Benon Kayanja
July 2024
July 2024
Dear friends.
Greetings from Uganda. I would like to begin by thanking each of you who came for the JLH Prayer Day in June, I was filled with joy seeing you all turn out for the virtual prayer day. I know you have a lot of other duties across the work dimensions but you found time to come and appreciate our Maker for Justice Livelihoods Health's (JLH) six months since start of this year as well as committing the next 6 months to the end of the year 2024.
God has allowed us to accomplish many things together during this time for His glory. We continue to have transformation of lives, pastors being equipped through our church engagement work, healing ministries through our health mandate and overall, the kingdom of God being advanced, all this, in great part, due to your perseverance in prayer. I'm confident and most times feel the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in times when I needed to make a decision in my leadership role at JLH, because of your prayers, I pray for you too that God will continue giving you more grace to stand in pray from that far.
The church has a key role to play in helping to restore the cardinal four broken relationships, bringing about holistic transformation to individuals and communities. In Uganda, we started this journey to awaken the churches through the Church and Community Mobilisation process (CCMP). In January this year we targeted to train 66 leaders who would be facilitators from four different evangelical church denominations bringing both Men and Women as well as staff of JLH. With the BMS support we have been able in the last 6 months to Mobilize the churches, conduct envisioning trainings, bible study workshops as well as follow-ups. By God's grace; 33 Facilitators have been trained; 31 Local Churches in Gulu and Kasese from different denominations have started CCM and they are engaging their Christians in bible studies, there are small pockets of evidence of changing mindsets of the Facilitators and pastors in embracing the process in their churches. Into the next 6 months to the end of the year, please pray that the process will get more impact especially with mindset change.
Thank you so much for your prayers, JLH has moved very fast to implement a Gender project in Kasese. We realize that Gender Based Violence (GBV) is prevalent on one hand among church people who suffer this type of violence at home, in their jobs, and through different situations of daily life. But, on the other hand, this problem is also present in the discourse of those who lead the faith communities. The JLH approach is first to transform beliefs at the leadership level (Church and cultural leaders), to then changing behaviors. One way to achieve this is through holistic leadership training. With the BMS support, JLH was able to arrange a Gender inception meeting and a training for faith based and cultural leaders for the project in Kasese which was well attended with representatives from the district, Civil society organization's and the Cultural structure from Obusinga Bwa Rwenzururu- one of the cultural kingdoms in from western Uganda, located in the Rwenzori Mountains on the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. Please pray for Jackie Akong the JLH Gender Trainer as she plans to run a series training with the leaders and also pray for me that together as a team, we will be able to demonstrate these views in communities we are implementing to create awareness about issues of Gender norms, social norms, negative cultural practices that lead to marginalizing women and girls as well as men so that a space can be created where women and men can feel safe, loved, and respected.
Thank you so much for helping to support both in prayer and in financial terms the completion of the solar project in Kasese, the installation of the solar panels had halted due to absence of windows and doors for 3 churches, BMS was very helpful in finding a small grant to help with windows and doors for these 3 churches so that their solar panels can be installed. Working with the Kasese Baptist Association 2 churches have been provided already with both windows and doors as well, there is one more that needs to be completed, please pray that we will be able to finish it for the communities to benefit.
Integrating sustainability principles in JLH's ongoing projects is one of the ways JLH is targeting to ensure effective and long-term impact, we do therefore have a few social enterprises set up and more yet to come, CEK CAM (in Acholi to mean; Abundant Harvest) is one of them, it's a buying and selling cooperative of agricultural produce which has picked up well since the start of this year. Please pray for CEK CAM for more creativity especially plans for value addition of agricultural produce but also pray for JLH to think creatively other sustainability ventures around the current interventions. CEK CAM plans to secure a piece of land in Northern Uganda which will be used as an agricultural demonstration plot as well as farm land to further boost the financial base of JLH's work. Please pray for the land purchase processes.
Its good news to hear about William Tusiime's Graduation, he has been studying for Certificate in Ministry course and this ended very well last month, he plans to enrol for a Diploma in November this year, please pray for him that he will be able to find the necessary resources. He has lots of passion to serve God's Kingdom in many respects and so we have identified him and would like to walk this journey with him.
Thank you so much for praying for my UK Visa which I received last week and so that gets me to start the preparations for my visit to UK in September this year, really looking forward to seeing each of you again and to enjoy some of the English cuisines in your lovely homes.
Blessings
Benon