Tuesday, December 6, 2011

The Deluge



This morning I said goodbye to Arua. It has been a busy but productive 7 days. Blasio and Samson accompanied me to the airport for an 11AM flight. We arrived a little before 10, only to find that the plane was waiting for us to take-off! We were going to fly to Yei in S. Sudan, drop off some folks and then return over Arua to Kampala. One has to be a little flexible in travel! I have been through yei before. It is a small airstrip well away from the town. It has a single grass airstrip. In fact in a single journey I experienced, grass, dirt and tarmac landing strips! Luckily, Eagle air was very efficient and had us turned around in 10 minutes and had us in Kampala almost on time.

Our regular driver, Charles , was there to meet me and take me to Mercy Junior School along the Entebbe/Kampala Road. Unfortunately when we got to the small side road that leads to the church it was closed for road repairs. We had to walk with my suitcase to the church, to the amusement of all the locals. There has been loads of rain in Kampala and the red mud was a sloppy clay mix. Anyway we made it to the church and spent time with Pastor Joseph, Dennis the new Head teacher and Prossy who has been running the school since its inception. They showed me the new construction and then we met in the small office to discuss future plans: More building, adding qualified teachers, enrollment and schoolroom materials and equipment.

I was noticing toward the end of the meeting that it was getting very dark fro 3:30 in the afternoon. (Kampala has power issues too and there were no lights). Then it happened – the rains came – and they came – for two hours straight. Now Mercy Junior School is built in a slum in a valley. When it rains everything flows downhill! We have spent a lot of time engineering the school to withstand water and rain. In some ways I had wondered why. Now I know. Within only a few minutes, there were raging torrents of muddy brown water running all around the school building. All of the ditches had become streams and the streams, rivers. In an Instant. And so it continued for over two hours. The good news was the school remained dry. The bad news was that I had no way out. There were puddles and mud everywhere, there were no cars anywhere and even if there were, they couldn’t get to us. I was experiencing that which had frustrated me so often – when it rains people don’t show up. I had a dinner meeting and I didn’t know how to get there.

Well the long and the short of the story was that Pastor Joseph was able to walk some way to a fellow Pastor who had a car and he was willing to take me to Kampala, if I could walk some way to where the car could get. It amused the locals no less to watch me pick my way out of the mud, following Dennis who was carrying my suitcase. Dr Livingstone I presume?! The two pastors took me to my hotel in the center of Kampala for which I was very grateful and so I made a contribution to his church!

This evening we had dinner with the folks from World Gospel Mission (WGM). Jonathan Mayo is an American, but was born in Burundi and has spent his life in Africa and wishes to spend the rest of it here too. I love hearing about all the things they are doing – church planting, pastor training, story telling, community health education and evangelism. The operation in Uganda is growing and they are making inroads into S Sudan and Congo as well. In addition they should take some credit for all the work we are doing, because the only reason I came to Uganda in the first place was to visit Victoria who was doing an internship with WGM in Kampala. As they say, the rest is history.

Blessings
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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