Missionaries

The leader of a team of Pennsylvania missionaries who were injured in Sunday's terror bombings in Uganda has written a firsthand account of the episode. "I remember a bright flash and everything went grey and it felt like rain," Lori Ssebulime, of Selinsgrove, Pa., wrote from Kampala, replying on her blog to questions from The Inquirer. "...I heard screaming from every direction. " Ssebulime is still in Africa, monitoring the medical care of five team members who were wounded by one of two blasts that shook Kampala on Sunday, killing 74 people.

Foot soldiers backed by helicopter gunships searched the Matabeleland bush yesterday for rebels who hacked 16 missionaries and their families to death, reportedly in an effort to "drive Western capitalist-oriented people" from Zimbabwe. Prime Minister Robert Mugabe said security forces were mobilized to "track these bloody evil-doers and bring them to justice" for the "unbridled savagery" of their attack late Wednesday on the missionaries' 10,000-acre settlement, the semi-official Zimbabwe Inter-African News Agency reported.

During 28 years in West Africa, the Rev. Eugene E. Grau and his wife, Dorothy, witnessed dramatic political and social changes. They saw the Gold Coast, a colony administered as part of British Togoland, become the independent Republic of Ghana, a nation torn by coups, revolts and economic hardship. But it wasn't until last fall, 15 years after the Graus left Ghana, that they returned and saw the full measure of religious change - change for which they had worked so hard as Evangelical Presbyterian missionaries.

Representatives of Western religion get another flogging in "At Play in the Fields of the Lord," the latest movie to heap derision on Christian emissaries looking for converts among this hemisphere's native peoples. The movie features the line: "Maybe we're in hell and just don't know it. " If you wish to spare yourself this feeling, then maybe you ought to pass on "At Play in the Fields of the Lord," which uses more than three hours of film to belabor the idea that European religious ideas are lost on natives of the Amazon region.

The leader of a team of Pennsylvania missionaries who were injured in Sunday's terror bombings in Uganda has written a firsthand account of the episode. "I remember a bright flash, and everything went gray and it felt like rain," Lori Ssebulime of Selinsgrove wrote from Kampala, replying on her blog to questions from The Inquirer. "I heard screaming from every direction. " Ssebulime was still in Africa on Wednesday, monitoring the medical care of the five team members wounded by one of two blasts that killed 76 people.

Six of 15 missionaries from Selinsgrove who went to Uganda June 16 to help build a wall around a church and school were due to return home July 7 but stayed to complete the work, a church spokesman said today. The six had reasoned that "we've got time. We'll just stay," according to Gerald Wolgemuth, director of communications for the Susquehanna Conference of the United Methodist Church. While nine members of the team arrived home July 7 in Pennsylvania, the others' decision proved fateful: They were at a garden restaurant Sunday in Kampala watching the final match of the World Cup when terrorists set off a bomb beneath a table.

When Sister Anne Bickford embarks on her journey to Chad, Africa, she will have to leave her beloved viola behind. The hot, dry climate is not instrument-friendly. It's a sacrifice, but one she is making happily, said the nun, who was a professional musician and member of the Pittsburgh Symphony before entering the Society of the Holy Child Jesus 36 years ago. "I'm very happy to be going," she said. "I think this trip is what my whole life has been striving for. " She and Sister Melinda Keane have volunteered to serve as missionaries in N'Djamena, the capital of Chad.

Army Capt. Charles D. Robinson's life spanned the globe. The son of missionaries based in Haddon Heights, Robinson spent much of his life in Paraguay, where he developed a love of languages and a bond with other Americans stationed overseas. At Baptist Regional School in Haddon Heights, Robinson played soccer and kept in touch with friends after his family resumed their travels. And after the Special Forces sent him to Afghanistan in January as part of Operation Enduring Freedom, Robinson asked his family to mail him care packages of candy.

The Rev. Roque Longo, 88, the founding pastor of Our Lady of Fatima parish in Camden and the first of the Missionaries of the Sacred Hearts to begin work in the United States, died Friday at Our Lady's Residence, Pleasantville. Born in Molinara, Italy, Father Longo was ordained into the priesthood in 1933 and studied at Lateran University in Rome, earning degrees in canon and civil law. In 1935, he began 14 years of service to the church in South America, where he founded several chapels in Uruguay and a school and a seminary in Argentina.

The Episcopal Academy will host a program called "China: Where Is It Going and Why?" at 8 p.m. Wednesday in the theater on the Merion campus, 376 N. Latches Lane. The Rev. Peyton Craighill of Narberth and his wife, Mary Craighill, will be the speakers. Both Craighills were born in China and lived there when they were young. They were missionaries in Taiwan for 19 years. Father Craighill is a former chaplain at the academy. SEMINARS The Rev. Peter Gomes, professor of Christian morals at Harvard University, is the theologian-in-residence Thursday and Nov. 14 and 16 at Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church, 625 Montgomery Ave. At 6:30 p.m. Thursday, there will be a dinner in Congregation Hall at the church, followed by his talk at 7:30 p.m. in the sanctuary.

