[wh_blogger img=”http://worldhelp.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/michele.png” name=”Michele-Lyn Ault” twitter=”michelelynault” short_bio=”Writer of A Life Surrendered“]
Michele-Lyn is more of a mess than she cares to admit, but she will. You’ll find her writing about motherhood, missions, and beautiful messes. As you read her stories, at A Life Surrendered, she hopes you find you are not alone. She’s a wife and mama to three spunky daughters and one darling son, and believes you should know, labor as a mama is work fit for God’s Kingdom. She’s a World Help blogger, and Allume contributor.
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I came to Africa with World Help, and a team of bloggers to see the rescue program in Uganda, and tell the stories of redemption and hope in Africa. Here, I’ve been in awe of the beauty of the Body of Christ working together, for the purpose of saving lives and advancing the Kingdom of God in this earth.
Evah Mugerwa is the director of Destiny Village of Hope, where the Operation Baby Rescue homes we are raising funds for are located. On the last day we were with her at Destiny, I asker her, “Why do you do what you do? What is the passion that drives you to keep on even when things get hard?”
She replied, “The reason we are doing what we are doing, a long time ago when I was still a young girl, I grew up with my grandmother. I knew how I suffered with my grandmother. I didn’t grow up with my parents. So it came into my heart and I said it—when I grow up I have to make sure that I look after young people, that I look after children. So, that is the passion that has driven me to do what I am doing—to look after babies, to look after young people.”
“We look for the Evah’s of the world,” Cyrus Mad-Bondo, World Help’s Director of Africa programs, tells us. This speaks of partnership.
World Help comes alongside of people like Evah Mugerwa, assuming a role that is more than providing resources. World Help comes as a servant, providing friendship, accountability, and counsel when asked.
It’s a three way partnership likened to the Biblical verse “A three stranded strand is not easily broken.” Ecclesiastes 4:12
Evah could not do what she does without World Help, and World help could not do what they do without donors. The three of them together accomplish more than what they could do separately.
When introduced to Evah, I knew immediately it was an honor to be in her company. You need to know her story to begin to understand.
Evah’s husband, John Michael grew up in extreme poverty in the Katwe slums of Uganda, the second largest in all of Africa, home to more than 500,000 people, half of which are children.
John Michael believed the Gospel, and began a church within the Katwe slums borders. People asked why he didn’t leave. His answer would be the reason he was there—so the people that lived in those slums could also know the hope of Christ.
The church stands as a beacon of light bringing hope to a people in a place that desperately needs to know there is hope. Twenty-six years ago the church building began as a tarp, sticks in the ground, and blankets on the dirt. Today, they have a brick building that World Help aided in constructing, and a congregation that has grown to 2,500 members.
Out of this church, a children’s home was birthed. It’s located a distance away from the slums. John Michael and Evah saw the desperate needs of the children living in desperate conditions, many orphaned, most starving, and in need of medical attention.
Everyday the children receive nourishment, education, medical attention when needed, as well as the Gospel of Christ. Every child has the potential of being something greater than a product of their environment.
Destiny Village of Hope has grown to over 1,700 children—900 of whom came directly from the Katwe slums.
We learned Evah’s husband passed away in 2011, and she still continues to run the church and the children’s home without him. And though she’s birthed no biological children of her own, she is Mama Evah to those children.
That is what she has committed her life to do. World Help has committed to a partnership with Evah, and to finish the homes to make room for more babies.
We have the means—maybe not individually—but collectively—to finish the Rescue Homes project so Evah can open the doors and welcome in 40 more babies who would have little chance of survival apart from rescue.
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