Changing Africa, part four

We have many volunteer groups like the blue t-shirt group. I visited just a few on my recent trip. A second group completed our training and one week later went out to help this woman.

She is partially blind, very old, alone and was living in this make shift home.

She has been in Lira since the IDP camps. Though displaced by the war, she had nothing to return to, so, she stayed. We asked the volunteer group if they recently learned about her or if they always knew she was there. What do you think their answer was?...they always knew she was there, but before they didn't do anything about her living conditions. I guess they assumed it was someone elses problem. Isn't that just like us humans? After attending our training they decided to build her a real home - one that would shade her from the sun and protect her from rain or animals (including nasty snakes). They are doing this with their own time, their own money, their own resources. It costs 1,000 Uganda shillings per bundle of straw for the roof. They needed at least 22 bundles to fully complete the project. The group took up an offering in their churches to pay the costs of building the house. It was not a handout from a white face or distant Westerner, it was community led and driven. Stories like this prove to me that real change is possible, even in what we consider resource poor areas!

They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. ~ Acts 2:42-45