Suubi is building a vocational center


 It is Friday and I am asking you to pray for Suubi Teen MOPS in Uganda. This has been a historic week for the group. This week Suubi purchased land to build a vocational training center. It is 5 acres 1 and 1 /2 hours North of Kampala. I am learning that land does not really have the same meaning in Uganda as it has in Germany. For the most part (naturally there are exceptions) land is a commodity to buy and sell in the West. But in Africa land is not often owned by individuals. The land belongs to families. And these families care for the land, but it's owned by the generations to come. Not many sell their land. So land is rare and expensive. It is special that we could find 5 acres of good land that we could purchase with a legal land title. They used lawyers. And the boundaries of the land will be legally laid down in stone tomorrow. So now Suubi Teen MOPS owns the land. It is not owned by one person...it is the possession of generations of women who God willing will be educated and fed and loved.




This week I also thought it could take years to raise the funds to begin to develop this land. Our vision is large. We want a 12 room school, many toilets, solar panels, staff houses, student housing, a fish pond, giant vegetable gardens, and a chicken coop. I estimate it will cost between 30,000 and 60,000 Euro to develop this property if we do a lot of the work ourselves. We are getting bids from contractors. Right now I am only guessing the prices. Hopefully, I will get a more solid idea of the cost in the coming weeks. But the incredible news is more than half the funds have already been raised to build the school. I am cautiously optimistic. We can actually get bids from contractors and begin to plan the actual buildings. We will set priorities. Build-in stages. The school will be built first. Homes are available in the community to rent. So if we can not afford the housing, we can build that up over time. First will come to the school, the gardens and the fish pond and chicken coop. Eventually, we will add the staff and student homes. We need wisdom. And we also need honest contractors. The Suubi vocational school is fast becoming a reality. Next week, God willing we plan to start the wall of love fundraiser. For any donation, you can have a brick dedicated to someone you love. Or you can write a word of blessing to the woman, or a Bible verse. It will be 3 lines, up to 15 characters per line. We will have these bricks built into the school building. They will be a testimony of the love of the people who helped us build this school. We hope you will consider buying a brick. ..or many. We have 15 to 20 women in Kampala who sew. They do not plan to move to the country. We are considering renting a store for them to sell used and new clothes. Right now our women are buying large bundles of used clothes. They fix the clothes up and go door to door in the slums selling the clothes. They also sell to retail shops. Because the tourist market is dead right now due to Covid, and international shipping is expensive and unreliable we need a local business model. A quality resale shop is the only thing that seems to make sense to us. A year's rent will cost about 8,400,000 shillings or about 2000 Euro/ 2300 USD. I would like to give these women one year's rent on their store. This would enable them to get established before they need to worry about making enough money for rent. They are operating as a Community Based Organization. They will be selling quality used and new clothes that they make at a fair price. If this appeals to you and you wish to support this experiment please donate to our website. Note that it's for the store. We will be sure to apply your donation to the rent. Eventually, we want to help start other stores. As we train women to sew, we would try to help them start stores in their communities. A chain of used clothing stores run by Teen and single moms. It's only an idea we hope to test. At the moment everyone is healthy and employed. Our kids are all doing well. Pray the schools will open in the country of Uganda. Our kids are thriving in private schools, but so many children are not thriving. We still need 1 more sponsorship family for one school-aged boy. And we need an additional 6 sponsorship families from January on. You can read about sponsorship on our website. Pray also for more vaccinations to be made available in Uganda. Pray for the continued health and safety of our people.



The women have also been making baskets. They have gotten carried away with color! We need a place to sell the baskets. Right now we have 50 baskets made. Pray, we find a good connection to sell our baskets. Before you ask, these were the only colors that the women could buy. But now the browns and blacks and natural colors are also available. And they will be making more baskets in natural colors too. Juergen and Nicole will probably be traveling to Uganda in early December. They will be carrying baskets and dolls home with them. So in Germany, they can be perchance in time for Christmas. If someone will sponsor shipping I can also ship to the USA. But our last shipment of dolls did not arrive. So I am reluctant to use anyone but DHL. And that's expensive. Thank you.
www.teenmopsuganda.com Some of the photos are only ideas for the school.

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