Our Job

We hope you are well. For the duration of our stay here, we are part of the Watoto IT team! Let us introduce them to you.

The truth is, they are a multi-talented bunch of highly-motivated, passionate individuals, and it is a pleasure to work with them. We have no idea who the guy in the background is, but we hope he is not too offended if he ever reads our little joke :) .

The goal of the Watoto IT team is creating a seamless information technology experience for all the Watoto Staff.  When they are not spending their hours coding (like us), the guys are often running all around fixing computer problems in Watoto central, where we're based, or the outer districts.

Cell Point - Saving the leaders heaps of time, and revolutionizing the way they keep track of the church!

"On behalf of Watoto ministries, I appreciate Massey Presbyterian Church for sending Jordan and Julie Morris who are full of ideas and have tremendous skill sets and have contributed  their skills and time. With their help, I have been able to learn and advance my skills in software development without paying any fees, and they are significantly contributing to the Watoto ministries by modifying and building the Watoto cell point system which is aimed to be used by all the Watoto churches as it expands throughout Africa. They are my inspiration and by the time they leave I want to be like them and they will have changed our story."
- Dennis, Watoto IT

Cell point is web-based system designed to help organise Watoto Church. Getting it off the ground is our biggest job.


Watoto is a cell-based church. That means most of the church members (about 98%) attend small groups called 'cells' in the middle of the week.

Each cell studies the Bible and prays together. The cells are like families and the people in them grow really close to each other. A lot of what Watoto does is based around this concept.

How do you organise a church like this?

The old (current) way:

1. Cell leaders have to fill in paper reports, saying what the topic of the cell was, who attended, who visited and recording any new members.
2. These reports are delivered to the center of each district by the cell leaders.
3. The district leaders compile the reports, and deliver them (often with long road trips), to Watoto central (Kampala).
4. The cell administrator spends long hours of data entry and producing reports to see how the church is doing and keep track of members.

The Cell Point way:

1. Cell leaders log on to the Web and enter their reports.
2. The cell administrator logs on and presses the 'church report' button.

This new system is about to become critical, as the church is just now expanding to South Africa and beyond!


Cell Point now and beyond:
As soon as the core features of Cell Point are ready, we will begin integrating other databases into it. It will become the hub for human resource management, member tracking and project reporting for Watoto Church. So, it is critical that the foundations are built well.

Cell Point was started by Dennis in the IT Department. With the level of expertise he had and working mostly alone, he could only take it so far. We have been able to future-proof the structure, fix up various issues and add features that Dennis didn't know how to add.

One of our goals is to prepare Dennis to pilot Cell Point into the future. He has been very patient with us as we changed a lot of the structure of the program he wrote, and he is picking up new techniques quickly.

Other Work
Meanwhile, we have been making pathways into other ministries. It has taken a bit of time to make the right contacts, but things are coming together.

These activities include:

• Hospital ministry.
• Discipleship classes.
• Teaching early-highschool classes computer skills.
• Sunday school.

There is too much to go into on this blog, but look out for more details soon!


Prayer and Praise

• Praise God that He has brought us here at this key moment for Cell Point to find its feet.
• Praise God that it is written in our favourite programming language, and many things we learned at university and through our old jobs are directly applicable
• Thank  you for praying for our productivity, things are going well, and we are so excited to be here, doing it!
• Pray that Cell Point will reach completion soon, so we have more time to help with integration and training.
• Pray that God will give us strength and courage as we branch into new areas of ministry.
• Please pray for Hope, a very prematurely-born baby cared for in one of the Watoto baby homes, who has miraculously pulled through to her 5th week, but has been losing weight. She weighs about 600 grams.

Watoto Church

While we are in Uganda, we are working with Watoto Church. The people there are committed to being Jesus' hands and feet in the lives of everyone in their city, country, continent and world and are a real inspiration. Through them, Jesus renews the lives of destitute women, abandoned and mistreated children, prisoners, sick people and even 'normal' people. =)

There are five church buildings in Kampala, one in Gulu, one soon-to-be in Cape Town, South Africa and one a-bit-later-to-be in Southern Sudan.

The following two pictures are of Watoto Church Central, where we work.

This is the view from the roof of Watoto Church Central showing part of downtown Kampala.

This is Watoto Church West, also in Kampala, where we went for a special Festival of Hope celebration. The Festival of Hope marks the birthday of Watoto Church and celebrates what God has been doing and will do in their communities.

The other day, we drove out to see two of the children's villages that Watoto runs. Along the way, the car had to slide, struggle and climb through a series of wet, muddy ditches in the road. The car barely made it. It was great fun!

This man is building a classroom at Suubi village. 'Suubi' means 'hope' in Luganda and it is the largest children's village that Watoto runs.

It is so beautiful there, and the air is so clean. It feels like the safest, happiest place in the world. Walking through the village brought Julie back to her childhood and she felt very much like playing marbles.

These villages house orphaned children (up to 8 in a house), house mothers, pastors (one per village) and teachers. They also have their own schools and a clinic. At lease one of the villages provides fresh water to the community outside the village.

On Thursday, we saw the very first show of the new Watoto Children's Choir production, "Beautiful Africa". Many of the children from the villages belong to choirs that tour the world telling people how Jesus has changed their lives and encouraging them to get behind the Watoto vision.

All the songs and dances in Beautiful Africa are completely original and are very good. We were blown away! The children obviously love what they do. For weeks, we had been hearing one line from the opening song repeated over and over again as the choir rehearsed. We weren't sure if we would like hearing the whole song, but when we finally heard it, it was amazing. What a relief! =) Seriously, though, if the Watoto Children's choir ever comes to your town performing Beautiful Africa, you HAVE to go.