My Heart, Your Home: Abbey's Story

I had gone on a few mission trips before through Franciscan University – the college I attended and place where I met co-founders Eddie and Brendan, and administrator Brooke – but never had I been to Africa, never mind to the “deep village” in Uganda. Yet, after roughly eighteen hours of traveling across the ocean, a day retreat in Kampala, and a few hours of driving across the country, we (Eddie, Brooke, and two other friends, Lindsay and James) reached Bugumiro.

To say we were warmly welcomed would be an understatement, but as arriving at the school for the first time is something one must experience for oneself, I will save the details for you, the reader, to discover yourself!

While I didn’t know more than a handful of words in Runyoro, the language spoken in the village, it didn’t take me long to realize that a simple smile is all that is needed to communicate with curious children who want nothing more than to play a lively game of kickball or be spun around in your arms. From enjoying matoke, rice, beans, and groundnuts on the daily, to taking a shower from a bucket, to even befriending a lovely chicken (enkoko in Runyoro), it was a fond experience.

Two of the most eye-opening aspects of the mission were that, firstly, to the people of the village, each person is seen as a gift: everyone has value, and everyone has a purpose.

Second, there isn’t a constant race against the clock: In the words of a book that Brooke happened to be reading while I was there, many Africans move at a pace that is “unhurried, knowing one can never achieve everything in life anyways, and besides, if one did, what would be left over for others?”

Both facts support their perspective that each person is to be loved not for what they do but for who they are. While, in America, many are monetarily rich, in Uganda, they have a richness of being.

Of course, that is not to say that absolutely astounding things are not happening at Bugumiro. On the contrary, they are a frequent occurrence. I am told that, in the few months since I visited, the building used as a gathering space is now a completed classroom and that they have even built an additional building that is to serve as a hospital next door. Marvelous, one might say, and there is no doubt more to come, but it was made clear to me that, for Eddie and those who are leading Bugumiro, what is more important to them than the physical growth of the foundation is its spiritual growth.

Prior to the foundation’s establishment, a number of people who lived in the village practiced witchcraft, many families lacked cohesion, and so on. Thanks to the Holy Spirit’s work through Bugumiro, however, many are now delving deeper into the Catholic Faith and their relationship with the Lord. Indeed, for anyone who visits, it is not hard to encounter the Lord there: He paints the most beautiful sunsets across the sky, He speaks in the silence under the afternoon equatorial sun, and He is evident in the joyful greeting of everyone who passes by the schoolhouse.

On one of my last days there, I remarked to Eddie that I have found that every place where we encounter the Lord’s love becomes home to us. For this reason, the very motto of Bugumiro Foundation could not be more fitting: “My heart, your home.” Bugumiro is a place where the love of God is so tangible. It is a place where one is reminded that the Lord will always provide and that Christ is sovereign over every part of our lives. Most of all, it is a place that stands as proof that God works spectacular miracles in and through those who are fully open to His Will.

Abbey Thompson