Uganda: Summer of 2003

A church in Uganda was selected to receive aid from a short-term team from the USA, based on the fact that this particular church had done a lot of work in preparing their building for a construction team. The missions team involved World Gospel Mission.

The team involved the World Gospel Mission agency, with their short term missions group called "Men With Vision". Despite this name, there were 6 women and 2 men on our team. One person was from Florida, and the rest from Oregon.

The original temporary shelter at the church site.

Moving rocks and preparing the ground under the floor. Some of the people in the background are paid local workers, and others are members of the church congregation. Many members of the church helped in the work. The missionaries have found that the more the congregation helps out in the work, the better the church does in the end, as the congregation has some investment of themselves in the work.

Mixing cement to make concrete requires water. These amazing kids hauled water up this steep hill on a bicycle from a considerable distance away.

Mixing cement with gravel and sand involved a lot of heavy work for brief periods. It was good to have a large number of people helping, as it got tiring quickly.

After the cement for the footing around the edge of the floor was in place, the cement needed to dry for several days. During this time, our group took several days off and visited Murchison Falls National Park, where we saw a wide variety of wildlife. As this part of the trip was more of a tourist activity, I have put the photos from this part of the trip on the VirtualTourist web site.

Upon our return, we participated in a service at the church where we were helping out. Generally, African church services last quite a while, but they decided to only have us around for several hours of it, as they didn't think that we could survive a longer service than that.

Pouring the concrete into the columns that will eventually hold up the roof of the building.

Everyone on the team, no matter how young or old, participated and helped with the work. Here, concrete forms for the columns are being cleaned for re-use elsehwere.

One member of our team was an art professor at George Fox University for some years. He filled in the missing blanks on the church sign, and otherwise completed the work.

This was our last view of the church before leaving the country.

Work did not stop there, however. In October, missionaries sent these photos to us, to show how the work progressed since our departure.

The congregation has pretty much completed the walls, and the roof structure is starting to be applied.

The large openings in the side of the structure are for opening during services. This will allow a considerable number of people to participate in the service while sitting outside the building.