After going to Russia for the past five summer, we are taking a totally different path. The LORD is leading us to go to Uganda. We will still be working with Teen Missions. The American team going this summer will be a foot washing team.
The first North American mission trip to Uganda arrived in 1991 and Teen Missions started its first national Boot Camp there in 1992. In 1996, 17 acres of land was acquired, which is located in Nakabango, a village near Jinja, on the road to Kamuli. Like at most bases, an annual Boot Camp and an effective BIBLE, MISSIONARY & WORK (BMW) Training Center is run on the property. In 2006, a second Boot Camp, called the Promised Land, was opened in northern Uganda on the shores of Lake Kyoga. Teen Missions in Uganda also facilitate seven AIDS Orphans Rescue Units (AORU) and one Matron Unit for young girls who live too far away from school to go home each night. On the main base the staff and students are involved in many agricultural projects such as fishponds, gardens and raising livestock. In 2007 Teen Missions became the owner of a secondary (high) school in the village of Bunalwenyi. The government pays tuition for each student and Teen Missions may hire staff and teachers to ensure that it is a Christian school. At present (2010) there are 600 students being educated at the school. The school ca mpus has two girls’s dorms and one boys dorm. Many AORU-sponsored orphans are going to the school and are staying in the dormitories. In January 2010 work began on a new base in the extreme north west corner of Uganda in a town called Kabuko. Now under construction, this base will include an AORU Rescue Unit, Boot Camp and BMW making it possible to reach youth in northern Uganda including the Sudanese and Congolese who also live there.
Fertile plains and mystic mountains define the land-locked sub-Saharan African country of Uganda. Winston Churchill dubbed it, “The Pearl of Africa.” Thirty million people reside in Uganda. English is widely spoken, along with many tribal languages and dialects. Indigenous beliefs, Protestantism and Islam are all major religions in Uganda. Sadly, poverty and AIDS are two glaring realities that Ugandans face on a regular basis, though coffee plantations and farming are major sources of income.
