FHLM Jan 2018 Newsletter—Happy New Year, Director’s Update, SOAR Youth Update

Director’s Update:

Happy New Year from Masaka!! Since November I have been in prayer, asking God for a verse for the New Year and He gave me Psalm 121:1-2 I will lift my eyes to the hills–from whence comes my help? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. Amen!

Foot Update: And sure enough God helped, because on 04 Jan I got the cast off of my foot—praise God! It was so nice to have it gone and for my foot to breathe! The whole month I have been rehabbing it and though swollen at times, it has slowly come back to looking like a foot again—Praise God!

Building Update: We are in the process of looking for a new location for the office/center. With all the instability of our current location; security issues, the market moving across the street, the District increasing rent and also threatening to sell the building at any time, our Board of Directors has voted to move. I thank everyone that has been lifting this matter up in prayer over the last 2 months. Please continue to keep us in prayer for wisdom and guidance for the right location and building, so we can continue to serve the youth and community of Masaka the way the Lord sees best, and to keep being used to build His Kingdom.  If the Lord puts on your heart to help the Youth Center with continued projects or help with the rent then please contact me at reetsindiego@yahoo.com  Bless you!

Youth Update:

New Year:  Many of our youth rang in the New Year at church overnights or all day prayer meetings. William chose to stick close to home and read the New Year in with his Bible. It blesses me to know that our youth desire to be close to the Lord and to seek His guidance for the upcoming year.

Back to Business: The office opened for 2018 on 02 Jan and Jane hit the New Year running leading a new Bible Study that very day. This January Holiday we continued with our study on the “Linage of the King”.  This time we did a deep study into David’s life.

Busy School Holiday: The week of the 8^th found some of our youth gone from Masaka. Joshua was at a Full Gospel Church Camp-out at Lake Nabugabu, and Alpha was at the Scripture Union Campsite for a national training called V.O.I.C.E., Values Orientation in Classroom Education. This program addresses the moral decline of young people. The training taught the attendees how to teach God’s standards of righteousness in classrooms of both Primary and Secondary schools and equipped them with the tools to train young people over a 6 week course that would be held in each of the three school terms. Alpha said he was blessed by the experience and now feels better equipped to help young people with their morals and teach God’s principles of living.

Babirye was gone from 26 Dec until 25 Jan visiting her Mom in Kampala. Two years ago we helped to reconnect them and I’m so happy that they are now spending time together and have renewed their mother daughter bond. Glory be to God for He is good!

Joseph spent most of January performing at youth conferences and Gospel music festivals! He even got the opportunity to travel to Bukoba, Tanzania to perform with a very well known Gospel artist from Kampala,  J.K. Shine.

The remaining SOAR Youth kept to our Holiday Schedule and they enjoyed weekly prayers for our camp-out, Bible studies, life skill talks and writing their pen-pals at Harlan Christian Youth Center.

On 20 Jan we had Movie with a Message. This month we watched the movie Chasing Grace. Here is Alpha’s take on the movie and what he learned:

• According to the movie, Carter didn’t have any problem, having a gun in his room wasn’t bad but, the mistake was he failed to hide this gun away from the place where it could easily be seen by the young girl, Grace.
• Grace was the center of happiness in this family that’s why when she died, everything went out of control. And that’s why we ended up seeing everyone doing his own thing which was not good.
• Today people drink alcohol not because they want to pass time as some know , but people drink while thinking that they are chasing away the problems and they forget that the more they do it, the more they get obsessed with it and adding on other problems which is not true at all.
• Carter’s brother, Jonathan, started hating him and blaming him for Grace’s death. Hating the one you love is not the antidote but loving them is the best thing you can do because our Lord Jesus Christ told us that, “Forgive those who wrong us and Love those who love us.”
• Forgiveness is a free gift that you give yourself. In this I mean you can’t forgive someone unless you forgive yourself fast and then forgive other people especially those who wronged you. That is the lesson Jonathan had to learn. My scripture for you is Colossian 3:13 and learn how to forgive.

Our 5^th Annual Youth Prayer, Praise and Fasting Camp-out was held 26^th-28^th January at Camp Ndegeya. This year I’d say we had our best camp ever! Though the number of youth in attendance was 6 short of last year, God answered my prayers and the quality of the youth that came was exceptional! Also none of the youth complained this time about fasting breakfast and lunch.

This year’s Theme was “Developing Biblical Character”; Proverbs 27:17 As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend. Both David and Oliver stated that they were so happy to see us learning about Character because it is not taught in the churches here. Oliver said, “I really hadn’t had people talk about these principles until we shared them in camp”. Prossie said, “Thanks a lot for our camp! We youth were really blessed and enjoyed. We are goanna keep lifting up our topic as youth–biblical character and responsibilities as a Christian. God bless you much for the encouragement.”

This year, as in past years, we had Morning Glories, Quiet Times and Bible Studies, but this year we also had two afternoons of Evangelism and Outreach in the village areas around Ndegeya. The 1^st afternoon of evangelism the youth encountered several people that were very resistant to hearing the Gospel, including some of their age mates. Despite the persecution they were able to share with many and several people accepted to be prayed for and one boy came to the Lord. They stood on this verse; Philippians 1:29 says For to you it has been granted on behalf of Christ, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake,

The 2^nd afternoon was their “Walk to Remember”! We called it that because they walked in circles two times in order to find the elderly man that was the contact for the day. When they found him, low and behold, he walked the group right back where they had just come from! But all in all the afternoon was said to be very wonderful, because the 5 elderly women whom they visited for outreach were incredibly grateful and happy for the rice, sugar, soap, tp, help, and love they received from the youth. This was Christ’s love in action!! What a wonderful campout!!

Back to School: The last week of Jan. found us preparing for school, as Eddy, Justine, Oliver, and Joshua were all heading back to Masaka Secondary School for the start of a new school year which starts on 05^th Feb. Wow time flies!

As the Lord leads us all into a New Year and another month, I thank you all for your support, love and prayers that you have so generously blessed the ministry and me with. I am very excited to see ALL the Lord has in store for the ministry in 2018—I feel this is going to be a year of BIG things from our Lord!

Have a blessed day and month and may God’s love abound in your lives!

Rita

Director-Faith Hope Love Missions