Health Day and improvements to St Mark's school site

A very successful Health Day took place at St Mark's school on 5th August 2011 in conjunction with a team from the International Medical Hosptial - see some photos from the day at http://blog.suubitrust.org.uk/.

Pupils and parents were tested for HIV and malaria - of the 245 people tested for HIV only 4 were found to be positive - they were started on treatment and referred to other centres for continuous care. Of the 93 pupils tested for malaria 13 were found to be positive - they were also treated.
A summary of the day concluded that most of the children were found to be in good health and no major illness was suspected in any of the pupils. Majority fo the pupils were suffering from minor infections mostly fungal and upper respiratory tract infections. Most of the pupils were dewormed.
Further plans are being developed as to how the health of the children, staff and parents linked to St Mark's school can be improved possibly through regular visits to the school by a medical team.

In addition, a new water tank and guttering have been installed and we also look forward to the completion a new school gate over the summer holidays. A school sign has also been commissioned following a kind donation from Prestwood Infant School. Many thanks to the staff and pupils who donated money.

Claire is home

Its great to have Claire home safely after 5 months away in Uganda - the highlights from her time in Uganda in her own words are below:

The highlights of my the final two months in Uganda are in bullet form as I would be here for days if I wrote about them in full! · Young Leaders and Teens Ministry § Seven of the young leaders were presented with their own bibles on the final leaders session with me as a reward for being committed to the work of Teenagers ministry and for showing dedication to their responsibilities. § Amazingly God has provided the ideal person to hand over the work of the teenagers to, appointed Wilson (a local primary school teacher), a God given man as the leader of the Teenagers Ministry and he will move it forward with the support of the team which we built up during my time there. § We had another day Teens seminar where we looked at the final gospel, John and learnt that John’s message within the gospel is that ‘Jesus is God’ and that with Jesus, nothing is impossible! · We (myself and some of the young leaders) visited and spoke at the local Compassion Project in Maliba, we lead the morning devotions and bible studies for the teenagers, 12 made commitments to Jesus that morning. · I managed to complete the Life skills Programme at St Mark’s school – including Assertiveness, Self Esteem and Goal setting with the years six and 7. Please pray that the new concepts which were taught to them will really impact their lives over the coming months and years. · One Sunday morning I was invited to lead the Teenagers at , a church about an hour away from where I have been based –over 50 became Christians for the first time or made recommitments that morning - It was amazing! · I did some preaching at some of the local churches, over the final few weeks being in the hills, which was a huge challenge and privilege. · My friend Jo Withers visited for about 8 days at beginning of July. We had a fun week together, visiting Queen Elizabeth National Park for the day with Hillary and Wilmon, visiting many local people for lunch and making Jo tag along to all the teenagers and school stuff that week. · A team from Onelife came out and was with me for the final week of being in the village. We then went to Mbale in the east of Uganda for the final week. We did some awesome stuff which included running a Onelife conference for over 200 young leaders, leading seminars, visiting local projects, including the local Children’s ward to pray for the sick children and a street kids project working with over 700 street kids. We visited the amazing work happening in some of the slums in Kampala. We also saw God answer our prayer for a small girl who had been missing from home for a day in an area where 40 children go missing or are kidnapped every month.