Each month we pray for two of our mission partners. Sunnyside’s local prayer focus in October is Home-Start Herts, and internationally JENGA Community Development Outreach.

Home-Start Herts

Home-Start Herts is a local community network of trained volunteers and staff who help families with young children who have multiple and complex issues. They work in the family’s home using a tailored approach to meet individual needs.

They ask us to give thanks for:

• all their volunteers, their board of trustees and staff members – for their commitment

They ask us to pray for:

• all the families that are supported as they increasingly face multiple and complex issues
• the volunteers, that they may have strength, confidence and resilience in those they support
• that more volunteers would come forward for training so they don’t have to turn families away due to a shortage of volunteers
• more funding to enable them to continue this valuable work.

JENGA Community Development Outreach

Bex Henderson grew up in Sunnyside Church. During and after university, she made regular visits to volunteer with JENGA in the city of Mbale, Eastern Uganda. That was more than a decade ago and, before long, Bex settled in Namatala, a sprawling township on the edge of the city and home to some 44,000 people, many of them refugees from the strife-torn areas of northern Uganda. She became the founder of the Loved Children’s Centre (Loved), one of JENGA’s most thriving projects. Sunnyside has been regularly supporting Bex through our Gift Day but over time, we have, as a church and individually, also made donations towards a new Loved building (2020/21) and, in 2022, towards a Community Building, erected on the same site.

Loved is a day centre, caring principally for very young children in the years before they can go to school. Many of the children are from the Namatala slum and are those deemed most at risk of malnutrition and abuse, some of whom have been born with disabilities. They receive early years education, as well as nutritional and medical support. The new Community Building is a place where parents can learn sustainably to care for their children and to acquire new skills which can help provide financial stability for those who’ve previously fallen victim to addiction and poverty.

We pray weekly for Bex and Loved on a Monday morning (and for our other international prayer partners), but for this Prayer Focus, she has sent us these wider/longer-term prayer points for October:

• For God to eradicate malnutrition in our district, through the combined efforts of JENGA’s community nutritional health programme and Loved’s life programme. That every misconception or lie about malnutrition, including witchcraft, would be broken off.
• For a breakthrough from addiction and domestic violence in Namatala.
• For healing over everyone with TB and prevention of the spread of TB in Namatala.
• For protection, healing and fullness of life over every child who is identified by Loved and that every child would reach their potential (especially those with disabilities). Protection against accidents too.
• For a united team who are equipped and empowered to make a change in their community through their work at Loved.
• For financial security and God’s provision and favour as we apply for grants for our work to cover the next few years.