Lulului: Pretrip Lui Update

Emily Bloemker, Rick Kuhn, and I leave next Monday for Kampala and then on to Lui. In Kampala Tuesday evening, we'll meet up with Anne, Shirley, and Jeannie from the Blackmore Vale Deanery, our partners in the trilink with Lui, and then Wednesday morning Marie and Göran (pronounced Yoran) from the Diocese of Lund in the Church of Sweden -- also in a partnership with Lui Diocese -- will join us all in Kampala at the MAF guesthouse.

The eight of us will spend all day Wednesday preparing for our time together in Lui. We are excited to be going together as an international team; we are all working to help Lui Diocese build capacity, and we are all committed to a global understanding of the Body of Christ, so this trip provides us all kinds of opportunities to work more cohesively with Lui Diocese and to extend our sense of the church in many directions at once.

Four members of the team are ordained: Emily (at left), Shirley, Marie, and Göran. They'll all have a chance to preach in different Moru churches the Sunday we're there. Emily will be preaching at Lui Parish, the sister church of the congregation, St. Timothy's, where she serves as associate rector. She last preached there as a newly ordained deacon Christmas 2008, so this will be a homecoming of sorts.

The team will facilitate conferences for the youth, Sunday School teachers, pastors, and Mothers' Union members. Rick, who owns a construction firm, will be looking at and consulting on various construction projects. The diocese has a piece of land at Miriloco on which they have been planning to build a new office; however, they have recently inherited the lovely home of the CMS missionaries, David and Heather, who have been reposted to Uganda, and it may become their office with some remodeling. Rick will look at both sites, probably meet with the construction company working in Mundri, and also consult on the diocesan guest compound (at right), which needs to be rebuilt. It is in such bad repair, according to the diocesan staff, that they have decided to house this mission team in the hospital's guest compound instead of their own.

We will also check on the construction progress of the chapel at Lunjini School, being built in loving memory of a good friend to Lui, and follow up on the ECW-, UTO-, and CPC-funded chicken house, grinding mill, and book grant. We are excited to be delivering a computer to Stephen's wife Lillian (below) in Kampala and a new netbook to the diocesan office, and we will retrieve photos of the 31 bicycles recently bought for the 9 archdeaconries, funded by many generous cyclists over several bike rides and some additional donations. Big thank you to all the many generous Missourians who have worked so hard and given so generously to help the Diocese of Lui during this post-war, pre-referendum period!