A Favor of God Business Endeavor

Many months ago teams visiting Favor of God and other supporters from the U.S. donated wedding dresses for the ministry to rent out and financially support some of the ministry we do. After storing them for so long, we are finally hanging them in the upstairs room of the mission house. This is a small business to the community of Gulu, and it’s the first of its kind in the north since most people have to travel to Kampala to rent a dress. We hope this will help generate a little income for some of the prison projects we have on our hearts.

"A Look at the Business Side of FOG in Gulu"

Gulu, Uganda is a post war environment, and there is very little in the way of, “business as usual” like we are accustomed to here in the west. Once one visits Gulu it becomes very apparent what we in America can and do take for granted. Let me give you an idea of business in Uganda.

Electricity is not dependable and can be down for days on end. Forget calling the electric company because no one is there to answer the phone. Internet is not dependable, and it is very expensive to have it plumbed to your place of business. The most affordable option is to go into town and use a local internet café and pay by the hour. Computers are a great luxury and when available they are usually antiquated as are the computer programs. Computer literacy is not common and even hand held calculators are a luxury.

Imagine running your current business or household in these same conditions. Imagine your electricity and internet going down but there’s no one to call. All you can do is just grin and bare it.

Welcome to Gulu Uganda, and welcome to Favor of God’s world. FOG has about 60 staff. They are responsible for numerious evangelistic, medical, children, and leadership training ministries. Everyday there are numerous requests and pressures on the ministry, and everyday they operate using an antiquated system of hand written accounting and administration ledger system.

Recently they have been able to acquire computers thanks to our generous supporters, but now more hurdles arise. New software needs to be purchased and personnel needs to be trained. Additionally, transferring all the ministry’s handwritten data into the computer is a tedious and time consuming process. On going administration record keeping cannot be stopped while this data process is underway, so for a while at least they must live in both the hand written and electronic world simultaneously.

Supporting ministry infrastructure or administration technology is not as glamorous or as high profile as supporting our orphanage – we know. But it’s so vital and necessary when running a ministry in 2009. We hope this snapshot into the inner-workings of the ministry is helpful for you to get to know us a little bit better

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Judith – shown with a computer donated from Riverside, CA