update kitgum part 1

thankyou to everyone who has been praying faithfully.
i am sorry i have not posted in a while, but i have some time now so i will update quickly and post pictures later.
i have three days left and time is of the essence.

Last wednesday i decided to go to Kitgum which is an area in the north of Uganda close to Sudan.
It was not an easy decision to make, but i am so glad i decided to go. I worked with Chris and Milen again (the two guys i met in Gulu) and along with Irene and Sarah (two student and Gulu University studying medicine) and Genero an elder in Chris's church we went to three schools to do abstinence training and aids education through the True Love Waits program.

Wednesday we were at Kitgum Integrated Secondary School a school that has about 600 students and 10 or so teachers. Chris surveyed the students and found that while people often get married about 24 they start having sex soon after the age of 10. We used an illustration called the multiplication factor to show through this trend how promiscuity in the area can easily spread disease, unwanted pregnancy, and adultery. Irene read a true story about a girl who had sex with her uncle so that she could get money for school, but then ended up contracting HIV. Then we gave them an opportunity to write down questions they had about sex, aids, and abstinence. Some kids as was expected did not take this seriously but there were some great questions. This gave us an opportunity to speak into their lives and situations and to abolish some of the lies that have been spread about these issues. Some questions were hard for me to read much less try to answer. I answered a few questions but was ultimately left shell shocked from the experience at the first school. Sarah then followed up what we had been doing with a gospel presentation and 37 kids stood to accept Christ, which was awesome. We were going to get them connected with the schools Scripture Union (bible study and fellowship group), but we found that they did not even have a Bible. We gave the students an opportunity to sign commitment cards for abstinence and very many did. I was able to talk to some of the students afterwards about school, sports, and just life which was good.

We got back to our hotel that night and discussed what worked and what did not. We read over some of the questions that had been difficult and planned strategies to help us the next day. Then we prayed together. We had dinner at the Pastor Francis' home. He is a pastor in Kitgum so we told of the kids who accepted Christ so he could follow up and get them into church and give their scripture union a bible.