Friends
April 2009
on the ministries of
Friends
United Meeting
Bikes for Boys in Belize
Sometimes we take transportation for granted in the United States. If we
need to go to the store or to work, we drive or take a city bus. If we need to
go to school, Mom drops us off in the car or we take a bus. Once in awhile we
walk somewhere, but how often do we depend on our feet to get us everywhere
we need to go?
In many countries, transportation is made possible by your own two feet.
Anything else is either not available or too expensive for regular use. Belize
is a country like that. While it is true there are many cars and even some bus
service in Belize, it is also true that the Friends Boys School (FBS) serves a very
poor community for whom most transportation is done on foot. Our FBS
students sometimes have to walk over two miles to get to school each day.
The 2009 Summer Mission
Project is “Bikes for Boys in
Belize.” We hope that purchasing
bikes for the boys will not only help
them get to FBS, but will be a good
source of transportation to high
school and any future employment
they might have. For $150 a student,
we can purchase a bike, helmet,
chain, padlock, pump and spare
Pennies for Postage
parts. Our goal is to raise $6,000 for
40 bikes by the end of August 2009.
Thanks to your eagerness to col ect
The next time you get in your
“Pennies for Postage” for the 2008
car or on the bus to go somewhere,
Summer Mission Project, we received
think about how things might be
$7,288.69. We were able to ship
different if you had to make the
1,871 pounds of books to Africa,
same trip on foot. Let’s give the FBS
Belize, Jamaica, Ramal ah, Mexico
boys a better future this summer.
and Cuba. Thank you for your pennies!
They went a long way.
Uganda Yearly Meeting was officially set off from East Africa Yearly Meeting
in 1980, and encompasses the entire country of Uganda. However, Quaker work in
Uganda began much earlier, when Luhya people from Kenya shared their faith with
their friends and family on the Ugandan side of the (arbitrary) colonial border. The
first Ugandan Friends Meetings were established in the 1940s, and in the early 1970s a
Friends Center was opened in Kampala. Ugandan Friends have undergone significant
hardship as the country experienced dictatorship and civil war — Quakers were
officially “banned” during two different regimes, and resorted to meeting in secret.
Currently, Uganda Yearly
Meeting has almost 4,000 members
ly Meetings in 10 quarterly meetings. The
r headquarters are in Mbale, on the
western slopes of Mt. Elgon, and
ea most Friends are concentrated
in this area. However, significant
energy is being dedicated to reviving
the Friends presence in northern
Uganda, which has been devastated
by decades of civil war. Peace and
development programs such as the Alternatives to Violence Project, school fees for
orphans and micro-enterprise loans are a priority for Ugandan Friends. Uganda Yearly
Meeting became a full member of Friends United Meeting in 2005.
The FUM Africa Ministries Office sponsored a short-term mission trip of Kenyan
Friends to Uganda in November 2005, funded entirely by the Kenyan yearly meetings.
Over 40 Kenyan Friends — men and women, young and old, pastors, yearly meeting
leaders and members — worked in Lutolo and Kimidi, building a church and a
school, and carrying out evangelistic meetings in the local communities. This event
was transformative for both the Kenyans and Ugandans, and has established the core
theme of FUM’s contemporary work in Africa, in which Africans are the missionaries,
workers and leaders of the Friends Church today.
FOCUS on FUM Y
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Friends
United Meeting
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