Necessary.

Dear sweet friends,

Thanks to the providence of God and a few incredible people that are allowing Him to use them, I am headed back to Uganda in a short 19 days. As I’m sure you can imagine, and have probably read, I am MORE than excited about this trip back into my “heart-home”.

This trip was both very short notice and very exciting to me for the same reason… Through a partnership with the American Refugee Committee, We are being given a unique opportunity to resettle 700- yes, seven hundred- children who have been living in IDP, or Internally Displaced Persons, camps.

For more than 20 years in Northern Uganda, tribes were required to live inside these camps as a way to protect them from rebel armies, and for some as a refuge from already-destroyed villages.

Because they have been displaced for so long, and because disease and sickness is so common, many of the remaining displaced persons are children leading, or living within, a child-headed household. Most are fearful to leave the pseudo-families that are all they have ever known.

However, after resettling hundreds of children, the word got out that they were able to receive beds, bibles, and mosquito nets…Children who were formerly afraid to return to their homes are now lining up to receive their goods and go back to their home villages! It’s so uncommon for the children to be willing to resettle that other organizations are asking how we are able to accomplish this. Praise God!

ARC is working hard to trace each child back to their tribe of origin by each of their family names. They are also working along side village leaders to determine what land each family owned and reclaim it for them.

Being resettled means the children acquire a new hut from ARC, and we with Sweet Sleep will arrive with a “resettlement kit” of mats, mattresses, blankets, bibles, and mosquito nets.

Here’s where you come in! Like I mentioned earlier, God has provided FAITHFULLY for the funding necessary for me to be hands and feet to these children, but we need more beds!

The staff at Sweet Sleep works tirelessly, and God is moving for them and the orphans they love over and over again!

For example, as we speak, a donor is willing to match EVERY donation toward the resettlement of these children 100%!

An ENTIRE resettlement kit, including all of the items I previously mentioned, costs only $50. Because of the generous matching, we only need 350 people to donate fifty dollars, or 175 people to donate 100, and I know we’ll get it. I know how big my God is!

What can you do? God is calling me to go, and I’m going! God will provide the means for these children to get the beds they need. Pray hard and often that He will move hearts in the next 19 days, and that those who are able and willing will cheerfully give generously!
Thank you for your prayers, your support, and your love!

-Kathryn

If you are also able to donate monetarily, it’s easy.
Go to www.sweetsleep.org
You will see a link toward the bottom of the page that reads “Click Here to Donate”
Here you are able to donate any amount… be sure to Type “GULU” in the comment box, and know that your money is doubling by the magic of a generous donor! ☺

If

If

If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or, being hated, don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise; If you can dream - and not make dreams your master; If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with triumph and disaster And treat those two imposters just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to broken, And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools; If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breath a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on"; If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch; If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you; If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds' worth of distance run - Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

Return, turn, turn.

Here’s to an attempt at restarting my blogging habit. When I do it, it’s very therapeutic to me. Especially when I have those random intense thought moments. Hey... It happens.

Today has been a non-Memorial Day kind of Memorial Day. For the first time in a long time, we weren’t able to get all of our family members together, and while I was sad not to see them all- I was VERY excited about all of the things I was able to get accomplished. I’m trying to get my life back in order so that a new beginning can come easier.

Hopefully this time next year I’ll be a month into nursing school. I’m both nervous and SUPER excited about that fact. One step closer to the Hope Clinic... Back to organizing and watching Tori and Dean: Home sweet Hollywood. (It’s addictive.)