Tuesday, June 14, 2011

The Coppedges


A short update.

I spent the whole day with Billy and Joanna Coppedge and their two daughters Elsie Jayne and Lucy May, seen above sporting their new T Shirts. It's good to see Red Sox nation alive and well in the middle of Africa!. Joanna is now pregnant with twins! What a household this is going to be!

I just had a wonderful time playing with the girls and talking with Joanna, but also spent much of the day talking with Billy. He has one of the most active minds I know and is very inquisitive. We talk about God, family, ministry, Africa and the great ideas. What else could one want? These conversations took place between morning tea, a visit to the White Castle for lunch (the most upscale place in Arua) and a wonderful fresh BLT sandwich and mango cobbler for dinner. Delicious! Joanna please send the recipe.

My daughter, Victoria, and the Coppedges are the reason I find myself regularly in this remote part of the world. While at college, Victoria felt led to take a semester off and go on a missions assignment. She chose Uganda and worked for three months at the Heritage International School as a teacher. While there she lived in a house next to a young couple who had just arrived in Kampala and were doing their accelerated language program – the Coppedges. They became fast friends. Gail and I visited Kampala while Victoria was there to celebrate her 21st birthday and there we also met the Coppedges. A year later Victoria and I returned to Africa to visit her friends and we decided to go to Arua to see Billy and Joanna. Billy was to pick us up and drive us there (530 Kms), but his truck broke down. The plane had already left for the day and we were left with no other choice than to …..take a taxi!!!! What a ride. The driver didn’t know where he was going and neither did I. I tried to steer by the sun only to remember we were on the equator! We passed roaming bands of armed men, but no-one stopped us – bursts of fervent prayer. Eventually we found our way to the Coppedges and that was how and why I first came to Arua! The rest as they say is history.

Please pray for the Coppedges as they reach out to pastors and train them in Bible story telling. Billy is a master story teller. They will be coming home in July for the birth of the twins and then returning to Arua in January, hopefully in time for us to be together again on my next trip.

You can follow their ministry journey on their blog, the link to which is on the front page of my blog.

This will be my last Blog in the field. Tomorrow I fly to Entebbe, go to see Mercy Junior school off the Entebbe road near Kampala, go on to a meeting with the Executive Director of the Uganda Institute of Research, speak to some members of the International Chamber of Commerce in Kampala and then have a brief visit with the head of the Uganda Coffee Development Association. Then it’s back to Entebbe to fly through the night to Amsterdam before going on to Boston and arriving on Thursday afternoon, at which time I’ll find out whether the Bruins have won the Stanley Cup!!

I will try to process this trip and write a summary blog sometime next week. While it takes time and effort to write this daily missive, I enjoy thinking of you all as I write, I appreciate the prayers and friendship.

See you back in Boston!
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The Genesis of the 5810 Project

Vision

When Jesus was asked what was the most important command he answered: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your heart and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments”

As a follower of Jesus, it is challenging to obey these commands, particularly with regard to my neighbors.
How can I love my neighbors? How can I love my neighbors in a global context? How can I love my neighbors who are struggling to thrive in developing countries?

The classic response of western Christians has been to “send”. Whether we send those that have been called to vocational ministry, or send money and resources to “give to the poor”, or occasionally send ourselves on short-term missions trips. Each of these has value, but is this enough? Is it effective? Is it all that God calls us to?

The questions become more complex when you consider that no matter how much money we have spent on the “war on poverty” over decades, the problem remains as acute as ever. We are not winning the war, even here in the US. Are there other approaches?

As I struggled with these ideas, I was led to consider Isaiah Chapter 58. Here God tells us what true fasting is – to loose the chains of injustice; to set the oppressed free; to share food with the hungry; and to provide the poor with shelter. Then verse 10 says “…if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed then your light will rise in the darkness and your night will become like the noonday.”

“If you spend yourselves in behalf of others …….”

While we should send, we need to spend too.

What does it look like to spend ourselves?
For me I have been led to spend myself as follows:
• To go to a developing country, and to go repeatedly.
• To develop personal relationships with innovative leaders
• To use my own specific gifting and experience in business
• To find ways to move people out of the poverty cycle on a sustainable basis
• To invest money in parallel with my activities
• To share the love of Christ with my neighbor and to spend myself on their behalf.

5810 Project

The 5810 Project is predicated on the belief that while “teaching a man to fish” will provide him with a fish diet for a lifetime, it will not lead him out of poverty. To escape poverty people need to develop sustainable business activities. The 5810 Project’s vision is to provide an opportunity for business people from developed countries to share the love of Christ with their neighbor by “spending” themselves on behalf of others who are trying to build businesses and break the poverty cycle.

The 5810 Project is currently focused on two principal activities in Uganda.

Arua
Arua is a significant market town in the NW of Uganda, with Sudan to the north and Congo to the West. It is an agricultural market town that has grown because of government and NGO activity primarily in S. Sudan, but now increasingly in E. Congo. While the town has prospered and grown, the native Aruans have not enjoyed this economic boon.

Our efforts in Arua are centered on helping the church and Christian business people develop sustainable businesses.
We work with businesspeople to analyze the market situation in Arua, to offer training sessions, to encourage and mentor entrpreneurs and to invest in their businesses.

Kampala
Jesus Commissioned Ministries (“JCM”) is a church founded in 2000 serving three poor communities on the outskirts of Kampala. The leadership of JCM has a heart to reach the many underprivileged children in the communities it serves. Without education, there is little hope for these children to thrive. While education is available, the costs are prohibitive for most families. JCM has established Mercy Junior School (elementary) for these children. In addition to education, the children receive uniforms, food and school materials. The school currently has over 50 pupils in two Pre-K classes and Primary 1 (P1)and Primary 2 (p2) and is building classrooms for P3,4 & 5 for completion in the spring of 2011.

The 5810 Project has helped Mercy Junior School develop its rudimentary facilities and to buy a neighboring plot of land for expansion. We also advise the administrators of the school on business and education practices and have steered them through a process of becoming a fee-baseda significant drive to parent involvement and elevated educational standards and outcomes.

Opportunity
We believe that the 5810 Project offers a significant opportunity for the body of Christ:
• Grass roots opportunity to create sustainable businesses and deliver families and communities out of the oppression of poverty.
• Many business opportunities are apparent with relatively small investment levels necessary.
• Opportunities for talented business people to connect personally with emerging entrepreneurs and spend themselves on them.
• Opportunity for the body of Christ in the developed world to share the love of Christ with our neighbors in developing countries.
• Transformational impact on the “spender” and recipient alike!

If you would like to discuss this further, please contact me Andy Mills at amills@tkc.edu