Land for Camp Site

Dear Family and Friends,

Thank you very much for your prayers! God has heard us and acted in a very strong way! We have a signed purchase agreement for the land and money to back it!

A couple days ago we sent out an email requesting prayer for the negotiations we were going to be in the very next day for the purchase of 1100 beautiful acres of land on the shore of Lake Victoria for our Manhood/Womanhood/Youth Camp. I have felt strongly that we need that land but we didn't have any money with which to negotiate. God has provided! The night before we went for the meeting, I received a call from a dear friend wanting to invest in this venture. Because of circumstances he isn't able to donate the money but he is loaning/investing the money needed for the down payment. We also got another significant donation from another dear friend. So as we went into the meeting we were able to talk with confidence.

Negotiations went well! We have now signed for 715 acres of the land. As I understand it, because of the pressure the cooperative is under, they have offered the second plot that would have made the offer 1100 acres, to someone else and said they thought we weren't interested. I assured them we are interested, so they are promising to bring that title to the negotiating table soon.

We have put a small down payment down and promised the rest after the two weeks it will take them to have the boundaries verified and an amicable agreement made with the squatters.

Thank you so very much for your prayers! Please keep this in prayer. We still need to raise approximately $120,000 to complete the purchase of the 715 acres. We also need approximately $150,000 more for the remaining pieces of land It is a lot of money for an organization our size.

Some of you may be wondering if the equatorial heat has been affecting my brains in trying to get such a large piece of land. Others have wondered about the size of the land and if this is in line with our mission of "bringing the Fatherhood of God to the fatherless. These are very valid questions. Below are my copied and pasted answers to those questions.

It is obviously a very large piece of land and is much bigger than we would be able to use in the near future. However, there are several reasons why I hope we will be able to buy all of it:
· Land prices are going up continuously in Uganda. Foreign investors from Arab Muslim nations, China, and other Asian countries are buying up land. The land is far enough away from Kampala that the price is still not very high but the land grab is spreading. Getting land of this quality and size in the future will be difficult.
· This is an investment in the future of ministry and the Kingdom of God here in Uganda.
· Ugandan culture is very different from US culture. Here there is only one volume on any radio or PA system and that is maximum. It is not uncommon for us to have our sleep disturbed by blaring music from “discos” that are several kilometers away from us. If I buy a relatively small piece of land it is likely that in the future someone will put in a disco on the beach near by and keep our campers awake through the nights to all kinds of bad music. It would be very difficult for us to do anything about it. If we own this whole piece, the nearest neighbor would with two possible exceptions, would be on the other side of a hill or quite distant. Without this whole piece of land, we could end up with a piece of property that was unusable for our purposes because of the neighbors.
· There is a fairly large piece of forest on the land. It is being encroached on by sawyers and charcoal makers. It would be wonderful to be able to preserve the beauty of the site.
· There would be much land available for hiking and nature trails.
· The population of Uganda is growing very fast and the market for the kinds of facilities we would provide would continue to grow. We would be looking at increasing the types of services we provide to include things like a retreat center and could have camps for different ages or groups.
· When we talked to the leadership of Hume Lake, one of the foremost Christian Camps on the west coast of the US, they told us to buy as much land as we could get a hold of. Hume Lake is what it is today because many years ago some young men with forethought made a big investment in a large piece of land in the mountains of California.

Our purpose is to bring the Fatherhood of God to the fatherless. We have been very aware of the need for a Manhood/Womanhood/Youth CampTraining Site and have been planning that direction. We saw that if we don't strategically train boys and young men to be true, godly men, many of them will grow up to produce children that are in effect fatherless if not in actual fact. Now we see even more that we need to make bold steps into this area if we are going to play the role we believe God has given us in reaching the fatherless, being a part of transforming Ugandan society, and reducing fatherlessness.

We are learning to look way into the future in our planning and are that much more aware of how strategic we need to be in preparing for the future. This isn't just about now or the next few years; it is about 20 and more years from now. The site is very strategically located to serve children's centers, churches, schools and needy children - often fatherless, from Kampala, Mukono, Lugazi, and Jinja and beyond. A significant portion of the population of Uganda comes from those areas. Those towns and the surrounding areas would likely include as many as a million fatherless children not to mention the many thousands of other children who could benefit from the programs we could offer.

Thanks again for your prayers. Goodbye for now.

In Christ,

Jay
Director
New Hope Uganda