IN "MACHINE GUN Preacher," truth is so much stranger than fiction that fiction eventually throws in the towel. The movie is based on the wild, wild life of a Johnstown, Pa., man named Sam Childers, who went from meth user/dealer to fundamentalist preacher to gun-toting missionary in the Sudan. Childers (Gerard Butler) is a different sort of Christian. In Sudan, when he turns the other cheek, it's to steady the rifle butt he's using to gun down Africans who are abducting children for conscription into warlord armies fighting over territory in southern Sudan and northern Uganda.

Ethel P. Moore, an 18-year employee of the Philadelphia Gas Works and a deaconess and missionary at Canaan Baptist Church in Germantown, died March 6 of lung cancer. She was 70 and lived in Mount Airy. She was born in West Point, Miss., to Ellis Rice and the former Mary Alice West. She came to Philadelphia in 1952 and graduated from the Benjamin Franklin Standard Evening School. She married Clifton McCrea Moore on June 13, 1964. Ethel worked as a customer-service representative for PGW for 18 years.

H. Clifton Russell, 79, a missionary in Peru for more than 20 years who became an expert horticulturist in Bucks County, died of melanoma Sunday, Jan. 9, at Penn Hospice at Rittenhouse. Mr. Russell had been in Peru for three years when he and another missionary, James Davidson, spotted a village of the indigenous Isconahuas from the air. They journeyed by motorized canoe and then hiked for three days to reach the tribe. With some difficulty, they became friendly with the tribe and lived with it for a year.

Ethel Huie McNair, 89, a nurse, guidance counselor, and church leader who lived in Yeadon, died Dec. 8 of heart failure at her daughter's home in Williamsport, Pa. Mrs. McNair came from a religious family, and she followed its example. Her parents, Arthur and Adina Huie, were active members of Allen African Methodist Episcopal Church in West Philadelphia. Mrs. McNair, or "Mother McNair," as she was known in the church, was an A.M.E. leader in Philadelphia and held offices with the Connectional Women's Missionary Society.

The ads are catchy. Upbeat music plays as the surfer, the artist, or the skateboarder states his or her beliefs about life. They all end with, "And I'm a Mormon. " On July 26, Pittsburgh became one of nine test markets for the advertising campaign that cheerfully counters stereotypes of Mormons as straight-laced, white, humorless, and sexist. The campaign from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints includes a revamped website at www.mormon.org . The ads arrived on the heels of a backlash by gay-rights activists over Mormon support for the 2008 campaign in California for a ban on gay marriage.

The leader of a team of Pennsylvania missionaries who were injured in Sunday's terror bombings in Uganda has written a firsthand account of the episode. "I remember a bright flash, and everything went gray and it felt like rain," Lori Ssebulime of Selinsgrove wrote from Kampala, replying on her blog to questions from The Inquirer. "I heard screaming from every direction. " Ssebulime was still in Africa on Wednesday, monitoring the medical care of the five team members wounded by one of two blasts that killed 76 people.

The leader of a team of Pennsylvania missionaries who were injured in Sunday's terror bombings in Uganda has written a firsthand account of the episode. "I remember a bright flash and everything went grey and it felt like rain," Lori Ssebulime, of Selinsgrove, Pa., wrote from Kampala, replying on her blog to questions from The Inquirer. "...I heard screaming from every direction. " Ssebulime is still in Africa, monitoring the medical care of five team members who were wounded by one of two blasts that shook Kampala on Sunday, killing 74 people.

Six of 15 missionaries from Selinsgrove who went to Uganda June 16 to help build a wall around a church and school were due to return home July 7 but stayed to complete the work, a church spokesman said today. The six had reasoned that "we've got time. We'll just stay," according to Gerald Wolgemuth, director of communications for the Susquehanna Conference of the United Methodist Church. While nine members of the team arrived home July 7 in Pennsylvania, the others' decision proved fateful: They were at a garden restaurant Sunday in Kampala watching the final match of the World Cup when terrorists set off a bomb beneath a table.

Sister Ellen Hare, 102, a missionary in Africa for 30 years, died Monday, June 7, at Holy Child Center in Rosemont. Sister Ellen graduated from Holy Child School in Suffern, N.Y. She entered the convent of the Sisters of the Holy Child in Rosemont in 1925. For many years, she was known as Mother Mary Damien. Sister Ellen taught in Catholic schools in Wyoming, Oregon, New York and Philadelphia before being assigned to teach in a Holy Child school in Nigeria in 1935. For the next three decades, Sister Ellen helped train young African women to be teachers and supervised primary schools in Nigeria.

After a tense, sleepless night, the relatives and friends of 20 New Jersey church members in earthquake-stricken Haiti went to the Presbyterian Church of Lawrenceville yesterday, seeking word of their loved ones. The mission group had arrived at Port-au-Prince at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, just hours before the quake hit, and planned to take buses along narrow roads to the tiny mountain village of Thoman. The group members were expected to reach the remote village, where they would be providing food and medical treatment, by nightfall.