Kris Swiatocho and Our Team

About Christ Divine Fellowship Ministries, Uganda

We are registered with the Government of Uganda as the Christian based FBO (Faith Based-NGO) operating Church ministries.
Our mission has been broad since the inception of this ministry in 2012. We have been engaging in a number of ministries such as:

DivorceCare ministry: We work with Churches, train their leadership and equip them with tools to help them minister to their congregations and members of the community who are hurting due to the trauma of Divorce and Separation.
Single Adults Ministry: Through partnership with Kris, we work with Single adults to offer them hope, discipleship, etc directing them to Christ. Helping them to grow in the love and knowledge of God as they learn to trust and lean on God for their heart desires.
Fatherhood Ministry: Teaching men both young and old to provide protect and lead their wives and children. Fathers are empowered to put the interests of their families above themselves. Below is a photo of a Radio program we have been hosting teaching fatherhood. In this show above, we had American Missionaries living in Uganda who had visited our city; we took them to speak in the Radio. It takes around $200 to host a one hour Radio Program once a week for a month (4 times a month). The cost is more than that but the Radio normally gives us over 80% discount to host a one hour fatherhood program during this COVID-19 pandemic.
Girls with Great Potentials: Empowering poor girls to see life beyond their circumstances; look at become a global leader thus providing solutions for world’s challenges/problem. There are so many girls whose potentials are not unlocked, worse of it all is that these girls gradually grow to become wives and mothers, the cycles of vulnerability go as far as to their great grand children. These girls if not help at the teen age stage or somewhere before they are married off while face rough life since they are unable to complete in market place, they are affected in all spheres of life.

It is unfortunate that the flights of these girls are known by people around them include governments in Africa but little is being done to lift them from the problems they face and that account for the reason why poverty among African women is high, it is the reason for gender inequality in Uganda.

In Uganda, the numbers of girls who enroll for basic education are normally higher than the boys but as the years on as they sit for Primary Leaving Examination, the number of Girls get reduced due to a number of issues that include;
-Lack of sanitary pads
-Cultural belief and practice that prefers educating boy child to girl children in the name that boys are the heirs of the family but girls get married off
-Defile and teenage pregnancies
-Child marriages
-Lack of support from the Schools, community and parents makes the girls to drop out of school who are always left the option of getting men to marry them and they are teen agers.

Therefore, Christ Divine Fellowship Ministries have decided to bridge this gap through her sister and partner organization called Girls With Great Potential Lira. Our Vision: To empower vulnerable girls with vocational skills in order to help them become self reliance and productive. We do this by using vocational skill training as the tool for empowerment and development to bring transformation that will reduce vulnerability of vulnerable girls in Lira and Alebtong Districts. Our target group are girls who have dropped out of Schools and Child Mothers. Our objectives:
1.To reduce the risks the vulnerable girls face
2.To expose Vulnerable girls to vocational skills that will make them be competitive in the market place
3.Help the vulnerable girls to unlock their potential through vocational skill training thus improved standard of living
4.Using locally available resources in order to enhance sustainability
5.Provide Girls with entrepreneurship skills to enhance their marketing or investment skills
6.To partner with local, national and international individual donors or organizations in order to achieve the goal, vision, mission and objectives of the project.

Our Needs:
1.Training tools and materials
2.Identifying market demands
3.Employing trainers
4.Acquiring display center

Training areas
1. Tailoring and Garment Cutting
2. Fashion design
3. Beads making
4. Value addition and packing of Agricultural products for sell and export
5. Exporting non Agricultural products like clothes, beads, etc
Food Relief: There are so many families that are going without and medication in Uganda, most especially the elderly persons and vulnerable children. Child headed families are facing it rough as well as vulnerable elderly persons who are helpless. What about children born with HIV, these kinds of children do not know why they take ARVs.
Plight of Children Ministries: Northern Uganda went through so many civil wars right from 1980’s until around 2005 when the last civil war led by Joseph Kony ended. Since then, the region is facing the post war impact that has so many consequences such as high level of poverty, HIV/AIDS prevalence is high, etc. This has impacted the lives of the younger generation badly since many of them lost their parents or their own lives as many were kidnapped and recruited as child soldiers. Many adults were killed and those who survived were forced to leave their homes to settle in towns or far away in places which had security.

