Looking to 2021- The Future of GM Childrens Ministry

Hello friends 🙂

I pray this message finds each of you well, and if not, I ask God to strengthen you and bless you in the difficult times.

It has not been an easy year for our ministry, as we mentioned in our last blog post, ( https://bit.ly/3ljfSMG ) a lot of our ministry was challenging, and the pandemic escalated those hardships. We have tried our best, repeatedly, to provide for these children and meet all of their needs, and consistently found ourselves just fighting for their survival. I will admit that at first realizing we could no longer continue with the way we were doing things, felt like defeat to me. But the more I reflected on this ministry, seeing the whole journey, from the seeds God planted in my heart before I had ever been to Uganda, to the precious children I love so dearly today- I am now seeing that our ministry is in a transition. We could not afford to continue to care for the children in our home and school, (and the government was also not happy with schools and childrens homes having large amounts of children living together anyway) so we were forced to take the children back to whatever relatives they have, and for the children who have noone, we have a few staff, or friends caring for them.

At first we felt sad to remove the children because GM Childrens Home is what they consider to be home. But we have all adapted and are doing our best, life keeps moving and God is with us. I see this as a rebirth of our ministry for many reasons, and after much prayer, I see a lot of benefits to this. One benefit that cannot be overlooked is that George and Margret who have been caring for large amounts of vulnerable children in their homes for as long as I have known them and before, are getting a rest from the constant caregiving and commotion that comes from raising a massive family with very little resources and staff. I know they are missing the children each day, but we all need rest and periods of silence and peace in life. Most of us, could not truly imagine what it is like to raise a household of 30+ children, every single day, in rural third world impoverished conditions, with minimal resources to care for their basic needs. Feeling concerned for their healthcare, education, spiritual growth, nutrition, trying to work and find money, manage a church, and to take it one day at a time- is no easy way to live. Always considering, how will we go on? how will we all survive? They have sacrificed so much, living this way for so long, before the pandemic magnified everything.

Every child has a different story of how they ended up in the care of GM Childrens Ministry. The summary is, that for whatever reason all of our kids are either orphaned or vulnerable. God has placed them in our lives and we have committed to enhance their lives and well being in whatever ways we can. We are extremely grateful to all of our supporters who have helped us to do this!!! Reflecting on 2020 and on how our ministry has developed and evolved for SIX YEARS now, just amazes me. God is good. Im grateful for the connections he has made between all of us. Now let me tell you our plan for the future of this ministry.

Our plan is to continue caring for these children, of course, but to send supplies to each family one at a time to help them support the child, or children(some of our kids are siblings). Below I am going to share some photos of a few of our children who have moved to their homes either with their mother, or a mother figure and you will see in some of the photos we have visited and brought food, bedsheets, mattresses, or other supplies. When a child has a medical need we figure out how to come up with whatever is needed to get them the care they need. (One of our boys recently broke his hand so we took him to a clinic to get the plaster he needed)

The next part of our plan is to help these families become more sustainable. We want to invest in each mother or relative one at a time to start small businesses to help them to be able to support these kids in a better capacity and to move from facing survival, to thriving. Some of these women are orphans themselves, or have had the father of their children pass away, some of the childrens mothers are deceased and there are other relatives who have agreed to care for them. We plan to take small amounts of money as we get donations, and invest in small businesses where the women could sell charcoal, or sell bananas and food in the market to help with their income situation.

Im blown away just looking at the kids how much they have grown. Life goes by very fast and I think it is a huge blessing to be flexible in the plans God has for us and to relinquish control to Him, knowing we can only do our part that he has called us to do and continue to adapt to the circumstances of life. I love these kids more than ever and I dream (often literally) of the day I will get to see them again in person. 🙂😃😍

We dont know how the future will look for the world or Uganda or when the pandemic ends, we can only plan for the way things are right now. We are so grateful for the relatives who have agreed to care for these kids, despite the circumstances that led them to us in the first place, that only increased in difficulty with the current global virus.

Thank you for reading our update! As always please pray for our ministry and our children and for our financial ability to provide for them. Thank you for your support!!

As always donations in any amount can be made at paypal.me/beautifulpursuit 💙

Im excited for the future and feeling positive about our goals!

🙂🌸💚

THE BEST IS YET TO COME!

🧡 Stephanie