Submitted by: Manette Monteclaro

On my trip to the village of Nagasi, I met a young lady by the name of Josie Montoya, who has been a part of the Nagasi Baptist church for eleven years and is now serving as a nurse aide in the clinic. Here is her story:

“My name is Josie Montoya, I am twenty years old and I started going to the Nagasi Church at the age of nine when Pastor Levi started it. I grew up with my parents and three other brothers. I am the second to the youngest and the only girl. Like most of the children in our village, I grew up in a poor family. My father works at the sugar cane plantation, chopping sugar canes, loading them in to a truck and bringing them to the sugar mills. His work day begins at six in the morning until four thirty in the afternoon. With this back-breaking job under the heat of the sun, he earns P200 ($5) a week to provide food and clothing for his family of six. He gets paid every Friday. My mother stays home to care for the family especially one of my brothers who has epilepsy.

“Together with my family, I started attending church at the age of nine. When I reached the age of fourteen, I accepted the Lord as my personal Lord and Savior. I began to understand what He did for me and how much He cares for the people of the world. With my faith growing stronger everyday, I became involved in the ministries of the church especially with children. I helped with the preschool kids. Later, I became very interested in the youth ministry during my high school days and even started singing in the choir.

“Since my parents cannot afford to send me to college, I began to pray for God to supply my needs. I got a scholarship from the Nagasi church and went to a nearby school and studied midwifery. It took me three years to finish my course. Being grateful for the opportunity of getting an education, I am now very much involved in church ministries. When the Family clinic opened as the result of Bright Hope’s support, I assisted the head nurse who was in charge of the clinic. Together, we do basic health care education especially for expectant mothers and mothers with very young children. With the limited supply of medicines, we help those who cannot afford to buy pain medicines, allergy tablets, cough drops, and antibiotic ointments for minor bruises. The clinic provides basic health care services for the village since the nearest medical center is still an hour away.

“I am so grateful to Bright Hope for its support to the Nagasi project without which the clinic would not be made available for the people in the village. I am a recipient of your kindness and generosity. I am able to help others and use the gifts God has given me to make a difference. You have given me hope and the many children who are part of our school and church. Thank you and may God bless you all.”

Truly, Bright Hope has made a difference in the lives of the people of Nagasi.

Our partner in Uganda tells us this story about his visit to a refugee camp in the northern part of the country . This camp is home to thousands of destitute men, women, and children displaced by decades of civil strife and oppression.

“I had just completed a training seminar for pastors and church leaders in this region, followed by an open evangelistic outreach. During the outreach, I shared the love of Christ with the people, who had suffered for so long. I told them that God cared about them and that He would bring them hope for their future.”

After sharing the Gospel message with a large crowd of people, I was preparing to leave the camp. Suddenly, one of the camp leaders placed a small box in the middle of the crowd. He asked the people to come forward and give me whatever they could to show their appreciation of my visit. “Butch gave us the Word of God,,” said the leader, “and now we need to give something to him.”

“I didn’t want to take anything from these people, who were in such obvious and desperate need themselves. I was greatly humbled in my spirit and I couldn’t even speak, as I watched them come forward one by one to drop whatever they could into the box. I remember seeing an elderly woman, crippled and hunched over, as she dropped 100 shillings (about a nickel) into the box. A few people carried their chickens (one of the few they had) and placed them near the box as their gift.”

The total of this collection was about $58 U.S. dollars, which doesn’t sound like much, but considering it was given by people in this kind of poverty, it t was a remarkable gesture indeed.

“The people in these camps are not beggars,” Butch said. “They want to work and earn a living. They want to take care of their families. But they have very little, if any, way to make a living, in their current situation.”

Your gift to Bright Hope’s projects in Uganda and with refugee families will help people like these to gain a foothold to a better future. Thank you for remembering them.

By Aaron Subich

I was talking with a friend last weekend about the genius of the placement of the kitchen window above the sink in her cabin. The view was superb, and the scenery before me — a pond, creek, field, sky, and wooded hill was captivating.

I realized later that night, the kitchen sink in my own house had a window above it, with a very picturesque scene as well. Only, I had long been bored with the view and no longer paid attention to it. There is simply no expectation that I will see anything worth seeing. I confess that its like that in many areas of my life - I don’t have many expectations of things being new, or worthwhile, or impactful. 

There is this barrier up not unlike the kitchen window.

This picture however, slammed right through that barrier like a well struck golf ball.

You don’t want to look at it, but it compels you to look. It might even, like it did me, bring some tears to your eyes. Maybe you feel guilt. I felt anger. Just God – Really?! How? And kind of amazingly, the answer came…

Me? I’m an answer?!?

“What, what in the world do a little, starving African child hours from death, and me, a successful American in his 20’s with the world available to him have in common?” I asked.

The answer to that… we both have a common creator and a just God. It is kinda scary to think about. I have so much. She has nothing. I have a future, security, food, friends, family, wealth, comfort, health, even entertainment. She has sores and dysentery, is starving, could have AIDS or has lost family members to AIDS, and clearly is alone (unless you welcome the company of vultures), and unless a series of dramatic events occur rapidly to her betterment, she won’t see tomorrow.

Why is that scary to me?… precisely because God is a God of justice. God, being just, clearly knows the innocence of that poor soul, and He surely knows the wealth I enjoy every day. Just imagine that if my emotions rise up and I became furious at this injustice; this atrocity, pictured above, that is so graphic in its reality we can barely abide it… Just imagine the indignation God himself must have for those that go on living as though they hadn’t seen this picture.

In any event, I watched my little brother apologize profusely for the wayward golf ball he once knocked through my parent’s kitchen window. You know,… the one right over the sink.

I can only hope this one breaks through yours in the same way.