So Much Africa In One Day!

What an overwhelming day! This morning we left our house and went to a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of the city. Mind you, everyone is poor but it is GFR's mission to the help the poorest of the poor. We went to demolish and begin building a new house for a blind woman named Cissy and her 3 children. Melody had written about meeting Cissy in her blog, she is a woman that was beaten severly by her husband and ultimately lost her eyesight...he was obviously trying to kill her because he killed 4 others in the process, one being her mother. She has a very tragic story and it made all of the newspapers but no one stepped forward to help her until now. Mel had described her as one of the most beautiful Ugandan women she has ever seen. So when we arrived at her house, she was there. She walked out of that house and her beauty and gratitude was overwhelming. Her daughter Brenda was constantly hugging and touching us. It only took a few hours to remove everything from the house and tear it down. We began leveling the floor and sifting thru lots of buried garbage. The original house was made of clay, the new one will be made of clay brick and concrete. We had to walk down thru the village about a kilometer to the water hole...and then carry 40 lb. jugs of water back up the hill..it was brutal and took many breaks to make it to the top. They needed the water to mix the concrete. A little girl took one of our jugs and carried it up the hill without breaking a sweat. Some of the local made fun of us, mzungus (a non-Ugandan), because we were struggling to get up that hill. By 2:30 pm, we were able to unload a truckload of bricks and the brick-layers finished about half of the new house by 4pm. There is much more to be done but what a great start. Everyone was so happy. JJ sponsored Cissy's family and now the children will be able to go to school.

1-Hello to Cissy! 2-daughter Brenda 3-'She-woman'(80lbs of H20)

We ended the day by visiting the older woman that is dying from syphillis and her daughter(17yrs), Grace, who has HIV/AIDs and TB as described in Mel's blog. She now has a new bed and mattress after laying in the same bed on the floor for 4 years. Kathy and Elton are now sponsoring this family. They were able to give them money to obtain medical care with all of their illnesses. We met Grace's daughter, Brenda, who is only 1-1/2 yrs. old. Mel had tests ran on her and it has been confirmed that she also has HIV/AIDs. Her mother doesn't know yet. It's devastating.

Brenda-age 1-1/2(tested positive for HIV/AIDs)


I have red clay in every nook and cranny of my body and I'm exhausted. I can't wait to sleep. There are more pics of all of us on the GFR site-I got to hand out some of those telescopes and I was mobbed:) Just think, I get to wake up and do this all over again-wow.