger more formal programs -one major risk attends any child remaining in any sort of general orphans support program.

That is if the boy or girl happens to catch a tropical disease like malaria or leprosy, meningitis, or the more normal childhood afflictions like measles or has or acquires a disability or similar. If they do then they often just have to learn to live with the debilitating and life-long results that may arise from the lack of ten or twenty dollars worth of drugs and fifteen minutes attention from a qualified medical person would otherwise prevent this.

Again the ideal result will be one day to have funds in reserve to allow for any medical treatment that might be needed for any child in the Ministry's care.

However right now the Mission does not have the material resources to be able to provide this and relies on ad hoc, prayer led situation by prayer led situation to try to meet such needs when they arise.

So a child being in danger of major medical crisis is yet another (a 12th) criterion one can add to the list of the eleven others already outlined above that will make them eligible to receive Sponsorship- if such Sponsorship becomes available.

So if a child fills all the qualifications listed above as Points 1-12 above!

Then after reflection and prayer and if a Sponsoring Couple can be found.

Then they will be enrolled, registered, have passports issued, have inoculations, be tested for HIV-AIDS. – As they will generally need to be tested to be negative to enter most Western nations.

Plus of course also fulfil all the other requirements that need to be met for both Sponsors and sponsored to enter into a situation where they act as legal guardians for the child. So that the child can attend in the Sponsors own country -as an international student - a full-time course of study at registered local elementary school.

The idea will be for the child to continue on for Secondary School – and more will be said about what happens after that in later Parts. – However in essential terms all legal, and moral requirements as these are put (in both their spirit and black letter- law- ) as required by all governments will also be followed.

So that the arrangement is temporary, specific and focuses on the provision to a child under the legal duty of care of the Mission back home an extended period of formal education -overseas- in a safe, secure home context- in that country.

Of course one cannot have a child living with oneself for ten-fifteen years without a deep and affective and ongoing bond developing!

But we are not out to out to get around the international system of oversight of adoptions or in other ways get around rules or laws.

We seek to merely use what exists and what is allowed to exist in some countries right now. That is to give better life chances to some children when and where Sponsors can be found! Part of the program also requires each Sponsor of child to enter into the following additional arrangement:

Part B. of 18/18

In addition each Sponsoring couple will host for a much shorter time – an older child or younger adult who will come to the Sponsors country to undertake a short course in post school program of one sort or another.

Unless the Sponsors have considerable means we cannot and do not expect them to fund the private fees for any major or mainline University course. Though we do see a day coming soon where a small congregation or group of Co-Sponsors might decide to back a Sponsoring couple in working together with them (so that twenty to forty or fifty couples might decide to jointly sponsor such an outcome).

In general we envisage for the majority of the initial group of Sponsored young adults that they will undertake a non-University para-professional, craft , trade or skill training program. A short form of post school training in gaining a key skill or aptitude that they then take home and translate into great benefit for their faith and general community at home and for themselves personally.

One young person who has already been marked out for this experience herself right now only wants a fairly sturdy sewing machine and some cloth and components to manufacture a particular female sanitary product .

Her modest but interesting and effective idea is to produce this product then sell it and in so doing this allow her to make a good living by local village standards.

She is also a very keen church goer and she wants to be able to donate a portion of her finished work to the wider work of the Mission! She also wants to get to the point where she can join the group of fervent and very active women volunteers who form the key backbone of the work of most of the existing seventeen different works of Tuweerzera Ministries International!

This fine young person has relatively limited material and worldly ambitions but as the first person marked out for this young adult Sponsorship it is hoped she will gain some more specialised training in the use of industrial sewing machines and over-lockers. Also it is hoped that she will get to work with a wide range of clothes, materials and processes in a context where she receives good solid technical training and training within a real-life sewing/fabric making training context.

This is to allow her to widen her technical repertoire beyond just becoming very skilled and very technically capable of undertaking the relatively technically limited but very original idea she already has. So that she might be able to add on other garment fabrication into her repertoire while retaining the essence of her very simple, very elegant, very simple but also very effective original idea!

This second older person in the house will (as I will explain more fully in later Parts) will also act as a psychological anchor- and also as a personal and living bridge between home and the new home for the younger child living with the Sponsor couple. Insofar as the young adult will help the child maintain a sense of really and truly feeling linked back to the sense and the reality of their other original and originating home with the Mission and their situations of origin beyond that.

In Part 4 I will outline what for me is a key issue in the absolute commitment we will have in this new endeavour to maintain the highest standards of Duty of Care, Risk management and Quality Control. - So as to ensure the moral, personal and psychic safety, happiness and comfort of our sponsored children and young people!

Unlike so many other programs of this type -even if they emphasise the foster-care or temporary side of things more than formalised adoption as we do ! - we will be emphasising right-through that it is a holistic meta-community that the Sponsors will be joining. That is when they take on the responsibility for caring for a child and hosting a sucession of young adult trainees!

The Biblical model we use is far away from the mawkish and self-eating- and blame the victim fantasies so often these days projected onto childless couples who are counselled (even by active Christians for Gods sake!) to 'accept Gods verdict' and 'get kittens' . No! The Biblical model is clear and is laid out for us in 2 Samuel 9:7

Do not be afraid, for I will certainly show you kindess on account of Jonathan, your father. I will return to you every field of Saul, your father, and you will eat at my table perpetually'

This modern obsession and fanstasy about 'genes' and 'naturalness' seems to forget what John Calvin called the fact that all of religion is 'bound up in' and 'is' covenant!

Also that coventant is higher, more superior, over-rides, all and everything else!

As if it did not we would not have any standing, any right, any capacity to stand before the Father Almighty and claim any relationship or anything with Him!

Other than that we are the children of those whose genes we inherited! If this was the case then Christ would not have claimed for himself - as his inheritance by adoption alone- that part of His human genealogy that He claimed was His- by descent (through adoption alone)- from Joseph!

We are all born again into the covenant that Our Lord entered into with us and on our behalf! It is this inheritance alone that is our eternal inheritance - and no other!

So to say that we cannot enter into meaningful, Spirit led , non-toxic, positive and meaningful and fulfilling relationships with people other than those we are genetically connected to is a blasphemy and a self-limiting of our anthroplogy of faith - and it is mind numbing in its stupidity!

Put away the kittens- for now!- They are cute and I personally have three cats but there is more!

Also put away your copy of Abbe's Mendel's treatise on the genetics of plants and Darwins' Origin of the Species. Both gentlemen actually would have agreed with me that a Covenant relationship entered into with the power and unto the majesty of the Lord far outshines and will far outlast the most plant like inter-connection we might have with someone related to us by blood.

Or will be of far greater significance that the most decisive and strategic genetic mutuation/development /and associative trait that links us by affinity to any of our various forbears by blood.

So jettison all the nonsense that says you cant be a Covenant Sponsor of a child who will otherwise live in relative deprivation for the rest of their lives ! -

And join us as a Sponsor today!

Get the house ready! -

Map out the route to the Airport!

Forget about fridge magnets with kids saying 'Thanks for your donation!' There will be time and opportunity to still give to those kids who will remain over there and who will stay over there in the care of Tuweereza Ministries International!

More particularly forget about the condescending - 'all knowing' 'mother of two' at church who will tell you- (and I can picture and hear it now)- 'You won't last - not even up till the first full session of crying- or -tantrum or whatever !

You will !

In the next Article I will talk about....cost.