Greetings from Hands Across Nations (HAN). We (Keith and Carolyn Jones) are still in the USA due to Carolyn’s health issues but Lucy is continuing the work of HAN quite well. The new HAN office in the center of Lira is working out well so that we can soon downsize this year from the large house/office we have been renting for many years. The literacy classes in the Lango language and in English are continuing in both the Lira men’s and women’s prisons.
Below is a short part of a much longer letter from a prisoner who wanted to express his appreciation for HAN and from his viewpoint to explain his part in the literacy program and how it has affected many prisoners:
“I, Obaa Denis, was apointed the inmates’ co-ordinator (for literacy). But though we had faced some challenges, we never failed completely thus we tried our best to raise trainers among ourselves (inmates) to train the fellow inmates of which they did their best by training and graduating about three thousands inmates both from male and female sections.
The lessons learned from reading the Bible are positively changing our life of interaction with others leading to co-operative leaders and churches where classes have taken place when prisoners returned to their home villages and started community programs . Men and women who have learned to read and write are becoming teachers themselves and are training others of Bible discovery with small reading groups starting with the “Easy to Read” Lango Bible which HAN has fully translated.
We also do thank HAN for the distribution of reading glasses to our learners who were unable to see during reading and writing. Thanks, yours sincerely, Obaa Denis”
(Denis was transferred to another prison recently and we are hoping the prison commander will allow him to restart the literacy program there which was apparently not continued during Covid).
With gratefulness for our Lord’s working in the lives of Ugandan prisoners, Keith and Carolyn Jones