Category: Africa
Coming soon! CLEAN WATER! Thank you!!!
We are really excited about our partnership with Ugandan villagers. For years they have had plenty of water in the rainy season. But then they have been drinking polluted water from rivers in the dry season. Cattle and other animals drinking in the river also use the water as a toilet. Then children and adults collect the polluted water for drinking and cooking. This results in serious illness, death and a grim level of child mortality.
Thanks to RSVP supporters we are solving this problem! We are are helping our Ugandan friends construct a water harvesting system. This system collects the pure rainwater in the rainy season and then makes it available to villagers in the dry season.
A massive underground tank has been constructed to harvest 300,000 litres of water in the wet season.
Water tank is 25ft below ground and then some above!
The underground tank was dug 25ft down and now has been added with another 7ft on top with brick work as seen here. The harvesting tank is now 40ft deep. The width of this tank is 7ft.
Underground water tank now ready for the lining.
Then solar power will pump the water to the overhead tank. Clean pure water will then be sold for a couple of pence for a 5 gallon water can to villagers. This small fund will be used for any maintenance – making the system self-sufficient.
Some of the beneficiaries who have been helping in fetching water for the construction work standing in front of the constructed Tank.
At £2,500 per installation, this is a REALLY efficient way to supply clean water in remote areas of Africa. RSVP hopes to install many of these Harvesting Projects.
If you want to get involved, please give a gift small or large here: Donate to RSVP clean water.
RSVP House of Mercy
RSVP children at the Hose of Mercy
Thanks to all who support us. The 16 orphaned children in our House of Mercy, in Rwanda, are doing well. RSVP supporters make it possible for us to provide a home, clothing, schooling, food and caring adults to look after them.
RSVP’s House of Mercy is providing a safe place for these children to grow and develop, and look forward to a brighter future.
Most of the children have sponsors but a couple are financed from RSVP’s general funds. If you would be interested in supporting us to meet the costs of this important work, please consider making a monthly donation of any amount.
Thanks again for all who give to this life transforming work!
Rwanda house renovation
Before…
Thank you to RSVP supporters! Tears have been turned into smiles for a family living in extreme poverty. On a visit to a poor area of Rwanda earlier this year, RSVP mission leaders, Alison and Richard Fenning, met a family without hope.
The family’s home was crumbling. The roof was broken and the structure was falling down around them. They also had no food. Everything looked desperate.
Thanks to the amazing generosity of RSVP partners and supporters, we were able not only to supply food for the whole family, but completely rebuild their home including a new roof.
We can only do this with your great support and so we say THANK YOU to all who support us!
After
RSVP Mission of Hope
Setting off to Rwanda
This afternoon I drove my work colleague, Alison Fenning, and her husband and RSVP Trustee, Richard, to Heathrow. They are now in the air, enroute to Rwanda, for RSVP’s Mission of Hope.
RSVP’s Mission of Hope will include speaking to a gathering of women involved in prostitution, providing food and bedding for the poor in Bugesera, community outreach, food and bedding for the poor in Kayonza, speaking on National Radio, speaking in churches, lecturing in Bible School, leadership seminars, visiting in the slums of Kigali.
Many thanks to all RSVP Partners who have donated finance to make this trip possible. Thanks to those of you who, I know, will pray for Alison and Richard every day through this mission. Please pray for good health, especially for Alison who suffered a serious health attack on an Africa Mission last year.
RSVP has been working in Rwanda since 1997, when I first visited the country with my Rwandan friend, Charles Mugisha.
The story of those early days is told in the book Beautiful on the Mountains (available from RSVP). Since then we have helped build a school, built an orphanage which we continue to support every month, helped educate hundreds of children, feed street children and support vulnerable women. We have supplied tons and tons of food to the hungry, provided matresses and bedding to widows and the elderly. We have helped women out of prostitution and start small businesses.
I had hoped to join Alison and Richard on this trip but funds have not been sufficient. So I did my small part and drove them to the airport. We greatly value all who support our work in transforming lives in Africa.
We still need to meet the full costs of the mission and it’s not too late to make a donation, however small, to help us meet urgent needs.
Thanks for your partnership and support.
Terms and conditions do not apply
Some years ago in Uganda we went to a village on Mount Elgon. I was preaching about Jesus and his power to heal. One thing that made me sad was finding people whose children were malnourished because their parents were poor. But then we discovered, when the children were sick, parents would spend what little money they had on Juju – bits of bone or pebbles sold by the local witchdoctor.
They paid for these worthless things because they believed they had some sort of mysterious power to heal.
