my time in Soroti is almost over!

Dear friends & family,

time is running so fast and I can't believe that I'm already here for more than one and a half months. But on the other side it feels like if I would have been here for so much longer. I don't even remember how austrian food tastes and how a real shower feels like. But I'm having a good time and I will miss Soroti a lot when I leave back to Jinja on Saturday.

Here some updates about my time in Soroti:

I really enjoyed working in Harmony Pre-School and I hate to say good bye soon to all those little children. It seemed like they really enjoyed it to have me in their class. Normally they do lot of copying from the black board. But I tried to teach them a different way. We did our lessons most of the time in groups which was very new to the children and even to the teachers. But very soon they realised how effective this kind of work is. With 35 children in one class its pretty hard and almost impossible to help every child with their need. But if you just work with 11 or 12 children its possible. And because we were 3 teachers in our class we could just split them in 3 groups and so reduce the amount of children. Sometimes I just played some learning games with the children or taught them some songs. We also did a lot of drawing and paper work. I could feel how much they enjoyed that. In Austria it would not be special for children but here it was very special. It was so new and precious to them to have paper for drawing because normally the school doesn't provide. First I could not believe it. For so many years I took it for granted to have an endless amount of paper in pre-schools. And after I bought paper here to use it for the school I was even more shocked because paper here is not that expensive. But on top of all of that I brought my laptop one day to finish our topic of animals with a disney movie. That was the biggest highlight. Even some parents came to tell me that their child was talking about a 'video' in school all day. 

teaching a song

making some masks

Nestor with the monkey mask

It took me pretty long to remember all their 35 names. Most of them are not English. That made it so much harder. For example the name of one of my favourite 6 year old girls is 'Kemigisha'. But even with the English names I had some problems because the Africans pronounce everything so different. And you know how children are, they don't like it if somebody pronounces their name wrong. But names were not the only language problem I faced. So many times the other teachers corrected me because I was using different words then they usually do. For example during my project about transportation I used 'airplane' instead of 'aeroplane' or 'bike' instead of 'bicycle'. I really thought it wouldn't matter but it seemed to be very important for them to use the words which are more familiar to the children. So I tried to use their words instead of the ones I would use just to avoid an argument. But besides that I really liked the other teachers. During break time we always had interesting talks. It was good for them to hear about the differences in teaching between Uganda and Austria. I think it changed their view a bit when they realised that all those clever europeans did not start writing and reading until they where 6 years old. When I explained to them why it does not make sense to me at all that they start teaching them how to write and read when they are 2 or 3 years old some of them actually started thinking about my arguments. Hopefully something will change in the future.

Dube

Kemigisha

Emanuella & Naume 

me & my class (some kids are missing on that picture)

me, Anyat and teacher Betty

If you are a teacher you know how exhausting it can be to sharpen the pencils every day. But now I really miss sharpening austrian pencils. Here the pencils are just ridiculous. The quality is so bad that I have to glue the lead to the wooden part from about half of the pencils everyday. And sharpening pencils with tons of glue is not fun at all. The lead is breaking so easy and some times I try to sharpen till the whole pencil is gone. My fingers on the right hand are full of blisters.. I promised the school to send proper pencils when I'm back home to give them a break from this job. 

Working in Amecet was good as well. I never thought that I would enjoy working with babies so much. Noemi helped me a lot in the beginning because I had not a lot experience with changing diapers and feeding bottles. But after doing it several times it turned out to not be as hard as I expected. But it's still not easy when babies are ill. When they vomit on you, have diarrhoea or cry the whole day I'm always tempted to quit. But then I always remember that they are orphans and that they need me and the other workers more than I can ever imagine. I always had great parents who cared for me and I always felt loved and wanted.. but what about them? They will never experience to have someone who will always be there for them. Therefor my prayer for those little one is to get to know God sometime. They need a close friend and heavenly father so much. They need to know that their identity is not being an orphan but to be a child of the the king of kings.

me & Agnes

me & Cathy

feeding baby Luca

Some of my favourite babies are already adopted. That's somehow good and I'm glad that they have someone who cares for them now. But I miss them a lot and I'm afraid they suffer. In Amecet they had everything they needed. Food and medicine was provided and when they were crying someone was holding them. But I think in the villages its different. They don't have so much food there and real medicine is rare. I pray that God will provide. 

