Angela Ross's Story
We started helping Ugandans because our older boys packed a couple hundred Operation Christmas Child shoe boxes a year, and one ended up going to Joshua Anywarach’s little brother. Josh wrote a letter thanking us and gave an email address, so I wrote back. We ended up emailing each other every night and “talked” for hours almost every night. He worked as a DJ at a Paidha, Uganda radio station then.
I started asking what his seven younger siblings would like and he amazed me by saying “immunizations”. So we sent money for them. The next thing they wanted was education. Our older boys decided to give up going out to eat so that we could send money for school. Josh enrolled all the kids. After Josh started to trust us, we were able to convince him to go to college, which was a huge leap for him. He had to quit his job and feared they would all starve. We eventually decided to raise money for his family to build a decent home. With the help of our church and many fundraisers, Josh’s house was built almost to completion. He finished college and ran for parliament. He has finished the house, and continues to educate his siblings, on his own.
Hannington Kakooza and Alec Johnson both met him personally, and provided me with the reassurance that he was indeed a good man who helped his community immensely. Their interest was primarily in the good deeds performed by Josh, specifically for those unrelated to his family. He has been involved in helping people with sustainable farming, helping children become educated, helping people find work, feeding those less fortunate than himself, finding sponsors for children in need, leading people to Christ, and many other things. We have seen so many wondrous things through our relationship with Josh. Once he mentioned that they would love to have more Bibles, which I mentioned in church. A couple weeks later, I came home to find a huge shipping crate filled with Bibles. A couple at our church donated the funds to ship them all over to Uganda.
Joshua has travelled to the United States to meet the President and was able to visit us in Vermont. He amazed us all at his dedication to learning useful information that he could take home to help his community, instead of wanting to act like a tourist and have fun. He visited numerous farms and electricity-producing facilities, and spoke to many people about his country.