CMS Ireland Ken and Judith Finch

A Day in the Life Of...

2008-03-04T00:00:00Z

Dear Friends,

We thought you might like to see a short video of the work going on at Kiwoko. The video was taken by Kate who visited Kiwoko recently and has made her video available on You Tube. Here is the link and hope you enjoy seeing a bit of life here at Kiwoko.

God bless,

Ken & Judith

Happy New Year

2008-01-08T00:00:00Z

A quick note to wish you all a Happy New Year and hope that you all enjoyed your time at Christmas.

We trust that all those resolutions for 2008 are going strong and will continue to do so throughout the next 12 months and beyond! (is that ever the case?). Anyway here’s an update on our last post. It looks like Ken will not be doing the 2008 Belfast marathon after all – there goes one New Years resolution. Due to changes in our home leave we will not be home in May and so for Ken that’s off!

How ever the good news (bad news for Ken!) is that we are home in time for the Dublin marathon and so it looks like on the 27th October we will be in Dublin supporting and laughing at Ken (That’s Judith will be laughing anyway)

God bless you in 2008

You Heard it Here First

2007-10-09T00:00:00Z

Personally (Ken here) I blame Niall Manogue.

Niall recently left Kiwoko to take up the post of Regional Mission Partner with CMS Ireland. While Niall was at Kiwoko we would run together to unwind from a day in the office. On one of these runs Niall challenged me to run the Belfast marathon – thinking that he was not serious I said I would if he would. That was me thinking of course that Niall would not be so – what’s the word – foolish.Anyway it seems that he is and so we have committed ourselves to running the Belfast marathon on May Day 2008 in Belfast.

We will be running to raise much needed funds for Kiwoko Hospital. Maybe I should put a bit more financial info here from time to time, but basically we need to raise the majority of our funds from voluntary donations. A big proportion of this comes from Friends of Kiwoko Hospital but running Kiwoko has constant financial demands and when the average person locally earns much less than $1 per day then you can see how we raise very little money locally. Anyway I will try and keep you posted on progress – this weekend is the Kiwoko Chase when I will run 16 km along with 49 others from Luwero to Kiwoko – some photos may follow!

Thanks to all of you who support Kiwoko…if you want to learn more get in touch…

Life's Hard

2007-09-12T00:00:00Z

Life’s not very easy anywhere but the harshness of life here in rural Uganda was brought home to us very strongly recently.

Audette and Fiona were visiting Kiwoko on behalf of ISIS – a charitable foundation which Audette founded some years ago with a friend. ISIS support our baby intensive care unit and we went out to visit a mother and child who had spent some time on the unit. This was meant to be a happy visit – the baby had come onto the unit weighing just 700 grammes and the staff had seen him through to a weight of about 2 kg. Victor as he was named on the unit had then gone home, with his mother due to bring him back for follow up.

Unfortunately the mother had not brought him back for further examination but we had heard recently that he was doing well. As soon as we arrived at the house the mother began to cry and it was clear that things were not good. Susan the nurse in-charge of the unit spoke to the mother and it turned out that Victor had died just the previous week. He had indeed been doing well and putting on weight but had then suffered from some diarrhea. The mother had gone out to dig in her garden in the morning and when she returned home Victor had died probably from dehydration. In Uganda it seems death is often unnecessary and certainly an early trip to the hospital could have resolved things for Victor but too often people delay to bring children to the hosital and the result is too often tragic.The visit was extremely sad but brought home the reality of life for many Ugandans.

The drive home to Kiwoko was a little sombre in the car. On arriving back at the hospital we met a few other staff who were obviously quite distressed. Two staff had lost young children – one of our cleaners had been away with the local church choir when her 2 month old baby daughter died suddenly and unexpectedly. On the same day one of our security staff lost his young child who had been on the paediatric ward for some days.

Death comes here at a faster rate than we are used to but the grief remains the same.

My Dad

2007-07-12T00:00:00Z

Ken’s Dad – Charlie – passed away on the 9th June. Although he had been on chemotherapy treatment for a period of time he never recovered from his last dose of chemo and in the end died very suddenly which meant that we did not get home in time again to see him. We are very thankful however that we did come home about a month earlier and we were able to spend some time then. As my sister said he died the way he lived not wanting to cause anyone any problems. We thank God for him – I’ll not say too much except that I have never known anyone to give of himself the way he did. Nothing was too much trouble for him and since his death we have heard more stories of acts of kindness and generosity. A wonderful husband, father and Grandfather. Thanks too to all who gave in lieu of flowers – so far about £3000 has come in which has been donated to Kiwoko Hospital – a fitting testimony.

