The Arrival of the Greers!

GSF is very excited to announce that with the new year God is blessing Uganda with a new missionary family. At the end of January Adam and Betsy Greer and their four children Ethan, Seth, Eli, and Eliza-Min arrived in Uganda and joined the missionary team at Good Shepherd’s Fold. Adam who wa s previously the Principal at Caldwell Academy in Greensboro, NC, will now become the Director of GSF’s Primary School. This addition will truly be a blessing, in that we feel that it will really enhance the level of education at our school. Our primary school is our biggest form of outreach, having over 300 students enrolled, so we are very excited about what God is going to do through this addition.

Clinic Up and Running

One of the main goals of GSF is to minister and reach out to the villages that it is surrounded by. One way that we do that is by providing a free health care clinic. For the last 6 months our clinic has been open to the public to walk in and be treated four days a week free of charge. We have been able to keep the clinic open and keep a close eye on the health of our own children because God blessed us with three wonderful nurses. Julie Landt, a short-term missionary through AIM, was here from August- January and did a wonderful job with our children, and also helped out in the clinic. Roma Marshall is a long term GO missionary who runs the clinic and also looks after the health of the HIV children at GSF. Also, we have a Ugandan nurse, Nurse Mili, who looks after the welfare of all of the GSF children and also helps in the clinic. The clinic treats over 100 patients a week, varying from malaria to common colds. Not only is the clinic a great way to reach out and help the people surrounding us with health care, it is a way for us to share Christ with lost people, and that is the purpose of GSF!

Christmas at GSF

GSF is very thankful for all of those who were extremely generous this holiday season. Thanks to all of you who gave, we were able to have a great celebration of the birth of Jesus at GSF. On Christmas Eve all of the children got together and sang Christmas carols. On Christmas Day a service was held for everyone in the surrounding villages where the GSF children sang and did a drama reenacting the nativity scene, followed by a powerful message from Mark linking the whole Bible to the story of Jesus’ birth. After the service there was a traditional African Christmas celebration with many traditional African dishes and sodas. Lastly thanks to all of the donations this year every GSF child received a nice bag of gifts as you can see Henry and Lily happily receiving here in these pictures. The kids were very grateful for such a special Christmas!

Sarah and Baby Amelia

We love to see God at work in ways that we ourselves could not have orchestrated, but only His mighty and loving hand. It was April 2009 that a team from North Caroline made their way to GSF to work, doing five intensive days of medical clinics with our surrounding villages. One of the nurses examined a lady in her late 20’s to find out she had a very advanced case of breast cancer. She was in need of immediate medical help so she was referred to one of the hospitals in Kampala that could treat a case like this one. Her name is Sarah and up until that point she had not been able to seek medical help because of not
having financial resources to do so. After visiting the hospital and confirming that GSF would take care of the finances of her treatment through our Mercy Ministry Fund she was scheduled to begin chemo & radiation treatments almost immediately. According to the doctors her cancer was a very aggressive type
and chances of complete healing were small. Sarah and her husband and their 5 children, all under the age of 8, live in a small grass hut and sustain themselves with what they grow in their garden and are able to sell. To our surprise, the day of Sarah’s appointment to be taken to the hospital came and she did not show. Months later she did show up, but at this time she did not come alone but had a little bundle in her arms. Sarah did not know she had gotten pregnant despite her and her husbands efforts to avoid that. She knew that in her condition the chances of that baby living were small. She would not be able to breastfeed the baby. But God had other plans and her and her husband accepted the baby as a miracle from God. The baby girl only weighted around 4 pounds and she was going to need special care and nurture. We took the baby in and gave her the name Amelia. Sarah was admitted in the hospital and went through her chemo and radiation treatments. With very little hope from the doctors she continued to fight this battle and always praised God for His goodness to her. She then had a mastectomy and the doctors admired her strength to persevere and determination to get well. The day of her surgery she was walking around the hospital. We were blessed to be able to help Sarah get the needed treatment and give hope to her and her family of being reunited again. Sarah came to GSF after the surgery and recovery to thank us for everything that we had done for her and her family. As we reminded her that the one she needed to be thankful to and give all the glory to was the Lord, she confessed that she did not know the Lord in the personal way we have been talking to her about and that she desired to know Him in that way. We were blessed with the honor to pray with Sarah to invite Jesus into her life and praised Him for not only bringing physical but also spiritual healing to her life. I Cor 3:6 “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase” We are grateful for our short term teams that through their service plant seeds in the lives of those whom they serve even for a short period of time; also for those who continue to water those seeds that were planted. Susan & Lillian, our secretaries who took special interest in Sarah and minister to her though these difficult days and Yes to the One and only able to grant salvation to Him we give all the praise and glory!

Holiday Activities

The holidays are a great time for us to spend quality time with the children at GSF and invest in their lives on a personal level. This holiday season Matt and Michelle Potter an Australian couple came
and blessed GSF by running a holiday camp. The camp consisted of everything from crafts to water games to bible studies, and a mini olympics. The kids loved this time and were extremely benefited
from it. Also both our teenagers and smaller kids were able to take short trips during the holiday. The younger ones went to a theme park in Kampala called Didi’s World, and our teens did a weekend hiking trip in a mountainous part of Uganda called Sipi Falls. Short-termers Chandler Sharpe, Ben Baxter, and Julie Landt chaperoned these trips.