Praise God! The first fully-funded cause from our 2021 Holiday Campaign was “Share with a Widow.” We raised over $10,000 in support of Madam Joyce, a local teacher in Uganda who is losing her sight. The funds will help to equip her home to be handicap-accessible and fund sessions with her tutor in living as a blind person, Nakiwolo Juliet.
Written by Lawrence Ssemakula
Madam Juliet learned that she was losing her eyesight later in life. As everything changes for her, G.O.D. Int’l contributes to equipping this widow for life as a blind person.
This Past Tuesday, we organized to go and visit Nakiwolo Juliet , following the previous visit we had with her last week. We hoped that she would meet with Madame Joyce who is almost losing her sight and needing more help to navigate her way through life, now that she's partially blind. While visiting Nakiwolo this time, our goal was to connect her with Joyce to hear story and learn how she was able to cope, and even how she's been overcoming challenges coming her way in such a condition of blindness. As we learn from Jesus, he was able to impact the lives of many people that came to him in big numbers as he shared the word of God with them (Mark 2:2). Nakiwolo has such a generous heart that allows her to share her story and her faith and testimony to what the LORD has done in her life is such an impactful story that we desired that could illuminate Joyce in such a powerful way to trust and hope in Jesus as the healer. To know that she's not alone in this but we are all by her side to overcome it. Secondly, Joyce needs to know what opportunities are available in organizations that help the blind so that she can access them as needed. By meeting Juliet she would get a glimpse of what that might look like. At the moment she's very thankful to G.O.D intl for all the support she's received so far in terms of prayers, advocacy, hospital bills, etc. This has helped her feel loved, supported, encouraged and hopeful. The meeting with Juliet was something she was so much grateful for and looks forward to more of these times.
Nakiwolo Juliet, Joyce’s new tutor, will help her to acquire new skills so she can continue to work and provide for her children.
Acquiring skills is something that will help to make Joyce not only self-reliant but also a means to earn some income in the long run so that she can take care of her kids. This will take some time. Nakiwolo has over the years acquired some skills and she said even Joyce needs to learn skills as much as she can access them. Nakiwolo can do weaving and knitting and she's done it for many years. It has come with some challenges including some people considering the blind to be not perfect in their skills and so not wanting to give them projects to work on. She's also willing to share her skills with Joyce in Braille (this is a form of writing and reading for the blind) so that she can express herself or even teach others in the future when she's fully confident with the skill.
We hope that we can find more opportunities for Joyce and by doing so we'll be empowering her, giving her a voice in society just as Jesus was able to do for even the ladies that he encountered - for example the woman who had a blood issue, approached Jesus, he allowed her to talk yet she was in the crowd that could not give her a chance to approach Jesus. He listened to her and her healing was whole, she shared her story with the people where she lived, testifying to what the LORD had done to her life.No longer was she hiding and she was joined to God's big family. We really believe that God has given us such a great opportunity to demonstrate the love of Christ and advocating for the voiceless, and doing other things he did to change the lives of people and bringing recovery of sight for the blind and shining his light.
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