ABOUT US

A Prayer for Friends

In 2012 my son, Nathan, and I were on a mission trip to Jinja, Uganda to work with our friends at Sonrise Baby Home.  At night we would talk about the day, share testimonies and pray.  One night some men from another mission team asked Nathan how they could be praying for him. He said with tears in his eyes, “Pray for God to send me friends, because I don’t have friends I can talk about God with.”  It broke my heart to see something he needed that I couldn’t fix for him. The men prayed over him that night.   

The next morning a small group of Ugandan boys showed up at the guest house. The boys and Nathan became inseparable from that day forward. The more we got to know the boys the more we knew they were the answer to Nathan’s prayer. They all loved God and they all had struggles. Little did we know that Nathan would be the answer to their prayers as well.

Real Life Struggles

When Nathan learned that the clothes the boys were wearing were the only clothes they owned, he gave them everything he had with him. Some days the boys would wait on the porch all day for Nathan to come home from serving somewhere.  We knew they had gone without food all day just to be able to play with their new friend.  So Nathan would bring out snacks he had brought from America and share with them.

One day one of them refused any food. He said he was fasting for God. These young boys loved God. One of them had a Muslim father who left them to fend for themselves. Their family struggles to survive, but sometimes the father comes back to them to get help from them. When he’s there he is angry that his son wants to follow Jesus. 

One of them found his sister-in-law and nieces bodies after a witch doctor had be-headed them and taken their hearts out.

Two of them (brothers) escaped from their hut being set on fire by their own father. He was tired of having the responsibility of a family so he tried to burn the family of seven alive.  

None of them had fathers to love and help guide them. But they knew God was their Father and they needed Him!

The Start of Friends for Hope 

One time when I was going back to Uganda I asked Nathan what he wanted to send the boys. He decided he wanted to send backpacks and help them with their school fees.  So that’s where it started.  From that time on our family has paid for these four boys schooling.  We eventually learned what an answer to prayer having their school paid for was.  Their mothers were all struggling, some barely able to provide food.  They didn’t know how they were going to be able to send their children to school. So they prayed and Nathan prayed a different prayer and God answered them all.

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Written by: Dana Whitton (President of Friends for Hope)