A group of seventeen church members and friends from Buckhead Community Fellowship embarked on their first mission trip to Northern Uganda during the summer of 2007.  This was the first time for many of us to visit and serve in Africa. We spent almost a year planning this mission trip and learning about the terrible plight of the children in northern Uganda. Our church, under the leadership of Pastor Todd Leonard and Dr. Keith Wood, adopted a small school called UNIFAT in the town of Gulu. We raised over $30,000 in funds by soliciting donations and organizing a special concert by Wintley Phipps. We collected books, school supplies, sports equipment, and clothes through generous contributions and sent a huge container to Uganda.  We knew, however, that it was not enough to just give funds and material goods but that we were also called to travel to Gulu and give our time and love to the many children that needed help.

After a seventeen hour flight to Ethiopia, a night of lay-over, and a two-hour flight from Ethiopia, we arrived in Kampala, Uganda. Early the next morning seventeen of us squeezed our luggage into two vans and journeyed over bumpy roads and large potholes for 6 hours to Gulu.  We finally arrived at the school in the late evening, and what a warm welcome we received! Abitimo, the founder of the school, several teachers and students greeted us with great joy. The children sang the most beautiful song to welcome us and this brought many of us to tears. We were made to feel so very special. It was painful to see the poor condition of the school. Classrooms were unfinished with no windows, unpainted walls, unfinished toilets, no electricity, and no water supply.  Yet, with these meager resources, we would soon discover that this school is one of the best in town. 

For the next four days we spent time with students, teachers and community members.  We helped build a much needed fence around the school. We carried bricks that had been made by hand; we made mortar from gravel and rocks; we carried water in jugs from a nearby stream; we pushed wheel barrels loaded with mortar; and we dug trenches. What would normally take one hour to do in the US took the equivalent of a full day.  In addition to building a fence, we learned more about the students and the plight of the community they live in.  We discovered that UNIFAT serves over 1200 students, some of whom are orphans.  Classrooms house over 90 students per grade, and as we visited each class, it was striking to see several children cramped into small benches.  Teachers are paid less than $180 per month. We learned that parents are very eager to give an education to their children despite their poverty. Somehow they eke out money from their meager income to pay the school fees and buy uniforms and shoes for their children. Although school fees by US standards seemed a low $200 per year, for these parents it is the equivalent of almost half their yearly salary. Many can afford to send only one child to this school. For the most part, if these children get a 7th grade education, that is all that they can afford for a lifetime. Some of the parents are widows who have lost their spouses from HIV or from 20 years of war.  Others are the only parent to these children, yet are battling HIV/AIDS. We were stunned to learn that many mothers have fought two tragedies: one caused by endless war and the other by a deadly disease. 

It was even more disheartening when we visited an internally displaced camp not too far away from the school. These camps house hundreds of people. Imagine a family of 10 cramped into one hut. These parents could not afford to send their children to UNIFAT.  They shared with us the pain they experience by being destitute, displaced and hopeless for so many years. They shared their fear of returning to their homes from fear of being killed. They appealed to us to give them ideas and hope about ways to get out of the life they live. Their culture and community have been destroyed. War has ripped them of their dignity.

We realized quickly that UNIFAT is not just any ordinary school. The light of hope in the community is in educating the young generation of children. For many, UNIFAT is the only beacon of hope.  Yet even UNIFAT is threatened by corruption.  We soon discovered that the local government officials have been questioning the land on which the school sits and were uncomfortable with the construction of a simple fence,  the very fence we had come to help build!   Abitimo took us to visit personally the governor of the town and numerous officials, and to our surprise they were all very impressed by our willingness to help the school and soon stopped questioning the construction of the fence. We did not realize how much impact our presence in this community would have.  The simple contributions of building a fence, singing songs, and dancing with the children in the school, listening to teachers and parents share their hopes and dreams, and even our visits to government officials showed that we cared and made such a difference to all.

On the last day of our visit the students of UNIFAT organized a small performance for us.  The children sang songs and danced their traditional dance. As they danced, we once again saw a glimmer of hope and joy in their music and culture, and realized that no matter the hardships they face, they rejoice in what little they have.  They are hopeful and resilient despite their poverty.  They expressed their gratitude and they asked us to come back and continue singing songs with them, because we made them feel special.  Once again our group was moved to tears. 

Upon our return to the US, we realized just how blessed we are here, and that the journey of partnering with those less fortunate than us is just beginning. There is so much more to do in northern Uganda, and more to do for UNIFAT. Our partnership will continue. We want to raise more money for UNIFAT to finish the fence, dig a well on the campus, fund scholarships for students whose parents cannot afford to send them to school, complete the school buildings and give them a cafeteria, and we want to encourage more people to go to UNIFAT and serve personally. We have all been transformed with this experience and know so much more about the power of God at work through each of us.

For more information on Mission Gulu visit our website at www.BuckheadCommunityFellowship.org. Correspondence can be sent to Buckhead Community Fellowship, 4100 Roswell Road, Atlanta, GA 30342.

by Joy Searcie

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Georgia-Cumberland Conference Mission for Kingdom Growth:
Share the everlasting gospel through personal and public evangelism, church planting, small group fellowship, community involvement, and healing the broken by applying media, technology, and talent to reach all in our territory.