Dan and Rosie Button - Uganda |
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Prayer Update October 2008
Dear Everyone,
Since we last wrote we have had our visit to England and have now been back in Uganda for a month. Our trip was wonderful – it was great to spend time with all of my family and we had a great fun celebration of various important birthdays and wedding anniversaries (including Dan and my tenth!!!). Thank you to my parents and others who had us to stay.
We have settled back in and life quickly reverted to Uganda normal. Dan found the Foundation Studies department in pretty good shape but he had a lot to do to get the new term started. Amos had done very well but was still pleased to welcome Dan back, with a list of urgent issues! As our numbers have grown even bigger (up to 7000 students in all), Dan now has over eighty tutors and lecturers in the department. This brings quite a change as previously he knew all the tutors well and would have been quite involved in many of their lives. Now of course that is less possible, but he is keen to retain the personal feel of the department. They still have the regular Monday morning meeting where they have Bible Study and some teacher development sessions as well as communications etc. Please pray for wisdom for Dan and Amos, to deal with the much larger numbers. We had our first Theology Dept meeting with Olivia as Dean and we were impressed how she ran everything to schedule, and kept on top of the lively discussions. Please do pray for her as she has this big role as well as being mother of two young children, Joshua who is a mischievous five and Faith who is a really beautiful toddler. Also pray for the students doing placements and the lecturers as they travel all over Uganda supervising them in the next two months.
Abigail and Alex are in years 4 and 2 at school, both with teachers called Fiona. So far the year is going well for them and they are so enjoying their friendships, clubs, reading books, and most things about school – with the exception of maths for Abigail… Alex is about to play in his first real football match against another school – for the under 7s – I am as excited as he is!
On a different note, whilst the western world struggles with the idea of financial crisis, Uganda remains fairly confident that it will not be too badly affected. However the fact of the matter is that the vast majority of our friends, students and colleagues here live in a constant state of financial stress and other kinds of hardship. Life is so full of uncertainty, unforeseen hazards, and loss. For example our lovely friend and worker, Florence, is in a terrible situation because her husband some years back allowed a friend to use their land title to guarantee a loan – the friend defaulted on the loan and the lender is now demanding their home as his due. Florence has to go to court in a few days time to fight for her home and property. We would appreciate it if you could pray for her in this.
Meanwhile her oldest son Charles managed to get a government scholarship, which is fantastic, to train as a clinical officer in Mbale, three hours to the east from Kampala. But there was a large chunk of money that had to be paid for equipment up-front. He went with half of the money required which was all the family could scrape together, but he phoned from Mbale to say they would only allow him to register and get into the accommodation if he paid the whole amount. So Florence had to borrow next month’s salary, and go off on the bus to get her son into college. But what about all her other children’s school fees?
A young girl who comes to our house to sell eggs, avocadoes and home-made hats and so on, recently came to us saying her uncle had refused to pay her school fees, but offering that if she would marry his friend’s son, that man would pay the fees. This kind of story is all too common for secondary school children here.
I have mentioned before the poor state of the medical centre here in Mukono. While we were away, a university staff member (not someone we knew) was taken there with an ongoing stomach problem, and they decided to operate on him there, even though they are not equipped to do so, and he died soon after from complications. Also, very sadly, the secretary of Foundation Studies, called Prossy, known very well to Dan, lost her three year old daughter recently. She was cooking red beans in a pot on a charcoal burner, which sits low to the ground – most people use those here – and the little girl pulled the whole pot over onto herself. Since the beans were in a boiling sauce which stuck to her skin, Prossy was unable to get them off quickly enough, and she died later from the burns. Please pray for Prossy and her family.
Actually the stories could go on and on. Our life in Uganda is full of the usual joys and excitements, but also with many frustrations and sadnesses on behalf of our friends here who face such things all too often. Although Uganda is developing fast, still, over and over the lack of resources and infrastructure, coupled with the oft-heard phrase (from Ugandans) “well, this is Africa” which means that people accept the way things are, results in people losing what they have, and even their lives, far more than would be imagined in the first world. I don’t believe there are any obvious solutions needless to say, but we do believe that by training professionals here at UCU, hopefully to be godly as well as competent, we are contributing to the betterment of life here. So do continue to pray for the work of the university in general and in particular that students would be instilled with godly values and vision while they are here.
Thank you as always for all your prayers, and financial support which we appreciate so much.
With our love and prayers,
Rosie Dan Abigail and Alex.