What a privilege it was to be the hands and
feet of God and so many amazing people as we blessed the Salvation Army
children’s home in Kampala with some Christmas gifts.
The home of Joy is a home for disabled
children.
Their disabilities range from severe mental
disabilities to severe physical disabilities.
Many of the children are missing feet, arms
or legs due to either birth complications or sometimes bad malaria shots as
babies!
Every one of the children are unique in
character and so very special. Many are funny and cheeky and love to laugh!
They love card games and soccer and
dancing.
I am constantly amazed at what they can do
with their limited physical abilities. And there’s never any complaining.
They work very hard at their school work
every day and dream big for their future.
Some are orphans, or have been abandoned.
Many have families who cannot financially afford to care for them or who live
in remote location so they would have no hope of any schooling due to their
families location and their physical disabilities.
What an awesome thing it was to be able to
surprise the kids and tell them we had a BIG surprise for them in a few days!
You could feel the anticipation in the air.
Rob and I spent days shopping for unique
individual outfits for the close to 40 children. Many of them would have never
had a brand new outfit or received a Christmas gift so we wanted to make it as
special as we could.
We also bought gifts for all the workers –
many who also have disabilities of some sort who grew up there and now work in
the place. They all work so hard and love the children. Some of the workers
even have families of their own who they have to leave in the village while
they work to provide money for their families.
The children were EXTREMELY excited on the
night of their surprise.
Robert explained to the children that they
were so special and unique and so very loved by God that people from the other
side of the world wanted to let them know how LOVED and SPECIAL they were, that
they wanted to give them a gift each for Christmas.
This was met with much cheering J
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| ALL THE CLOTHES LINED UP READY |
I then delivered a Christmas message and
talked about the true meaning of Christmas – which to these kids is not hard to
grasp because for them – Christmas is simply about God loving us enough to send
Jesus and loving family and friends.
It was great to show them that love in a
practical way.
We called out each child’s name
individually and you could see the joy on their faces as they received their
gift..... They then waited until everyone had their gifts before they could unite
the bow and see what they had received.
There was a lot of tears of joy and lots of
laughter – especially from the workers – some who had never received a
Christmas gift in the 40 or more years of their life!
What a gift it was to see the joy on all
their faces.
We told the kids that not only had we had
enough money to buy them all new outfits but we also had had enough money to
fix the water piping (the water system had broken down – and the children had
to fetch water from down at water pump – very difficult with their various
disabilities – was special seeing the way they helped each other and those who
couldn’t do it).
This news was met with MUCH cheering!! J
But the biggest cheer came when they would
no longer have smelly LEAKING toilets! That we had paid a plumber and been in
contact with sewage department to have it all fixed – YOU would have thought we
had given them all a trip to Disney land they were so happy and cheering so
much!
More joy was expressed when we told them we
were going to have a movie night with ice cream included! And that they had to
all get dressed up in their new clothes.
A few days later we were blessed to see all
the children in their new clothes. All scrubbed up ready for a fun night.
All the workers came and we started of the
night with the kids leading us in singing and praise to God! What an amazing
experience this is to watch as these precious children with such limited
physical bodies, allow their minds and hearts and souls to completely connect
with God, someone they know and love deeply.
