November 2005

How Can We Say Thanks?

When we at Covenant Mercies consider all that God has done through you, our sponsors, how can we possibly thank Him enough for you? As of this writing, our Orphan Sponsorship Program is providing care for approximately 530 children. In the brief articles that follow, you will learn of some exciting developments within our program, news that we believe you will find both informative and encouraging. But most of all, we hope you will interpret this third annual edition of the Sponsorship Program Update as an extended note of thanks. None of what you are about to read would be remotely possible without you, and an army of others like you. So read and enjoy. Give God the glory, and know that as we are thanking Him for all He is doing through Covenant Mercies, we are thanking Him for you!

Medical Team Directly Confronts HIV/AIDS

In October 2005, Covenant Mercies led a medical team to Uganda to run a weeklong clinic in the church facility of Nagongera Gospel Centre. Armed with an abundance of donated medications and supplies, our team of five doctors, nine nurses, and one pharmacist met the needs of approximately 1,500 patients who came from far and wide to receive care.

In addition to serving the throngs who came in search of medical care, it was our hope that through this medical team we could directly address the HIV/AIDS issue that has orphaned so many of our children. This is no simple proposition in Uganda, where national policy forbids the testing of children due to the stigma associated with being HIV positive. Orphans known to be HIV positive, the reasoning goes, can expect to be abandoned for dead by their guardians. In order to test children for HIV, one must demonstrate that treatment will be available for those testing positive. Again, this is not such a simple proposition in our rural region of Uganda, where no clinic providing such treatment was available. Not until recently, that is.

Only months prior to our medical team’s departure, the Lord providentially connected Covenant Mercies to a program known as TREAT, run by Uganda’s Joint Clinical Research Center (JCRC). Funded by a grant from the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), this program provides free treatment (including antiretroviral drug therapy as necessary) to orphans and their caregivers. Even more exciting, the TREAT program had recently extended its reach to a rural clinic approximately 40 minutes drive from Nagongera. After working out a partnership with JCRC, we now had a means for treating our children, and therefore grounds for testing them.

With this treatment plan in place, our medical team left for Uganda prepared to test all the children in our program for HIV. Using rapid HIV test kits donated by Orasure Technologies (see photo to below), we screened the majority of the children in our program during that week, along with many of their extended family caregivers. Thankfully, we found only six children to be positive, slightly over 1% of those tested. Two days after the medical team’s departure back to the USA, those six children were taken for their first appointment at the clinic where they will receive treatment. Their test results were confirmed, and treatment began that very day. Thanks to your sponsorship, Covenant Mercies is able to commit to transporting these children (along with the guardians who tested positive) back and forth to their monthly appointments at the clinic, following up in their homes to see that they are carefully abiding by the doctor’s instructions, and making sure they are responding well to their treatment.

While it is heartbreaking to see any of our children test positive for HIV, how rewarding to connect them to this life-preserving treatment! AIDS was once a death sentence, to the extreme degree that it was forbidden even to test a child. But now, thanks to the medical attention you are enabling us to provide, the best treatment in the world has been made available to those who so desperately need it. While you are not likely (statistically speaking) to be sponsoring an HIV positive child, your support has been instrumental in making this new component of our care accessible for those who require it. May God bless you, and may you derive great satisfaction from the many ways you are helping Covenant Mercies touch the lives of the children He has given us.

Solar Panels and Smiles in Maundo North

In last year’s Sponsorship Program Update, we celebrated the recent opening of our first orphans’ home and informed you of our plan for a water system that would use solar technology to distribute clean water to each of the homes. How encouraging to consider the progress we have made in a year!

Today, Covenant Mercies has three homes in operation in a village called Maundo North (just outside Nagongera), serving 24 children in a family environment. Each home is occupied by a loving couple caring for eight orphaned children who have no extended family members capable of taking them in. Our “family parents” live with the children full-time, treating them as their own (see one of our “family photos”, above). The effect of their love is wonderfully evident in the lives of the children, who have enjoyed improved health, greatly enhanced school performance, and the reassured happiness of being a beloved member of a family. To know these children and to track their development is to know the blessing and joy our God can bring forth from great sorrow.

In October 2005, Covenant Mercies sent a team to Uganda to install solar panels atop our water tower, which was built by a previous team in March. With power generated from the sun, these panels keep a 7,000 gallon tank filled with water, ready to serve our existing homes as well as any additional homes that may be built in the future. As a result – aside from the benefits of water on demand for drinking, cooking, and washing – our homes are equipped with working toilets, a priceless “luxury” we did not want our children to be without.

While each of the children living in our homes is a sponsored child, we have undertaken the construction of these homes, and all associated projects, using funds contributed to Covenant Mercies apart from the sponsorship program. We are exceedingly grateful to all who have participated so generously, and to the teams who have traveled to Uganda to make this dream a reality. The infrastructure is now in place for many additional homes to be built, and for many more children to be served there for the glory of God.

A Story of One Life Affected

George William Oburu was among the first children sponsored when we established Covenant Mercies’ Orphan Sponsorship Program in early 2003. Both of George’s parents had died of AIDS by the time he was eleven years old, and he was living in a rented room under the care of his grandmother when we first registered him for our program. At that point in time, George’s family makeup was typical for our sponsored children; the oldest generation taking care of the youngest, because the middle generation had been lost to AIDS.

When George’s grandmother became ill and died in early 2004, he was left with no other family members to take him in. Though construction was underway on our orphans’ homes by that time, they were not yet ready for occupancy. Since George had nowhere else to go, he continued to live in the room where his grandmother had resided prior to her death. Covenant Mercies paid the rent, our staff checking up on him regularly to make sure he was getting enough to eat and going to school. George was all alone at the age of twelve, a sad but not altogether uncommon story due to the devastation of AIDS.

When Covenant Mercies’ orphans’ homes were opened in November 2004, George was one of the first children to move in. As a child, he needed the love and care of a mother and a father and the structure and discipline of godly adult leadership. But as a thirteen year-old boy now accustomed to living on his own, he did not immediately welcome the loving boundaries that were placed upon him there. Not long after George had moved in, he ran away.

After finding him and convincing him of his limited alternatives, our staff in Uganda brought George back again to his new home. In a short time, he came to appreciate all that had been provided for him there. Today, he is a happy member of a family, and he readily gives glory to God for the way He has rescued him, given him a new mother and father, and provided for his every need. George is pictured in the center of the photo below, with his arms around his Children’s Home “brothers,” Julius and Derrick.

While our orphans’ homes are never the first option for the children we are serving – we always look initially for an appropriate guardian within the child’s extended family – George’s story illustrates the way we are now able to care for each child in a manner commensurate with his or her need. Whether you are sponsoring a child who is living with a relative or one who is living in our children’s homes, your ongoing generosity is equipping Covenant Mercies to provide care in just the way he or she needs, even as those needs change over the years. As you continue to commit yourselves to children just like George, we are able to commit ourselves to them as your representative, so that together we can look forward to many testimonies similar to George’s in the future.