Alice - my favourite baby who left about 3 weeks ago - I miss her a lot!

The last week we got a lot of new babies. Some of their mothers died while giving birth to them and others are sick and unable to care for their babies. One mother was just 17 years old and gave birth to her baby alone in the forest. This mother disappeared. So maybe she is still alive and the baby can return to her sometime. We also got 3 kids between 8 and 12 years. Those children are HIV positive and did not take their medicine properly. So they are pretty sick. One boy is very skinny and doesn't understand English. The whole situation must be very hard for him.

baby Jessica

Two weeks ago we went to Mount Elgon in Eastern Uganda to see the Sipi Falls. We just travelled about 200 km but again it took us very long to get there. Some Austrians who are staying in Soroti as well asked us to join them on their trip. So we didn't have to organise anything, that was nice. Unfortunately it started to rain very hard about 30 minutes after we started our hike. Although I had my rain jacket I got very wet. First we went behind the falls. It was amazing to see how all the water came down right there in front of me. I never thought it would be so loud inside a water fall. I could not even hear the guide anymore.

The way up there was so slippery and without help I would have rolled down the whole mountain. Because the rain didn't stop we decided to take a break. We went to a cave and there we found some other people making fire. We were all freezing so it was very nice to warm up our hands at the fire. I could not believe how cold it can be in Africa. 

After we waited for about an hour the rain stopped and we continued our way up the mountain. The way was still wet and muddy. My shoes and pants got so dirty and I tried not to think about the washing afterwards. But reaching the top of the mountain was all worth it. The view was amazing. And it was the first time for me to see falls so close by.

Last weekend we went to a village about 200 km up east called Usuk. Some friends invited us to join them to see their relatives there. On the way we had a beautiful view and we even saw some baboons.

When we reached Usuk I realised to what kind of adventure I said yes to. The area there reminded me so much to the place in Tanzania where I did my outreach. No running water, no power but lots of heat and dirt.   People are much poorer there and they don't even have real houses. They live in little huts.

But even though those people were so poor they welcomed us so full of love. They cooked almost all day to show us how much they appreciated our coming. Some of the food they served was very new to me but most of it was nice.

Almost all day the old people of the village were telling us stories from the past. They spoke about the different tribes and how they used to fight. They also talked about Kony and Idi Amin. I heard a lot about those two men the last years but listening to their experiences was very impressive. 

Our friends told us that there would be a lot of children in the Village so we brought some sweets. Noemi even brought some toys and bubbles. It was so amazing to see how they liked the stuff we brought and how they enjoyed it that we played with them. 

That's it so far! Miss you all!

Blessings from Soroti,
Raphaela

first update

Jambo Rafikis,

The last 2 weeks have been full of highs and lows. But I know that I am at the right place right now. God has been so faithful and I know he will continue to do beauiful things.

Okay I dont know really where to start now. So maybe I'll start with writing about my first day in Uganda. We arrived on Monday the 16th of September around 1pm at Entebbe Airport. After we got our luggage we faced the first difficulty. There was no one picking us up from the airport. I tryed to call somebody from the base but my Ugandan phone was not working. Then finally Benni called me. He said that Charles, who was supposed to pick us up, had to do something else. So another man from the base was coming. But it took us about an hour to find him. So at around 3pm we left the airport to start our way to Jinja. Because of traffic and a problem with the petrol we arrived at around 9pm. Just 120km and it took us 6 hours. Unbelievable! But thats african time. By the time of arriving I was not feeling very good. Just the fact of travelling for 19 hours without sleeping was too much for me. But then the people on Hopeland just welcomed me so full of love . Everyone was just hugging me and telling me how great it is to see me again. That totally changed my mood and I was so excited for my time in Uganda. I could feel how God used those people to show me how happy he was that I made my way to Uganda. And then I saw our nice room. We had our own shower and even a sitting toilett (not just a hole on the ground like I had it during my DTS time). I was so grateful.


So my first week in Uganda I spent at Hopeland. I was attendig a staff orientation week there. I thought it would be just some thoretical stuff but it turned out to be more like a time of fixing the relationship with God and growing in my real identity to be able to lead others - like the motto 'You can just give what you have.' It was so good to focus on God and to give him everything that was holding me back. I could release all my sorrows and just trust in a new way. At the end of this week we had a free day so we went to the nile. It was nice to see the beauty of uganda again and to spend some time with Benni and his fellow students.






