Greetings………

On the 30 th of October, after nearly 3 weeks travel time into Uganda and Ethiopia I returned with my son Tom, and the team we worked with in Ethiopia; Global Missions Fellowship. It was a trip long on experiences unexpected, fraught with emotion, and too many hopes and dreams for the future. Let me try to explain…………..

After arriving in Kampala, I traveled to the first of many Children’s Centers, African Renewal Ministries. There, I was able to get some personal photos of 2 of the 5 kids we are currently sponsoring thru Kids-Stuff. They will go to the individuals who are communicating with them. From there on to Lira, a northern district where the Indigenous Displaced Persons camps (IDP) begin. Currently, there are some 1.5 million people in camps as a result of the civil war still being waged by Gen. Joseph Kony (self appointed leader of the Lords Resistance Army……..LRA). In Lira, I was fortunate to meet with the founder of the Rachelle Children’s Center. They run a facility designed to rehabilitate kids that had been abducted by the LRA. Then on to PATH Ministries…….an orphanage started a few years back by friends from Bend, Oregon.

Gulu. A district above Lira about 100 miles was where I was able to spend a day with Jolly Okot (founder of The Invisible Children Org. and one of this years nominees of the Nobel Peace Prize). She took us to several centers (SOS, World Vision and one of the medium-sized IDP camps of some 28,000 IDP’s).

The sights, sounds, (and sadly the smells) of these camps is indescribable. Mind you, Gulu is still very much in the area of Rebel influence, if not control. And the fear that people in these camps experience is paralyzing. The U.N. is trying to feed the people, but with most of the men dead, and 40% of the camps HIV positive, hope is not evident on the faces of these people. Later that evening, Tom Jr. and I along with Jolly did the “night walker trek” so familiar to so many thousands of kids not wanting to be abducted from their homes by the rebels. We walked in darkness to the safe-places where the U.N. has (finally) put up tents for an evening of relative safety for thousands of kids. Although this is a sad way of life for so many, let me say the real story is now with the people trying to put the lives of kids that have been freed (or wounded by Ugandan forces) and left to die on the trails of Uganda back together. Rehabilitating kids forced to fight as soldiers and kill and mutilate will take a lifetime of effort for many.

Following a week in Uganda (sorry, I can’t possibly do anything right now but touch on the trip………..too, too much to tell). I left for Ethiopia to do a week of what I call “front-line evangelism” with Orthodox and Muslim sects in Wykite, Ethiopia. This consisted of working with 13 teams of 3; an American, an interpreter and a disciple maker. For 4 days, we walked the mountainside(s) of this area sharing the Gospel of Christ to nearly 1,200 people. At the end of our time there, we had taken nearly 200 confessions of faith in Christ, planted 13 churches, and left training materials and funding to support these new churches and new pastors for a year. This area is severely impacted with both HIV and Malaria. I can’t tell you how many kids and adults I observed suffering with these diseases. Virtually every hut had either one or both conditions……..not to mention TB, intestinal worm infection and all manner of other health issues. One reason: all livestock lives INSIDE these huts………..animals are attacked at night by packs of hyena’s and occasionally lions. All they own of value is kept close. Perhaps you can imagine the condition of the inside of these huts shared with cows, pigs, goats and chickens.

We left for Adis Ababa after the time of evangelism and I thought I was done ( honestly, I was on “over-load”…….) working with distressed kid situations. I was wrong. The last day in Ethiopia was spent with the Director of African Rainbow Humanitarian Foundation, started by an Ethiopian woman name “Winnie” nearly 4 years earlier. Her work can only be best described as “The Mother Teresa of Adis”. Her work consists of feeding and clothing some 52 kids (and their families) on a daily basis. She operates on a shoestring budget…….because “God gave her a vision and told her to go and take care of the kids in Ethiopia”. These are her words. In all my years of travel and working to try to share the condition of kids in a broken world, and trying to do a little to help, I have never seen anything to compare to the hopelessness of her place of work. Imagine 80% HIV in this place where she works. She has seen the worst and still chooses to stay and attempt to alleviate some of the suffering. I told her that I would try to help her raise funds for the work. Honestly, it will be my honor to do so.

I don’t know how to end this letter I promised to send you as a follow up. Saying thank you for helping send me into this environment seems not quite right. It was terribly distressful, and at the same time, richly rewarding. Yet how can seeing the unimaginable suffering of so many children; (I met and have pictures of girls 14 years old with their own children…..providing food for them by prostituting themselves) be richly rewarding? I guess I will just say that this trip only serves to solidify my passion to do what I can, to let people know about a world many can only imagine. But the horror is real……..unbelievably real. If you are interested in a Video of my time there, let me know. When I have it done, I’ll send one along. Caution: watch at your own risk to having your heart broken.

Thank you for your friendship……….thank you for caring about the victims of this world: the children.

Tom for Kids-Stuff

“In the end, it’s a short day and a big world………….all of us need to move quickly