Tickets Booked!!!

We booked our tickets to Africa today (it's like a 2-3 day journey to get there from Chicago) and will be departing on May 1st for 22 days in rural, 3rd world Uganda.

The area we are going to, Kapelebyong, has been hit hard on multiple fronts over the years. This area was heavily hit by the LRA (Lord's Resistance Army), who killed most of the men and took all the young boys to fight in their war. Secondly, this area has experienced long periords of drought and many communcable disease including hiv/aids and malaria. Throw this all together and you have a situation that creates many orphans, in fact Kapelebyong has over 506 orphans in 1.5 sq miles. Our mission can be summed up by saying, we want a better life for these orphans and the people in this area and we hope our efforts will take them from dependency to freedom and sustainible living.

While we are there we will be helping the village cultivate and plant a 3 acre parcel of land as well as teaching them how to care for the crops and training them how to harvest them once they have matured. We will also be identifying potential leaders in the village and training them to manage their new crop resource in our absence. The overall goal of our mission there in May will be to enable the village to no longer be dependent on aid to survive and to provide them with a source of income for their village so that they can have a prosperous future.

We are still very much in need of your help to make this trip a success. The trip and our effort there is going to cost roughly $8000 when it is all said and done. The money is going 100% to provide direct help to the people of Kapelebyong and will make an immense difference in their lives. To put it in perspective, a good working wage in the area is $1 / day for hot grueling labor in the sun. I have been contributing as much as i can towards this amount in order to make this trip happen but i NEED your help.

The bottom line is that without your support this trip be limited in how effective it is, we will not be able to accomplish all of our goals, we will not be able to help as many widows, we wont be able to feed as many orphans and we wont be able to effect the lives of as many people.

You are all my friends and most of you know me very well. You also know that it is very very rare for me to ever ask for anything of my friends, especially money. You also should know that in order for me to ask you for something it must truly be something that is very dear to my heart.

I know that times are tough for a lot of you as they are for me but i would like to sincerely ask you all to join me on this effort by giving a donation towards this trip. Even if you can only afford $10 or $20 dollars please know that it will help and you will be directly participating in making a child's life better. $39 in kapelebyong can feed, cloth, house and pay for schooling for an orphan for an entire month. This is real, significant change for the people here and I ask every one of you to please give something.

You can make a donation by simply clicking on the paypal donation form at the top right of this blog. Also, for those who would like to make larger contributions or would like to make a tax deductible contribution you can send your check using the information below.

Thank you all for taking the time to read this note and for your prayers and financial support as we are in Uganda.

Peace and Love,

Adam

Donation Information:

For Tax Deductible donations please send a check and the information below to the following address.

Please make checks payable to "The River Academy" and place "Uganda" in the Note section of your check.

Address:

The River Church
302 Academy
Kalamazoo, Mi 49007

Please also include the following information for tax deductible donations:

For Luke and Adam
Name:
Address:
Phone:
Email: