Boats and Baking, Painting and Pumpkin Pie

Out on the Lake

Last Sunday some of our team went together to BMCC Church. It was great to be back with Pastor Mbuke and this wonderful church and also good to introduce the new members of the team to them! After the service, we went on to have lunch together at a nearby restaurant on the lake. Often here, you can wait for rather a long time after ordering before your food arrives. The great thing at this restaurant, is that while you wait, you can go for a boat ride on the lake! It's a hard life!

Ukerewe Island

Tim was back on the lake on Thursday and Friday; this time for the four hour journey to Ukerewe Island with Joel. They were pretty chuffed to discover that a new boat had been launched which had a VIP lounge! Complimentary drinks included! Again... it's a hard life! On the island, they were meeting with local churches to discuss how the entrepreneurship project would run and could be shaped - particularly the upcoming training. It is not without its challenges, but exciting to be seeing this project move forward!

 Joel travelling VIP

At their hotel with Palapala (Director of Development) and various pastors

Baking Classes for Girls

While Tim was away, I had the privilege of going with Carol Nzogere to the home she has set up with others from MICC to help girls off the street. About 20 girls are staying there, from as young as twelve years old. These girls have been abandoned, rejected, orphaned and the life they have lived on the streets is horrendous. Three girls have their young babies with them. This home is offered to them for a set period of time in which they have a safe place to live, the opportunity to learn new skills, continue with some education and most importantly, be loved. Here they are shown the true love of Jesus. I went to start teaching a series of baking classes. We started with bread rolls and banana cakes. While I loved being with them all, the actual lesson was rather a disaster! The rains have started (which is a very good thing!) but with that comes an unreliable power supply. As the oven in the house was electric, it was on and off, then on and off again so baking proved disastrous! But it meant we had plenty of time to chat, while cooking (on the open fire outside) and eating lunch together. We also read the Bible together reflecting on verses in Deuteronomy 8 about a land in which bread is not scarce, about a life which is given by our Creator who can take us out of whatever wilderness we are in.

Upendo wa Mama Workshop

The painting and cleaning up of our workshop is now finished! Standing Voice have given us sole use of the garage, which with a bit of fixing up, is going to be good! On Wednesday, we moved all our materials and supplies in and can now focus on getting tables and chairs and also an oven and kitchen cupboard. Our only set-back was arriving to find the floor under water ... the rains come in (yes, a familiar problem!). But we have every hope this can be fixed! We set up the sewing machine and soon hope to start some sewing projects. Yesterday we got back to work, making African tie-dye again. Again the rains (which we want so much!) created havoc as we had the fire boiling a huge pot of water outside ... and the line outside ready to dry the fabric, when the heavens opened! We hung the twelve wet pieces of fabric up on criss-crossing strings in the garage and then sat in and under them to keep out of the rain! But there, all crouched on the floor in between diagonal walls of dripping fabric, we had a long and good discussion of hopes and plans for where to go from here and how the group can be a blessing in our wider community. It's great how God works things out when things don't seem to be working out!

The painting begins

Clean-up after the painters!

Back to work! Making African tie-dye!

A new skirt made from the last batch of fabric! 

Canadian Thanksgiving

Today, we had the joy of celebrating Canadian Thanksgiving with friends - old and new! We truly have so much to be thankful for and there is nothing like a delicious feast of turkey and trimmings and pumpkin pie to remind us to reflect on this!

Carving the turkey with Jannetta and Jade

The Canadians (plus a few others!)

The girls are particularly thankful for half term now! I hope they will have a bit of time this week to start up their blog again ... they have their own news of new bunnies and our first efforts at milking our goat! We head off later this week to Dar es Salaam for time with our good friends at Victory Christian Centre I will then stay on to work with a group of Albinism Mamas there which is new and exciting!