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.

Rain

Our new friends in the IT department were telling us some interesting things about rain.

Apparently, when it rains, everybody sleeps in. When they were in primary school, they would be caned for being the tiniest bit late, but when it rained, they could come two hours late, tell the teacher "It rained" and get off scott free! Mothers might say to their children, "Where are you going? It rained!" Sometimes, bosses don't even show up at work because it rained the night before.

They also said that the people in the villages use firewood to cook their food, so if the wood is wet, it seriously disrupts their eating. It makes sense, then, that if rain during the night causes you to skip breakfast, you won't want to go anywhere, but we can't think of any reason why everyone else would find it so disruptive. It gave us a good laugh.

Here is a better picture of the humongous birds. Good ol' 12x optical zoom.

Welcome Home

Driving from the airport to the Watoto guest house revealed a mixed landscape of greenery, dirt roads, and tarmac roads which are so dusty they look like dirt roads!

Most things have a layer of red dust on them.

We stopped at our local 'supermarket' on the way in. We would call it a very cluttered superette. Anyway, we were able to find the basic supplies, and went on to our new home.

The below, or at least one room of it, is our home. It is a nice big solid place, located in relatively well-to-do spot in an elevated area (but still a mixture of nice houses and slum). It is all gated and barred so we feel pretty safe in there.

It is one of two main houses in Kampala hosting a number of Watoto volunteers. There were 3 other volunteers in the house when we arrived, two Ozzies and a Chinese student from the States.

These were great people to meet, but in the last few days they have all left. Another girl (an American Missionary Kid from Italy) arrived yesterday and apparently there are more guests incoming. There is also a grounds keeper who lives on the property and keeps an eye on the place.

Because of power rationing, electricity is only on half of the time. On any particular day you never know if you will have power for all, half or none of the day. It makes things like using the washing machine a gamble. Thankfully, there is a gas stove.

Apparently we are about 20 minutes walk from lake Victoria where there is a market, but we have yet to explore that far. The occasional roosters we can hear in the neighbourhood are completely redundant for wake-up calls. There are huge, ugly, loud, wild birds with dangly necks which hurtle from place to place in the morning. They sound like geese with megaphones being attacked by pigs!

This is the best picture we have got of the birds so far, taken from a distance with a cellphone.

We have started IT work now, and seen the Babies' Home. More on them later.

Prayer points:

• Thank God it looks like we will fit right in to our roles.
• Pray for our health as the in the last 24 hours we have had the unwelcome interruption of some travel-belly.

Dubai Layover

Our first few days in Uganda have been exciting and tiring and we have had minimal chances for reflection and photo-taking. We will take some more photos, get our bearings and post more Uganda news soon. Meanwhile, here are some photos from our stop-over.

The cheapest flights available to Uganda included a transfer through Dubai. We decided to extend our trip to accommodate a 3-day layover. Holiday pay from our previous jobs allowed for some much-needed R&R before the mission began.

Because it was Ramadan (the Muslim month of fasting), eating in public before evening was frowned upon. We had to laugh as we snuck around looking for hidden corners and stairwells to eat in like it was illegal (in some places, like the mall, it was)!

It is summer in Dubai, which means temperatures were in the 40's (celcius) and very humid. Stepping outside felt like taking a hot bath. The moment the camera went outside from an air-conditioned building or car, the lens fogged up.

Dubai city and mall displayed such wealth. It was as disturbing as it was magnificent. Julie found the cuddly toy she always wanted but never knew existed!

Touchdown

Well, we made it to Uganda! We arrived yesterday and had our orientation today. We met with the head of the I.T. Department, our new work colleagues (the development guy, the technician and the Mac guy) and a bunch of other Watoto Church staff members. Apparently, there are about 600 church staff and many people we met couldn't wait to get us to come look at their computers. It looks like the work we will be doing is mostly in coding languages and operating systems that we like and are used to, so hurray for that! Other opportunities include teaching regular classes to the older children from the children's villages, about computer stuff and where it can take them.

The place where we are staying is about 1/2 – 1 hour's drive (depending on how much "jam there is on the road" lol) to Watoto Church where we will be working. It is pretty spacious (which is very nice for us, especially considering how crowded this city/office is) and clean. We even have a shower head with hot water coming out of it (though it doesn't fit in the holder)!

We still have a few more stages of orientation to do, but we will probably make a start at the work set for us tomorrow.

We are very tired and busy getting settled in at the moment, so more updates/photos will have to follow shortly.

Thank you so much for your support and prayers. We really appreciate you!

Bits and Bobs

We just spent a week packing, moving stuff into storage and cleaning our house. It was a very big job. Most nights, we went to bed after midnight. The last day, we were up for 22 hours. It was hard, but we made it with God's help and a few well-timed, helping hands.

On Sunday, Massey Presbyterian Church presented us with Woolly, a sheep puppet which is meant to be the 'ambassador' from our church's children. It will be coming with us to 'see what life is like in Uganda' (and get lots of photos with the children in Africa, etc. to send back to church!). Then the pastor prayed for us to send us off.

We are now 'homeless', with all our worldly possessions (aside from those we are taking with us) locked away in a storage facility. We are staying at Jordan's parents' house until we fly off on Friday afternoon.

Here's one of the turkeys we are currently living with!