What do pillow cases have to do with dresses for little girls?

Virgil met a wonderful lady, Jacquie, a few weeks ago through a mutual friend from our church - Cherie Jordan.  When Virg told Jacqui about our upcoming Uganda trip and who we would be visiting, including orphans....well, Jacquie's heart melted.  She told Virg about the pillow case dresses she has been making for other ministries that travel to third world countries and asked if we would like to have some.  Would we ever!  So, she got some friends to help her and they made 30 pillow case dresses in just a few days! (some of them are pictured  here)  She also gave us some pants made out of t-shirts for the boys.  What an awesome lady with a huge heart. Jacquie is willing to show anyone how to make these dresses - so if you're interested just let us know and we can set up a time to show several people all at once.

Pillow case dresses by Jacquie

T-shirt pants

Aren't they so cute?

We will distribute these items to Jonah's children (he has 55 now! 5 of his own biological children and 45 that he and his wife, Sylivia, have welcomed into their home, many of them orphans).  It will be so much fun to watch them as they receive something new and pretty.  And then, of course, we will get pictures of them - the kids absolutely love to have their pictures taken!  So be sure to check back sometime next week to see that blog posting.  We leave for Uganda on Wednesday, September 7th.

Thank you, Jacquie, for your heart of love for children you've never met.  May you know the blessing of the Lord all the days of your life!   Certainly the children will literally wear your love for them!

Here are some of Jonah & Sylivia's children - lots of little ones to enjoy the dresses & pants!

Putting feet to the plan...

The Uganda Team 2011 is busy getting things in order to leave for Uganda on September 7th.  The Halls and the Millers are engaging members of their church to help fill luggage with toys, clothing, "sweeties" (hard candy), and anything else children might like.  It will be so fun to see these things distributed among the kids - treats are very rare and most appreciated!  The Robinsons have collected many toothbrushes and toothpaste tubes, which I'm sure will be well received by all!  The Ricks' have a mix-n-match collection going on - a little bit of this, a little bit of that.  All together it equals two 50 pound bags!  Between all of us we will have 16 - 50 lb bags, 8 - 40 lb carry-ons, plus 8 small bags for personal items.  We are going loaded for bear! :)  Our trip home will be much, much lighter as we will leave at least one bag per person there in Uganda.  Don't ya just love how God puts people of like heart together?  What a blessing this team has been already!

We are told we will be in Uganda during the rainy season and to dress accordingly.  That just means it will be a wet 75 degrees during the rainy season, which is still shirt sleeve weather for us Oregonians!  The rain usually comes in "gully washers" and doesn't last too long.  But it does leave a gooey mess as the dirt is a clay mixture - very sticky.  But we are glad that it rains - much better than the draught Uganda had last year.

We know God has some awesome things ready for the Team and for those we have the privilege of ministering to.  We look forward with great anticipation to seeing God's plans, purposes and pursuits worked out.

First Team Trip for Say Yes

We are very excited to be taking a team of six others with us to Uganda this year in September!  There are 4 adults and 2 teenage girls coming besides ourselves.  We believe each one has been hand picked by Holy Spirit for this trip.  We are certain each one has a unique gift the Lord will use while in country.

This will be the fourth trip for us, Virgil & Joy, to Uganda.  The first one was in 2008 as part of a team of 29 with Show Mercy International to visit the children we sponsor in an orphanage - you can read more about that on our website www.sayyesinternational.org.  Since then we have gone by ourselves and at no time did either of us think we would ever take other people with us to this wonderful land of promise...yet, here we are doing exactly that!  Of course, this is God's plan, God's purposes, and God's pursuits - it really is ALL about HIM!

We are looking forward to posting our journey on this blog. Having never done this before it will be interesting to see how diligent we are to post stories and pictures - but we'll give it a shot!

Pastor Bret Smith is leaving for Uganda August 2nd and has his own blogspot to post his journeys to. We encourage you to follow him at bretsmith.blogspot.com.