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FINDING A PEARL OF GREAT VALUE IN THE PEARL OF AFRICA

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We have been coming to Uganda for six years now.  Winston Churchill called Uganda the pearl of Africa.  We have done a number of things including leading Fatherheart Ministries A Schools in Mto Moyoni, Jinja which I have written about before (see blog July 2012).  We are supporting the work of Ingrid Wilts and Winette Hubregtse who have been building at Mto Moyoni over ten years or more.  They have held various weeks and youth schools for the people of Uganda and beyond.  Almost every time we come here to lead a School there are some people who come from Katwe which is a town in the far west of Uganda close to the Congo border. Over time we have got to know them and seen the group from Katwe grow in this revelation of the Father.  I think of a young man called Benson who could barely look you in the eye when we first met.  Last weekend we travelled to Mbarara in the west and led an A School then held a two day conference.  Again there were 25 from Katwe, a mixture of people young and

70 YEARS ON

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70 years ago the war in Europe officially came to an end after six years of horrific bloodshed and slaughter that left millions dead and millions more homeless and displaced.  New borders where drawn across Europe, whole communities were up rooted.  Many who had fled westwards to escape the steamrolling victorious army of Russians, thirsting for revenge, were caught up in all the turmoil.  Russian Cossacks who had ended up in Austria and had fought with the Germans against the Soviets were forcibly sent back to Russia to face annihilation in the Gulag.  Abortions in the occupied zones of Germany rocketed in 1945 and 1946 as Stalin's army of rapists, as he called them, subjected German women of all ages to atrocious brutality and terror.  The Nazi death camps had all been liberated and the absolute horror of it all had become known.  The numbers of deaths beggars belief.  The mountains of spectacles, suitcases, and extracted gold teeth speak of families destroyed and lives shatt

21ST CENTURY LONDON, MULTICULTURALISM, MISOGYNY AND REAL FAMILY.

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I recently spent a week based in Colliers Wood in South West London.  The occasion was a Fatherheart Ministries A School, the first in London.  The event was hosted by Oasis Church which is a large church by British standards. There were about 450 people in attendance at the Sunday morning service. The meeting was a vibrant life filled service.  I was impressed by the multicultural make up of the congregation.  The Pastor and his wife are Nigerian.  Looking across the crowd during the worship there were people of every shade and ethnic background. There were people from Asia, Africa, South America, Europe and the Pacific Islands.  I asked about the ethnicity and cultural background of people and over 50 nations are represented in the church. They were all sitting together alongside each other with a comfortable ease that spoke of being at home with each other. At various points in the service participants from diverse backgrounds were involved. There was a moment when members who h

AUSTRALIA DAY, WAITANGI DAY AND NEW DAY

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Today is the last day of our summer holiday.  We have been in Queensland, Australia with our daughter and her family for ten days.   We will sadly miss the Australia Day anniversary next Monday which celebrates this country and its culture.  If we lived here I guess we would call it Straya Day and celebrate with a few snags thrown on the barbie on the beach in the arvo! This morning we stopped by our daughter's place of work at the University of the Sunshine Coast.  How can anyone seriously think about studying and working at a uni with such a beautiful sounding name? While there we saw a group of students relaxing before going to their classes.  These iconic Australian creatures were everywhere in the campus grounds. The collective noun for a group of kangaroos is a mob, but this sounds more like a group of British soccer supporters to me.  Interestingly, the nick name for the national football team of Australia is the "Socceroos" so maybe mob is a good group name fo