Every year, before The Uganda National Examinations take place a dedication service is held to pray for the P7 students of God Cares. All parents, God Cares staff, and students are in attendance and they take time to recognize, their help comes from God. Florence Dongo speaks as well as Teacher Francis, the spiritual director at God Cares Primary School.

The week following the dedication service, our Primary 7 class spends two days taking their Primary Leaving Exams.We thank God for this large class of 88 students!

When a student successfully passes their primary leaving exam, he or she graduates to high school. Each year, God Cares School rises in the rankings of top schools in Uganda, and we believe this year we will once again receive high scores.

Plenty!

In 2015, Brent Flynn, a Taco Bell franchisee that operates restaurants throughout California, decided to sponsor 26 children for each of his 26 Taco Bell stores. He did this in honor of his good friend Mike Benson who passed away. Buyamba sent each of the restaurants a picture and short bio of a God Cares School student, and each store manager put it up on their employee wall so the staff would have the chance to be involved in helping orphaned and needy children in the Buyamba program.

Each store also receives the monthly newsletter, student letters, and annual photo that is shared by all. Brent reported, "Some of the store managers get really into it, and the staff reads the letters and have actually written back to their child."

This giving model has been so successful that Brent and his team have continued to sponsor all the kids every year since then! Not only that, they have increased their sponsorship numbers as they have acquired new restaurants. Today, they sponsor 33 children in the Buyamba program, and two of their sponsored children have graduated high school and gone into universities. Tracy has now entered Makere University Business School, and Enoch has almost completed a three-year program at Kabale School of Nursing and Midwifery. Brent and his team continue to support part of their tuition through the Buyamba program. They have decided to keep sponsoring these past few years together for they believe they are called to children in desperate situations wherever they are and as Brent said, "To be a father to the fatherless."

Susan was raised by a single mother who could hardly afford a daily meal at home, Buyamba started helping her since Primary three (Grade 3) class. She comes from one of our bush communities called Buwama (in southwestern Uganda). Susan has experienced a lot of hardships in her education journey to the point of giving up, given the fact they couldn’t afford a casual meal and the basics at home. But while at school, she was encouraged by the teachers and the environment at school, which gave her hope to keep pushing on. After her S6 class graduated in 2017, she had passed her national examinations well, but she thought that was the end of her education journey since there was no hope at home... But now, she is the family’s pride, for she is the first child (and a “girl” at that) in the entire family to go University. She is giving hope to the girls in her community that it is possible to make it as a girl! She is a living hope.

Stepping cautiously across a footbridge, I am careful not to slip into a small stream choked with discarded rags, empty water bottles, scraps of shredded plastic too small to be of use to anyone. Pungent, acrid smells seeping from black charcoal contrasting the fresh, bright sun-soaked weeds clinging to the river’s edge. Plump brown chickens scratching through the filth as fluffy chicks follow closely behind. Small shards of beige straw protruding from handmade bricks, fingerprints still evident, with bamboo lashed to the exterior of the hut for strength. These are some of the images seared into my mind as I returned to the slums of Busaka.

So much contrast. My eyes are drawn to the cramped shacks constructed out of scraps of corrugated steel scraps and discarded wood as I duck underneath turquoise and magenta shirts draped unceremoniously over a clothesline. I marvel at how clean the laundry appears after peering into the small blue tub used for washing.

So much poverty, yet beautiful, bright smiles welcome us joyfully with squeals of delight as news travels of our arrival. I’m braver this year. Gone are the tennis shoes I wore last summer as protection against disease. I consciously chose to wear open sandals beneath my long skirt, symbolic of my desire to break down barriers with the people I have grown to love. Also gone was my hesitation to engage strangers we met along the path. Although a curiosity, we are greeted with love and acceptance as children show off their ability to roll a bike tire over the rough terrain.

In the summer of 2017, I was given the opportunity to travel to God Gares School and Orphanage with the mission team at the Met Church and was equally blessed to be doing it with my mom by my side. Preparing for this trip was a tedious process that required lots of time, commitment, and money, but I knew, in the end, it would all be worth it because I was going to do the Lord’s work and change some lives…but little did I know that it would be me whose life would be changed instead. When we arrived at the orphanage on the first day, the squeals of the kids accurately reflected my feelings of excitement, as the trip of my dreams was finally beginning! During my time in Uganda, I met a handful of children and lifelong friends (no matter how far apart we may be) who left a lasting impact on my heart and my life. I prepared to show each of these people the unconditional love of

Jesus and teach them His righteous ways, but miraculously they managed to show me a side of Him I never knew. As the days evolved, I quickly realized that all some of these children had was Jesus and each other. That’s it. Some of them had deceased or terminally ill parents, nowhere to call home outside of the orphanage, or were abandoned because their parents couldn’t handle the burden of caring for a child. This broke my heart when I heard some of their stories and personal experiences, but in a strangely beautiful way, none of that seemed to matter to them because they had Jesus in their hearts and therefore they had everything they could ever need and from THAT is where their joy stemmed. The moment I realized that is when I knew that nothing would be the same when I returned home, where I had everything and more that I simply take for granted. My lifestyle would be shifted in such a way that I stopped putting my happiness in the hands of material objects or people and started putting it in the hands of my Creator, Jesus Christ, where I would find an everlasting joy I’ve never known before. Furthermore, God was calling us to sponsor a young lady, and He placed Waldah in our path.  This was our opportunity to continue His work and give back each month as a constant reminder of where our joy comes and to keep shining our light wherever we go.