Tomorrow the team from Cornerstone (see commissioning below) will continue the story of lives coming together from a small church here in Auburn to a small church in Buloba, Uganda. The last trip, made in June ( see Welcome Home from the Mission Field in Buloba Uganda Africa) of this year, was a working team trip, and one that delivered some incredible news about funds raised for the drilling of a much needed well for the church (see THE WELL and Creative Chaos 14 // Allowing God to Work in Your Church) in Buloba Uganda. On a side note: I was once one who was somewhat skeptical of the overall good that could be done in mission trips that (I thought) were short, sort of hit and run type of mission vacation things, but I would say to anyone who has similar thoughts or questions, just dig a little deeper, get involved, and really find out what is going on before you come to any conclusions. It may be there is more to the story, and it may be changing lives in a significant way, as is the case here.
The incredible story about missions and CUMC is the extent to which this particular congregation goes in its willingness to support missions. This is made very apparent by the statement on the church finance blog that says:
Cornerstone UMC is a tithing church. We take 10% of everything given each week and designate it for missions. Therefore, operating income/expenses are based on the 90% we use to support our staff and other ministries.
In my past experiences and (probably misconstrued) understanding of mission trips growing up, it has been a once a year trip, for one week, then the church moves on to another location or mission, many times with little real impact made on the visited community, town, or church (this of course is not always the case, just some of my past experiences). The impact that working with one church, in one community (Buloba in this case), with multiple visits throughout the year can have is very obvious when you look at the results these two churches have been able to achieve in Buloba. An entire church building is being built, a well is being drilled that will deliver fresh, clean drinking water (something unseen so far), and most importantly, lives are being changed.
Cornerstone has made several trips over the past 18 months to this small town and the team members and congregation in both churches have been able to get to know the people in both churches, formed relationships with them, and each church continues to grow and is blessed by the other.
This particular trip will last about one week and is mainly to continue forming the bonds between the two churches, to see the progress made on the construction of the new church building and the drilling of the well, and to speak with members of the community in Buloba. The team leader, Andi, will be updating the mission blog (looks like Andi already has something up her sleeve at And then it blew up…) starting on Friday with photos and stories from team members on the trip, so jump over there to see the updates. The photo gallery has been started with the image above on flickr. To see more photos as they are loaded just go to the Buloba Uganda Oct 08 gallery. Good luck to everyone, can’t wait to hear the stories and see the photos when you get back.
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