After months of praying and planning, I finally boarded a plane on the 13th of June to Entebee airport, Uganda. I was travelling from Belfast to Kabembe in Uganda, a little town 2 hours from the capital, where Africare has set up a unit to care for disabled children. This centre is called ACHERU – which stands for ‘Afaayo Child Health Education and Rehabilitation Unit’. ‘Afaayo’ is Luganda for ‘He cares’, and as this became my home for the next month, I truly learnt the meaning of this word! I travelled out with a friend from university, and neither of us were fully prepared for what we experienced in Africa!

After 166 days out of the UK, my time was up I was returning from one of the most emotional yet amazing trips I have ever done. As you all know, in June I ventured on a 5 1⁄2 month mission trip to Uganda and Zambia to help some of the world’s poor with a charity called Mission Direct.

Mission Direct is a Christian charity who support great projects amongst the world’s poorest people across various different countries. They do this by sending volunteers; like myself, on these life changing trips to show God’s love in both words and actions. I was starting in Uganda for the first two weeks where I was going to be working with children who had various disabilities. Then I would be spending the rest of my time in Zambia, running and hosting UK mission teams to help ‘Restore the gift of Childhood’. A good childhood is precious and thousands of children are deprived of this in Zambia. Due to poverty and loss of their parents, children are denied basics such as; Food, Shelter, Education and...a loving family. So like the rest of the Staff Team and Volunteers, I had been called to Africa, we just needed to get there....