On Sunday the 22th of September we travelled to Soriti. One of the leaders from Hopeland was going there by public transport and we decieded to join him. We could have also taken a privat car but that would have cost us about 200 Dollar. Taking the public transport was just 6€. But chosing the cheeper way was not very comfortable. We just had very little space and by the end of our trip I could not feel my butt anymore. But we made it safely to Soroti that was the most imortant thing. And it just took us 6 hours for 250km. So I guess that was good for travelling the african way. 

The people in Soroti welcomed us full of love as well. And again we have a very nice room, just for us two. And we even have a sitting toilet. God is really blessing us with those small but very important things. But the food here is a bit different than it is in Jinja. Here they eat more Posho but less Noodles and Potatos. I guess I just have to get used to Posho now. Maybe there is a little chance I will like it at the end of the 6 weeks here. And the other thing is that I feel like we won't have power very often. The last week we hardly had power and the last 3 days we went completely without. And we don't have Internet where we stay. Just at Amecet there is internet sometimes.





 

I really like working in the pre school though it's very different to austrian pre schools. Here the children have to know how to write when they start primary school. So in public pre schools they start to teach the kids how to write when they are 2 or 3 years old. And here the teachers are allowed to beat the childen when they do mistakes. And public schools are quite expensive so not all the children here in Uganda are actually going even though they are supposed to. The pre school I'm working at right now is a private one running over YWAM. It's called 'Harmony' and the school fees are very little so that even poor kids can come. Harmony Pre School is against violence and all the teachers are christians. This pre school has 3 classes: Baby class, Middle class and Top class. I teach 35 childen in Top class together with Teacher Betty from Kenya and Teacher Lorenz from Uganda. I really like working togehter with them and I'm glad that they help me with getting to know the Ugandan curricuim. I have to prepare now two lessons a day for the subjets 'general studys' and 'social studys'. Each lesson takes 30 minutes. It's new for me now to prepare without all my materials and books. Last week we didn't even have power or internet . So to prepare the first lesson was very hard for me and I almost lost my courage. But teaching them was great and I felt how God was using me.

 

 

 












Today I did some paper work with the kids. It was very new for them because normally they don't have paper. That sounds very weird I know, but the school just doesn't have the money to provide paper. It took me quite long to find paper by the way. I had to ask several people in town where to get it. But the most important thing is that the kids had a lot of fun today.









Because school ends at 12:00 I work in the orphange called 'Amecet' in the afternoon. It's so sad to see all this little babies without parents. Some stories are so touching that I had tears in my eyes when I heard them. But it brings so much joy into my heart to see them smiling when I play with them. Amacet has about 14 babys and little children and 2 teenagers who got raped and are pragnant now.















Last weekend we went to the clinic with one of the babys because it was vomiting for 2 days. When they gave her the IV I almost cried because it was so hard for me seeing her in so much pain.  I feel so sorry for little Alice that she has to go throu all that without even having a mommy who cares. I feel so blessed to have a mom.

  

On thursday and friday last week we went to the prison. There we did worship with the prisoners and one lady from YWAM was preaching. I went there with mixed feelings. Someone told us that the prison we are going to has all the murders and mans how raped from this area. I thought:"How could I ever feel love for those horrible people and minister to them?" But God made it possible. As soon as we reached this place I felt so much love and couldn't stop smiling at them. It's was so good and necessary to show them that they are love by us and God although they did horrible things. Others may not believe in them anymore but God will do it forever.


I think that's all so far what happend. I will try to write my next blog when I finished my time in Soroti.



Thanks to eveyone who is praying for me!

Miss you all!

Love from Soroti,
Raphaela

Going back to Africa

Dear friends & family,

Most of you have already heard about my plan going back to Uganda. While I was there the last time I just had the strong feeling that God wants me to come back to serve specifically in the area of kids. So I was talking to my base leader Dr. Tim and shared my feelings with him. During that conversation he told me about his big vision for the pre-school and a coming primary school on our base. He said that it would be so helpful to have a trained teacher during the time of planning eveything and also during the time of starting the projekts. So I deceided to come back when I was still there. That made it even harder to leave this place. But now its hard to leave Austria as well. I feel like I belong here too. I was spending beautiful 6 months in a christan school in Vienna. I learned so much in the area of teaching and about the way how to talk about God in school. But I know God will use those skills.