A number of kids ended up on the streets, rate of school dropout increased simply because they are either orphans or having one vulnerable parent. Children from single parents families dropped out of schools and joined street life where they get involved in petty jobs like fetching water, washing utensils in the food restaurants, collecting scraps, etc in order to earn a living, some got used up and are still being used up by the adults, these has caused them to be in conflict with the law as challenges force them to do dirty activities such as stealing, teen prostitute, robbery, etc.

In 2012 when our ministry was established in a suburb in Lira town in a place that was a camping site for poor people who had left their homes about 10 years ago, our first Church members were kids from the community who came to us to seek for help. What we like about them is that they later turned to be community evangelists who brought their friends and relatives to Church.
With our background of working with street kids before we came to this community to plant a Church, we had to embrace these kids and henceforth started kids program for all age groups. We have been blessed by the Lord to be part of their livelihood. Our homes became their homes, their pains became our burden, and their joy became our encouragement and so on.
Today, we run two centers that provide Psychosocial care and support, discipleship, counseling services, Sunday School, DC4Ks, vocational training skills for School dropout, as well as basic primary education for orphans.

OUR INTERVENTION: We had to come up with the strategy to help the children in their plight.
The first strategy was to share our lives to them using the bible, most of us were products from those heated war torn areas. I for one was born in the year when our country had a military coup, at the age of 7 another coup took place and the government was changed, so between the age of 7 to 28 I lived sleeping in bushes either twice a week or thrice a month, then time came for two years we could not sleep in our houses. Christ was the only hope that we have, to live in Him or die in Him was the only hope we had.
The second intervention was to link the kids to services and that really helped so many of them because some NGOs were able to give them some livelihood skills that made them self reliance but when the war ended, most of NGOs closed their offices and services thus so many kids and families were left without hope. As a result, many kids dropped out of schools.

The current challenge that we have is education and feeding those children we work with their caregivers in order to help kids live a better life but their biggest challenge is education, feeding and other basic needs.
Below are some of our activity photos.

DivorceCare.org Ministries, Pastor Thomas Mike, Facilitator/Trainer

Pastor Thomas Mike, Full Bio
Church: Christ Divine Fellowship Ministries, P.O. BOX 520, Lira (Uganda)
Email: tmikeobong@gmail.com
Phone: +256 773 623 374
Donations are Needed in any amount to help continue the ministry here in Uganda.

See list of Churches that have conducted Divorce Care in Uganda.

Pastor Thomas is the verified Uganda DivorceCare Facilitator. He conducts the 12-week video course in his church in Lira. He is also available to come to your church.

Additional Ministries Working with Pastor Thomas or Uganda

A Father's Walk Ministries, Matt Havilland, Teacher/Trainer

Matt Haviland, Director
A Father's Walk Ministries

I have been blessed to partner with Pastor Thomas Obong of Christ Devine Fellowship Ministries in Uganda in helping to bring one of the first Father's Day celebrations to their area! With God's leading, we pray this will become an annual event and possibly even a national holiday. (Father's Day here in America began a little over 100 years ago through a couple church services also and look at it now)

Restoring the Heart Ministries

Julie Woodley, Director
http://www.rthm.cc/

Our hope in 2015 is to re-visit three distinct areas of Uganda: Gulu (children, teenagers and their adult mentors), Pader for the first time (young adults 18-25) and Kampala (adult women with HIV). Our mission is scheduled for the Summer of 2015. Our hope is not only to minister to the people of Uganda, but also to teach them the basic skills in the healing from trauma. During our mission in 2013 we filmed all of our ministry work and have begun work on creating a documentary highlighting the healing work and giving all of the glory to Our Lord, Jesus Christ.

Operation Blessing, Microenterprise

Imagine the struggle of being a parent and not being able to feed your children, take them to the doctor or provide them with safe shelter. For these hardworking families, the burden of poverty, lack of resources and sickness often keeps them from reaching their greatest potential. Through Operation Blessing’s microenterprise and community development programs, families are becoming equipped for success through life skills training programs such as sewing, baking, jewelry-making and carpentry—as well as community farms and gardens, home construction projects, animal husbandry, small business loans and more!
http://www.ob.org/microenterprise/