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Setting: Good Shepherd's Fold: 120 acres filled with a farm (pigs, cows, goats and occasionally monkeys), a school and six orphan homes surrounded by sugar cane fields and one of the larger rain forests in Uganda in one direction and Lake Victoria (the second largest lake in the world) in the other direction. Only 30 minutes from the source of the Nile.
 | | Hayden attended The Good Shepherd's Fold School for 2 days. See the muzungu in the back (ma-zoon-goo -white person as those who don't know us call us) |
The Cast:
Claudia- a lady from Colombia, South America who has adopted 3 Uganda kids already and has four others that stay with her. She handles all the adoptions for Good Shepherd's Fold and does much of our accounting.
Mark & Amy: A couple with 3 kids who have worked with international schools in South Korea and Singapore. They now handle all the farm management, house mothers (ladies who stay with and take care of the orphans), maintenance, and handle intake of orphans.
Katie- A nurse from England who leaves in July. She cares for all the medical needs of all the staff, kids, and school children.
Dennis- A mand who grew up as a child at Good Shepherd's Fold after his mom was killed by the Lord's Resistance Army and his Dad died of AIDS. He is the main guy that helps Robb deal with our high school and university students.
Keren: Our Ugandan Head Administrator. She is tough as nails, very wise and helps us avoid countless mistakes.
Warfields- Robb directs education for GSF, heads up Mercy Ministry for GSF and deals with all the older students whether in high school or university. Sheila after getting our house settled and schooling our kids, will help with organization at the school and donor communications.
Focus: Good Shepherd's Fold started out solely as an orphanage to deal with the AIDS crisis. A veteran from Vietnam who lost his legs saw the orphan crisis created by AIDS. He opened up his home and started caring for the kids. However as it matured he thought if we provided care for certain destitute mothers or fathers their kids might not end up in an orphanage. Mercy ministry and social work have therefore become bigger focuses at GSF. We constantly walk a fine line between trying to empower a local community to care for their own destitute and realizing that many of the communities we are dealing with are so poor that they simply cannot provide all that is needed to even meet basic needs. We therefore offer a feeding program for mothers with young children that are malnourished so that their children do not end up at GSF because the mother cannot feed them. Additional examples that we have dealt with in the last two weeks:
- A father who was recently paralyzed by a stroke and cannot move 1/3rd of his bodies but has four children under eleven. The eleven year old takes care of his father and cooks for all the kids. His wife left him after he had the stroke and at that point he bought poison to kill himself and his children as he though they would starve to death anyway. Fortunately, some community members brought him to church and a pastor helped to give him hope through faith in Christ. While trying to encourage the community to do what they can GSF is providing medical assistance to see if the father's condition can improve a
 | | Boy who lives with his Grandma and has rats bite his feet at night. |
nd hopefully the kids can stay with their father. - A mentally insane mother who locked herself and her children into their mud hut. She was found still covered with blood from childbirth several weeks after giving birth and human waste all over the floor. The children have been taken to GSF while counseling services and mental health experts attempt to treat the mother.
- A grandmother who is attempting to take care of her abandoned grandchild in her tiny mud hut but has a problem with rats continually biting their feet. We have yet to come up with a solution.
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