I'll be leaving on the 15th of September at 10pm. And I will arrive at Entebbe Airport at 1pm the next day. Then I will stay on Hopeland Base in Jinja for a week to attend a staff orientation week. After that I will go to another YWAM Base in Uganda. This one is in Soroti. Its about 6 hours from Jinja. There I will stay for about a month. This YWAM Base has already a primary school so while I will work there I can find out how they teach in ugandan schools. That will help me a lot to support the development on Hopeland. On the 1st of November I will be going back to Hopeland. There I will work in the pre-school and beside that I will help with the planning process of the coming primary school. During the summer break in December I will work with street kids.

This time I am not going on my own like I was last time. I will be flying with my friend Noemi. She will stay about 3 months with me in Uganda. My boyfriend Benni is already there. He is doing his DTS right now. After that we will probably work together in the pre-school. So our time in Uganda will be a time defining our relationship as well to find out what we going to do afterwards. We both don't know yet how long we going to stay exactly. At least we will stay till the end of March. I was thinking of maybe staying till June.


My adress in Jinja on Hopeland is:
Raphaela Seehofer
P.O. Box 739
YWAM Hopeland
Jinja
Uganda

If you want to send me some stuff, I would be so grateful. Just a chocolate bar or some tea bags and you would make my day! But if you want to send some stuff for the kids (for example some sweets, clothes, pens, books,...) I would be even more grateful. To see them smile just means everything to me! I could send you some pictures of the kids using your stuff in reverse.
If you are too busy to send a package you could also put some money in my account and I will buy the stuff you order for the kids.

(This picture is from a friend from America. She got clothes from a lady named Maria for the kids while I was in Uganda last time. The kids were just so happy.)



Prayer requests:

-  HEALTH, I need Gods supernatural protection in this nation full of malaria, typhus and so on. When I was in hospital the last time I was shocked by the condition there. It was a miracle I got well when I was sick.
- GUIDANCE & WISDOM, It's very important for me to hear God clearly and to get his direction. One of the questions I have is how long I should stay. An other one  is concerning my relationship with Benni. If God wants us to stay together and marry we have to decide if we move to Austria or to Swizerland (for those of you who don't know, hes from Switzerland) after coming back from Uganda. These are just two of my questions where I need Gods wisdom.
- VISA, Because I will be staying longer I need a long time visa. This one is quite hard to get. What makes it even harder is the fakt that all my documents are in German.
- MONEY, I have to pay staff fees (200$ per month) and I have to pay my own insurance. I saved a good amount of money during the time I worked in the school in Vienna but like it was last time there, you always need some extra money. I just hope I'll have enough money to stay as long as God wants me to.


If anyone wants to support me not just in prayer but also financially, here my bank details:

Raphaela Seehofer
BAWAK PSK
Konto-Nr.: 20110036400
BLZ: 60000


Thanks to everyone who is supporting and praying for me!

May God bless you!


Love,
Raphaela

Outreach / Graduation / Teacher Training Course

Dear friends,

Unfortunatly my laptop is broken. So I'm using a friends laptop right now. For that reason I wont have enough time to translate in german this time - I'm sorry.

Because of some visa issues we couldn't leave uganda on the day we were supposed to leave (Nov. 24th) so we left 4 days later on the 28th. The bus driver was supposed to pick us up at 4pm but he came at 1:30am the next day... these 9.5 hours of waiting were exausting. The whole time me and my friends were complaining about how we wanted to be in the bus insead of waiting. But after about an hour on the bus we regretted this wish. Because of speedbumps, hours of waiting at the border to kenya (and later at the border to tanzania) and lack of food and water the journey wasn't comfortable. And instead of taking the expected 18 hours, it actually took 28. We arrived in Arusha on the 30th at 6am.

The first 2 and a half weeks we stayed at a place called "Mayi ya chai". The name of that village is in swahili and it means "Water like Tea" - it has the name because the water in the rivers there is broun like black tea. In Mayi ya chai we did programs with hospital patients, orphans, street kids and leprocy's. we also worked together with some local churches. One day I led worship in one of the churches and on another day I led the sunday school. Both times my leaders told me on the same day that Im supposed to lead. So I was a bit nervous because of lack of time for preperation, but I could feel how God gave me courage and how he worked through me.

