DIETERICH – The Team Uganda committee from Dieterich, Newton and Teutopolis is organizing a bus-pull fundraiser where teams pay to pull a bus 150 feet by a rope on Sept. 14. The funds raised will go towards helping people in rural Uganda, and the event will have food, drinks, live music and games.
In 2016, Father Fred Jenga – a missionary priest born and raised in Jinga, Uganda – visited St. Isidore Parish in Dieterich during a mission appeal. That’s when a Catholic priest visits an American parish, describes what their church is doing and how the parish members can help. Jenga formed both connections and friends with some of the parish members.
“We remained friends, and we kept in touch,” said Jenga.
In 2023, Jenga visited St. Isidore Parish again and asked for help raising $20,000 to build a church and a school in Atanansi – a less fortunate community near Jinga. When Jenga was younger, he visited his grandparents there. He had already collected $24,000 himself.
The friends he made during his first trip to St. Isidore Parish helped him collect donations from both St. Isidore Parish and St. Francis’ Parish in Teutopolis. With this help, Jenga was able to collect more than his $20,000 goal. So in addition to the school and the church, a girls dormitory was built alongside the Ugandan community’s school – St. Atanansi School – because students have to travel quite a bit to get to the school. With the dormitory, some can stay there overnight during the week.
“Education can be powerfully empowering for people,” said Jenga. “When kids in a very poor area get a strong education, they are able to succeed at other levels of life.”
Twelve parish members, including Jenga, then visited Atanansi in late July 2024 to early August 2024 to help paint the church and some of the girls’ dormitory, as well as meet those they’re helping. Team Uganda also brought shoes for each student since most of the kids came barefoot.
“One of the things that’s pretty interesting with some of the people there was they had never met anybody who was white. So we were the first white people they ever saw,” said Dust. “So, it was really a special trip for us because of that fact … They actually wanted to touch our skin to see what our skin felt like.”
After their trip, Team Uganda then came up with the idea to sponsor children: People would donate money to send them to St. Atanasi because some parents are only able to afford one child’s education.
“They would have to decide which of the children they thought would be good in school, and the others couldn’t go,” said Dust.
Now, there are sponsors for about 120 children to attend the school.
“It’s a very empowering thing that I’ve never seen in my entire life … Impacting life in this kind of way is just very powerful,” said Jenga. “We are basically breaking the cycle of poverty in that place. They are going to school, and their children are going to school, too.”
The idea for a bus pull came from Team Uganda member Mark Probst. He had two inspirations: When the committee’s bus got stuck in the mud in Uganda and had to get pulled out, and from when he and his wife saw truck pulling done during the Special Olympics’ Big Brown Truck Pull.
For $120, teams of six can enter the bus pull for a distance of 150 feet. Hosted by St. Aloysius Church in Dieterich, the event runs from noon to 6 p.m. on Sept. 14 and will have concessions, live music, games and a raffle.
To enter, call Mark Probst at 217-663-0449.