Ticketed

Our tickets arrived today – nine of them. One month from today we will be boarding a British Air flight to Entebbe, Uganda. A tenth member of our team will have left the day before and will be waiting on us. She’ll be returning later than us as well, so she was ticketed differently.

Seven of the ten of us traveled to Uganda about this same time last year. That may tell you something about the experience. Everyone wanted to return. And we picked up a couple of others. I wish you all could go.

So what are we going to do? We arrive on Monday, June 5 at 5:30 AM and make the four hour drive to Mbarara. After lunch Patrick Forrester and I will launch (that’s what you do with an astronaut) right into the pastors’ conference. We’ll be teaching the Gospel of Mark and helping about five dozen Ugandan pastors learn how to develop teaching and preaching outlines from the texts. That will be going on all day from Monday afternoon until Friday at noon.

Patrick will have some opportunities to speak at some local schools. Other team members will be involved in a variety of ministries and projects –

§ Teaching members of “Go Make Disciples,” an HIV+ group of believers, how to make some creative greeting cards that will be sold back in the states. This will develop as a cottage industry for them. Melinda will be leading this project and others will be helping.

§ Filming short dramatic skits on AIDS prevention done by members of the “Go Make Disciples” group, editing them, and reproducing them on VHS and DVD so that they can be shown in clinic waiting rooms and other places. Jenna will be leading the team who will work on this.

§ Daily visits to homes of AIDS patients through the Words of Hope ministry. We did this last year as well. Diana Forrester is leading this ministry. All of us will get to participate.

§ Prayer-walking the university campus and other places where ministry is underway or about to be developed. Andrea Stephens is coordinating this work that all of us will be involved with.

§ Leading a “Hot Topics” conference on purity and integrity issues for university students and young professionals. Pamm Muzslay is developing the curriculum for this and getting us organized.


§ Building high efficiency brick and mud cook stoves that will help women use 70% less wood or charcoal and that will also be vented so that they do not have to breath the smoke as they work. Most of us will get our hands dirty in this project.


Besides those I’ve mentioned, Andrew Forrester, a student at UT, will be returning with us. Last year he helped in so many ways, including leading a guitar seminar for university students and building benches for a village church. Kelli Hancock, a student at A&M, will be going along for the first time and will stay an extra couple of weeks to work with Larry. Courtney Johnson, a high school student and veteran missionary in Mexico, is making her first journey to Africa with us as well.

I’ll post a bit more about our preparation and plans in the next few days.