Rita was a loving mother of six young children.

Milly, a 10-year-old girl in Uganda, watched her mother Rita cry.

“I lost hope completely…. I saw all the time (my mother) was crying,” said Milly, 18.

Milly’s mom, Rita, had just become a widow. She cried because she had lost her husband. But she was also angry and scared. Her six little children watched their mother cry almost every day.

Her in-laws, who once accepted her warmly, had become vicious.

They were out to harm her and her children. They wanted her land.

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Her relatives cut her crops and threatened her with machetes.

They took over the little shop Rita and her husband had owned to make money, causing Rita’s children to drop out of school because she couldn’t afford the fees.

One relative told a passerby, “I am going to cut this lady into pieces and her children, they are not leaving this piece of land… why are they insisting on staying?

Rita barely had any money left. She walked to a police station and begged them to help. They told her about IJM.

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Then supporters like you came in. You sent IJM to win her case. The court affirmed Rita’s rights to her land. IJM also helped police arrest and jail a relative that had been moving Rita’s boundary markers.

Thanks to support from people like you, IJM helped Rita set up a small business— a piggery to raise pigs for sale.

Nowadays, Milly watches her mother smile, not cry.

“If it weren’t for IJM maybe my mom would have given up by now,” said Milly. “Maybe God answered our prayers through IJM—and we are free.”