It was during this era (a dangerous time when IDI AMIN was the president of Uganda) that  the Lord gave me the vision Canaan Children’s Home was born after.

On another occasion, I was found at home with my family and they started shooting at us, looted my household property. They bound me with ropes and I was thrown on their truck and taken to Kampala where they had a special place for killing people. On the truck I found 5 more pastors whom I knew and so we became 6 in total.

We were kept in a room which stunk of human blood in a house called the Nile Mansion. After three days soldiers came and asked us to denounce Christianity and become Muslims so that we could save our lives and be set free. Because of the excessive torture and hunger, four of the pastors accepted to be Muslims and they were circumcised and immediately set free. The other pastors and I persisted and after three hours we were told to get ready for death. We were taken outside with our faces blindfolded; our hands held backwards and they shot their guns at us. My fellow pastor whose name was John died instantly. I was shot on the right hand, the soldier thought I had died and then we were left there on the ground. They never knew that I was still alive. So, that is the way I miraculously escaped death.

After that, twenty-five of us were thrown on the back of a truck and the driver was commanded to take us to a pit in the forest and dump our dead bodies there. After dumping us in that state, I got a vision “Isaac, I have saved your life so that you may save the lives of my fatherless children”. In that state I got a vision in which a lot of children were coming to me and these children were hungry and malnourished. In fact children seemed like they were naked, moving skeletons and the voice when on to say, “Isaac I will be the father of those children through you”. Immediately I felt strength in my body and I tried to stand up but failed since I had spent days without eating anything and bleeding so much; so I crawled on my knees from the dead bodies. I really cannot tell how, but when I woke up, I found myself in the home of a herdsman who I later learned was looking after his master’s cattle. The herdsman saw me and carried me to his home where I gained consciousness. He nursed my wounds and the next morning he took me to a clinic on his bicycle. He was my good Samaritan and paid my medical bills. I recovered after five days of treatment. I asked him to go and check on my home since I had feared going there on my own.

When I arrived  home, I found everything was looted and my house burnt to ashes. My wife had gone to hide at her parents’ home with our two biological sons James and Samuel. So many pastors were escaping into the neighboring country, Kenya. I also got an idea of escaping too and the Lord made it possible for me to go into Kenya by train. We stayed in Kenya for 9 months and after Idi Amin’s government was over thrown, the Spirit of the Lord led me to my church in Buziika.

Time passed, by 1982, I had almost forgotten about the vision and the words of the lord in the forest. One day,  a lady came to our church with two children. The mother told us that the Lord had led her to come to our church. She stayed for three days on the fourth day she abandoned the children and escaped leaving the children behind. It wasn’t until after two days then I remembered the vision of becoming the father to the fatherless. Today these two girls are now married. Then again in 1986, a widower came to us and asked us to help him support his two sons because he was sick and old, after few days the old man died and the children remained with us; one was four years old and the other was eight years old. We took them to school each day and they became part of our family. They stayed with us until they reached adulthood and were self-reliant.

CANAAN CHILDREN’S HOME

In 1996, we realized a home was necessary as more and more orphan or abandoned children were coming to our church. I remembered the vision in its full light and a great conviction came to me to help these children. My wife and I rented two rooms for those orphans near our house. We started that home with four children and by July 1997, we had received eight more ages 4-13 years old. We tried our best to cloth and feed them and also meet their basic needs. To our surprise children continued to come and we could not stop them. By 1998, we had twenty-four children enrolled and I was obliged to open another home at one of our local churches in a village called seta. We helped them with the little finances we could get from God. The most difficult problem was the education of these children, their feeding and health care  but  we trusted in God’s providing hand.

In 1999, Canaan Children’s Home became a registered ministry with an orphanage of 30 children. And that year was the year when our ministry was low in finances and we needed some real partners to support in this work of promoting the vision that God gave me.

Through this ministry, thousands of children have been helped and blessed; many have become teachers, doctors, nurses, engineers, preachers, evangelists, pastors like William Muyanja, Isaac Mwesigwa, Enoch Kwagala and many other professions.

Currently, we have 58 children (2 in kindergarten, 25 in elementary school/primary level, 31 in high school). We ensure that they are well equipped and able to sustain themselves both spiritually and physically. We still welcome and take-on vulnerable children as the lord leads us. I thank God so much for his provision and care to us through our friend, sponsors, donors and well-wishers who are able to stand with us to help us fulfill God’s call for Canaan.

GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

1. Children are people too and Canaan children’s Home main objective is to bring the vulnerable, abused, abandoned, Orphans and needy children out of the street and turn them into good Christians and responsible citizens. We desire that they come out of the miserable life they are leading to a bright future.
2. It is our desire that the orphans get help; find meaning in life, and to belong to the home.
3. To help them not to think that life ended when they lost their parents, or abused or abandoned. We desire to be the fathers of the fatherless as the Lord commissioned us.
4. We desire that all these children get good education so that they may be self reliant in future and we want to train to help other orphans by ensuring that the school has well trained and qualified teachers who are well facilitated to do the work well.
5. To give these children good health services by ensuring that the health facility is well equipped with clinic supplies and well trained and qualified medical personnels.
6. To ensure that these children are well feed with a balanced diet so as to keep them healthy.