A Little Child Shall Lead Them--in the ABC's, too

I was incredibly encouraged by my visit to ECM's team of Americans and Ugandan nationals working in the Gulu District. I visited our sponsorship program in the Tegot village (formerly called an IDP camp, but the government now wants to call it a village in keeping with its policy of encouraging people to return to their home areas).



My job, besides seeing how the team was working together, was to visit with the guardians of the children in our sponsorship program. Only a very few have living parents. Most of the parents were killed in the war with the LRA or died of AIDS spread in the war. Many of the kids live with a very old grandmother.



I was supposed to encourage the parent figures in the kids' lives, but they did so much to encourage me! One of them was thrilled that her little grandchildren are coming home and showing her what they learned in school. She herself was never able to attend school at all because the war brought education to a standstill for two generations. Now her grandchildren come with their papers and say "Look, grandma. Today we learned the letter b. See, this is what it looks like. This is what it sounds like: bbbbb. This is how you write it. Look, Grandma."