Family life can cause a lot of pain..

 Every morning we start with singing and a meditation, we are looking at the five ways of praying, yesterday we did Praise and Worship and today we looked at Thanks giving. Emmanuel and Helen started the meeting, Emmanuel spoke in Ateso and Helen was translating him. They did so well!!

The subject today was family life. Also a difficult subject, because most of them have no parents and live at the mercy of relatives. Simon shared from some experiences of his own life and asked if they recognised this, and many of them did, they just talked in the group, in front of everyone, very brave. Many stories came out, so very sad. many of them are not treated very well by their relatives, and it was really heartbreaking. Many of them got to hear regular that they are bastards or that it would have been better that they were not born, that they will not have a future. I cried when I heard their stories and I was not the only one of the staff! It touched me very much, this is what we want to show them: they do have a future, God has big plans for them. It was quite emotional.

After the tea break Madam Adongo arrived. She is the senior police officer from the Family affair office. We work very often with her. She was also going to talk about family life, she talked a lot about the girl child, defilement and that the family has the duty to care for them. The children were encouraged to ask questions and many did. All kind of questions, some were crying while they were talking, a lot of pain is there. It was a good session, all the children were very attentive, Madam Adongo is also a good speaker to listen to, she is very bold and say the things how they are.

After lunch Jane was going to share, also about family life. Jane is a YWAMmer and she looked at it again from a different angle. She put the emphasis on serving and humbling down, we need to serve our family for the good of the family. God wants us to obey our parents ( for them their uncle, grandmother etc.) Try to be a blessing to them and forgive them, because they are probably also grown up the way they treat you. Let them talk, know that you do the right thing.

Of course we sang! David and Julius lead us with the singing and we have a lot of fun!!! It was a very good day, I am so amazed about the openness of the children. We gave some advice what to do and how to react, but it is still a very vulnerable subject. They played games and after dinner they closed the day with Dominique and went to bed!

To be continued.....