One of my favourite days in Mayi ya chai was when we did a programme at the leprocy home. I was a bit scared because I had no idea HOW I could help people with leprocy and how I should reach those people with my little swahili... But God did a great job. I felt like I had even more fun during that day than they had. Just because they were literally soaking in the joy we bought. We danced for the people and sang songs and just sat together, sharing the love of God. Most of those people had experienced so much rejection during their life because of their disease. Most of them had lost fingers, hands and \ or legs and were not able to work any more. Some were blind and some used wheelchairs. Just greeting them and showing an interest in their feelings meant so so much to them.


The second half of our Outreach we spent in Kakatiti. The house we had there didn't have running water or electricity. Every day we had to fetch water from a well about 500 meters away from our house. That doesn't sound very far away but when you are carrying 20 liters of water every meter feels like one kilometer... Because we were only allowed a certain amount of water every day which we had to use for cooking, drinking, cleaning the house and washing plates and soucepans, excluding each of the 5 liters we were given a day for personal use (showering, washing clothes, brushing teeth..) - that was quite hard but definitily doable. It made me so much more grateful for every single liter. But sometimes the well didn't have enough water for every one. So my friends and I went a week without showering and washing clothes... that was an interesting feeling.

Apart from that the time in Kikatiti was amazing! My friends and I did a kid's programme for the kid's of the church we were working with. But we also invited street children and other children from our neighbourhood. The first day we had 8 children and by the end of the week about 50. We did games, songs and biblestorys with paper work. It was not easy to get all the materials we needed because we were in the middle of nowhere but God provided. We had enough papers and pens of every single children each day.

Christmas and new year was different than I expected. In Africa people do not really celebrate these holidays and when you have 35 degees celsius outside its hard to have a christmas feeling anyway. On the 24th of December we had a free day (like every monday). Me and two of my friends spent most of the day laying in bed and talking about how similar christmas in the heat is to the original christmas day over 2000 years ago. Next to our house we had cows, sheep and donkeys - that gave the real feeling of christmas.. or should have given.. How ever, Chriatmas morning was interesting but good. We woke up at 6 in the morning. We read the christmas story out of Mark then cleaned the house and then went to church. One of our students, Joe from the UK, was preaching about the real gift of christmas - the salvation through the birth of Jesus Christ. That helped to show me that I didn't have to be sad even though I was not with my family and there was no presents for me and no good food.. the most important thing about christmas is to know that I have received the greatest gift already.

New year was also interesting. There was no big party, no fireworks and no champagne. But we talked about every single month in 2012 and the good moments we had had. It made me realise how amazing the last year has been and how blessed I am. I went to bed at 10:30 not sad that there is no party, but grateful for the last year and excited for more blessings in 2013.

The first day in the new year we spent in an orphanage. Normally I sleep the whole day on the first day of the year but being productive and spreading joy seemed to be so much better. The kids were so so happy to have visitors and we sang songs together and ate good food and prayed for the new year.

We returned to Uganda last week and at the weekend we had our Graduation. We had a big party with many visitors, a long programme and good food. But even though the celebration was amazing we all were so so sad. It was the last day we spent all together. I cant believe how fast DTS went but I had the time of my life. I have so many new close friends now and some of them have left Uganda already. I can't tell you guys how much I miss them... It is unbelivable for me how a group of 44 students from different cultures with nothing in common except the same spirit of Jesus can get so close together. We were a great team and God worked through us and did amazing things in our lifes and in the life of others. I feel so blessed that I had the chance to be part of that.

This week and next week I have been given the opportunity to be part of a Teacher Transformation Course at the Hopeland Base were I live. Its a course for christian pre-school and primary school teachers from Uganda to get to know how to give chi;dren a biblical foundation in their education. I have learned so much the last two days and I'm excited for the rest of the course. The speaker is a woman from Germany who lives in Ghana and is in the leadership of the Early Childhood Development Center in YWAM.

　

I am coming home at around noon on the 31st of January. I can't wait to see all of you soon!

Much love from Uganda,
Rafiki