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Pinehurst Catholics Bring Hope to Uganda
The journey to Uganda is a long one, but that country is never far from David Johnston’s heart.
The parishioner at Sacred Heart Church in Pinehurst knew little about Uganda before he chanced upon a bulletin from St. Michael the Archangel Church in Cary in early 2005. There, he read about an upcoming trip to Uganda organized by Father Emmanuel Katongole, a Ugandan priest-in-residence teaching at Duke University’s School of Divinity.
He immediately wanted to go. As he describes it, it was an instantaneous connection, a sudden desire to see the place where villagers walked a half-mile to fill their buckets with muddy water.
When he told his wife Martha that he wanted to travel to Uganda, her response was, “Great!”
So that August, the Johnstons joined the St. Michael’s group. For many of them it was a return excursion; the Cary ministry, Share the Blessings, was already an established non-profit that resulted from a 2002 cultural exchange trip to Uganda. That ministry has since completed 13 wells and sponsors about 50 schoolchildren every year.
With them, Johnston and his wife saw firsthand the physical needs of the Ugandan villagers. At the mudhole where they fetched their water, “I’d put my hand in the water an inch below the surface and it would disappear. That’s how muddy it was,” he said. “I just kept thinking in my heart that maybe I could do something for these people.”
Fast-forward almost four years, and the Johnstons, along with Sacred Heart Pastor Father William Pitts, are spearheading their own ministry to help the people of Uganda. They work through Father Emmanuel’s brother, Father Joseph Kakooza Nnyanzi – Father Joe, they call him – and have completed seven wells and supported numerous educational projects, including funding tuition for 40 students to attend Catholic Mission Schools in Luweero. They raised enough money to build their first well in October of 2005 – just two months after the Johnstons returned.
The ministry has snowballed since then. Sacred Heart parishioners have underwritten the costs of a new roof in a regional school for girls, new science laboratory equipment, and computers for the students. They also purchased a laptop computer and gave tuition aid to a Ugandan seminarian studying in California. Johnston returned to Uganda in 2007 to oversee the expansion of the well-building project.
The seven wells are all in different villages served by Father Joe. Each cost between $5,200 and $7,000. Three of the wells have been financed by private individuals: Two by a couple and one by a man in memory of his wife. The last is known as “Mary’s Well.”
In June of 2007, Cardinal Emmanuel Wamala of Uganda visited both Cary and Sacred Heart Parish to deliver his personal thanks. The parishioners, with contributions from the Knights of Columbus, the Ladies Auxiliary of the Knights, and Women of Sacred Heart, presented him with a check for $8,000.
Now, the wider Pinehurst community is taking notice. Pope John Paul II Catholic School in Southern Pines has adopted St. Joseph’s School in Uganda as its sister school, and the two exchange letters and pictures. The American students are raising money for mosquito netting for their Ugandan counterparts.
Johnston has also heard from community groups who want to donate to the cause, and he has seen his own generosity mirrored in his family. Last Christmas, one of his grandsons requested that his parents donate to the well-building campaign instead of buying him Christmas presents. When he received the presents anyway, the boy returned them to the store and presented his grandfather with the money.
Johnston’s next aspiration, apart from financing more wells and continuing to increase the number of students sponsored every year, is to take his son and one of his grandsons on his next Uganda trip and hopefully hand over the reins of the ministry to them.
Johnston’s ministry remains separate from but inspired by Share the Blessings, but both exist to serve the people of Uganda. Said Father Emmanuel Katangole, “The impact has been immediate and visible. Communities who had no water now have clean water – and with it the health of those communities has improved. Children now spend fewer hours going down the forest to the mud holes. Orphans who had no chance of education are in school, and many are already talking about a future as nurses, doctors, teachers, and priests. It is the difference between hope and no hope.”
- Dana Lorelle