I sometimes cringe when I watch Christian TV because there are some who are peddling a Western form of Juju. In order to get healed I’m urged to go to the phone ‘right now’ and pledge $1,000 to get my miracle by Monday. Others urge me to phone in to get the magic handkerchief, magic water or some other bit of nonsense.
In John’s gospel, chapter 5, we read of a man who had been crippled for 38 years. He had been fed the line that when the angel stirs the water, the first person in gets healed. Being crippled, obviously he never made it into the water first. And so he was trapped into thinking this was they only way he’d get healed. He remained sick for 38 years.
Jesus meets him and asks him if he wants to get well.
The sick man answered Him, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; but while I am coming, another steps down before me.” Jesus said to him, “Rise, take up your bed and walk.” – John 5:7-8
Jesus does not use Juju, does not ask for $1,000 and does not give him magic water or any other nonsense. With a word of authority he heals the man.
In most cases of healing in the gospels, people approach Jesus and he commends them for their faith. But this man didn’t approach Jesus and didn’t seem to have faith except in the angel and the water.
There is a freedom in the mercy and miracles of Jesus that is very pure.
When we begin to hear ourselves saying, ‘You need to do this or that before Jesus can heal you’ I think we’ve got off track.
Terms and conditions do not apply. Jesus freely gives.
No one who got healed in the Bible was right with God or met other requirements. If there is any requirement, it can only be our lostness and helplessness that could possible qualify us for a miracle. He comes to seek and to save the lost, the least and the last.
When we send a $1,000 and stand on one leg with our magic handkerchief on our head, we are making it all about us.
But miracles are all about him and he doesn’t use Juju.
Pastor Tom in Stowmarket
Don Egan, Tom Abungu and Alison Fenning
This morning Don Egan & Alison Fenning met with our Kenya Partner Pastor Tom Abungu from Connect with a Child Ministries.
We talked about the development of RSVP’s partnership in Kenya, the Child Sponsorship programme and how to make teams more helpful to Tom and his ministry.
Tom also shared about his desire to do more Water Wells with RSVP and his vision of a village hospital.
Pastor Tom will be speaking at Mildenhall Baptist Church this Sunday at 10:30am as the guest of RSVP Trustee Pastor Carl Morehouse.
Kenya seminar
Michelle speaking at the seminar in Nairobi
Michelle Smith was part of the RSVP Team that travelled to Nairobi recently. These are some comments on how her ministry impacted the people attending the School of Ministry.
Whilst being part if the team I was able to lead a seminar dealing with The Conflict between Men and Women.
The challenge in Africa and actually all around the world is for people in ministry to have healthy home lives first before ministry. Within every culture we have strayed from the Kingdom of God principles and there is a desperate need to have an open discussion and teaching on communication with each other, as Jesus modeled when he walked the earth.
There are 42 tribes in Kenya, each with their own customs, so this raised some questions and we shared openly and discussed where tribal custom ends and kingdom custom begins.
Those who came loved it and there was laughter as we talked about the challenges of modern inventions like TV and mobile phones being either a useful tool or hindrance to our communication.
House of Mercy
Thank you to all those who helped us build the orphanage in Rwanda and who continue to support it every month.
The House of Mercy is transforming the lives of 16 children for whom it has become ‘home’.
The short video about shows how it came about…
Thanks!
Thousands gather to hear about Jesus
Alison Fenning telling people about the love of Jesus
Alison Fenning reports on her recent trip to Nairobi’s slum district
People in Africa love to come and dance and sing to their favourite bands that they hear on the radio or see on the TV. Whilst in Kenya we were able to use this as an opportunity to speak about Jesus and giving people a chance to respond to the God who loves them.
Alison was able to preach and lead people to Christ. Over the two nights the team have estimated that 500 people responded, wanting to either acknowledge Jesus as Lord for the first time or come back into personal living relationship with God.
The benefit of this type of outreach is that we not only give people the chance to hear the gospel but also we bless an area by providing a concert for two nights. This often lifts the community, people have fun and enjoy their favourite bands and the Church has an opportunity to build bridges with local people.
Thousands gather to hear good news
Orphans into families…
Alison Fenning feeding street children in Nairobi’s slums
Three years ago, RSVP’s Kenya partner, Tom Abungo, based in Nairobi, took us to see a piece of land where he had a vision to build a Church and have a centre of education for street children they were reaching out too.
Two weeks ago I stood in the Church and the education centre that now exists on that land. It is a still a work in progress. The 190 street children have now been placed in families, so they have a home, get daily food, and are educated. Some are sponsored whilst others are still waiting for a sponsor.
This project is amazing and very unique, as it not only helps street children gain a future but also helps the local community make a difference to their own people by having a child join their family.
Thank you all our RSVP partners who support Tom and sponsor children in his care – you are transforming lives.