Games in Sunday School ??????

2007-05-14T08:27:00Z

Judith was describing to a colleague a game she was planning to use with the children in the Hayashi Youth Group. "We often used this game with our Sunday School back in the UK" said Judith. William a member of staff and a pastor in one of the local churches looked up in surprise. "You use games in sunday school ?" The concept seemed very alien to him. Having been in churches where children – who easily make up more than half of the congreagation – are expected to sit through an entire service including perhaps an hour long sermon, it is not surprising why the idea of a game was so novel. Clearly there is a big gap in reaching out to children. A team from St Marys in London visit Kiwoko each year. They work alongside the hospital Mission Team to support, encourage and provide training. This year one of the team – Emily – who is a teacher was able to provide some training for Mission Team members and church leaders on creative ways to share the gospel with children. In a country where 50% of the population are under the age of 15 the need to reach out to children is paramount. Please pray for:

access and availability of sunday school material – there is very little available in Luganda the hospital mission team as they seek to implement the training they received the CMS Ireland summer team coming out in August to lead two childrens' outreaches

Nurture & Discipleship

2007-05-08T08:13:00Z

It's well known and documented that Christianity has taken a firm hold in sub saharan Africa – in Uganda for example the vast majority of the population call themselves born again Christians. We have also become acutely aware of the truth of another saying – that the Church in Africa is a mile wide but only an inch deep. Although many have accepted Jesus as their Saviour the truth is that this does not always impact their lives in a meaningful way. It has been sad at times to see individuals who profess to have a faith yet their lives do not always reflect this. No doubt there are different reasons for this and we recognise that we are all weak and the challenge of living a faithful life is there for us all. We often hear local christians measuring the success of a mission or outreach based on the number of people who have responded. Although this is good all too often little is done in regards to discipleship and Bible teaching so for many who profess to be christians there is not always the knowledge or understanding of what it means to live a christian life. So please pray for:

The hospital Mission Team and in particular Shadrach Lukwago as they seek to bring the gospel and to disciple new christians in their faith. Pray for the continued use of the Christianity Explored course For Judith & Christiane (a German colleague) as they continue to lead and develop a fellowship/Bible study for the housekeepers who work in the Guest House and in other staff homes – in this group there are 2 muslim ladies For Ken as he continues to think and pray about how he can be used in this area of ministry

Personal snippets

2007-05-03T09:01:00Z

As we write this we are in the UK for 2 weeks. Ken's Dad is currently undergoing chemotherapy and so we have come back briefly to spend some time at home. Our time back home has also coincided with Ken's sister Heather and her family moving to Dungannon. Our brother in law Andrew has been appointed as the new Rector to St Anne's and St Elizabeth Churches in Dungannon and Moygashel. It has been good to be able to give a hand to Heather & Andrew in their move. In doing that we got back down to Drumcliffe for a final visit while Heather & Andrew were still in residence – a beautiful part of the world with some great people in the congregation there. Judith was in her element packing and cleaning! It was also very special to be at Andrew's institution in Dungannon and to see many family and old friends. Andrew, Heather as well as the children – Hannah, Patrick and Megan received a very warm welcome which was great to see and of course the spread of food was fantastic in true Northern Irish style. We return to Uganda on Sunday 6th May and get back to Kiwoko on Monday – it will be good to catch up with everyone there

Back to Kiwoko

2007-02-18T09:33:00Z

We have just picked up Andy Garside from Entebbe Airport – Andy has come from St Pauls church in St Albans our home church in England. We have taken the opportunity to do a bit of shopping while in Kampala and to get on the internet. We have been back in Uganda for a week now and in many ways it feels we were never away. We take that as a positive sign. It was great to be home however and to spend time with family and to catch up with some friends – unfortunately time did not permit a lot of travelling. Difficult as it was to say goodbye to folk at home we feel very connected and continue to enjoy texts, e-mails, comments etc. Thanks again for all your support

Going back

2007-02-07T08:39:00Z

It has been great to be back in the UK for 3 weeks to spend some time with family and to catch up with folk, We have split ourselves between Ireland and England and it has been good catching up with people. In many ways the year ahead at Kiwoko feels daunting and of course it remains difficult saying goodbye. Please pray for us as we go back to Kiwoko and in particular that our time there is one that we can encourage and develop people and practices. Likewise that we will develop and be encouraged by what is going on around us. We have been challenged that what we do at Kiwoko should not lead to dependency which can happen too easily in our desire to be useful. So I suppose as we go back for the next year our desire is that we would be enable others to do more. Thanks for all the support Ken & Judith