Pennsylvania victims of Uganda bombing recover, remember

SELINSGROVE, Pa. - When nine of their colleagues flew home last week, five missionaries from this north-central Pennsylvania community stayed in Uganda to work at an urgent task.

They hoped to finish a wall protecting their sister congregation's church and school in Kampala - in particular, one missionary said, to shield children from a scourge that haunts Uganda: ritual child sacrifice.

"We've got time. We'll just stay." That was how Gerald Wolgemuth, director of communications for the Susquehanna Conference of the United Methodist Church, described the volunteers' reasoning.

The decision proved fateful. On a break from their labors, the Americans had sat down at a garden restaurant in Kampala on Sunday to watch the final World Cup soccer match when terrorists set off a bomb beneath a table.

Team leader Lori Ssebulime, shaken but unhurt, told the Associated Press that when the blast occurred, it was "total chaos."

"I fell over backward. Everything was gray," she said.

Besides Ssebulime, the other four from Selinsgrove were Kris Sledge, 18, who suffered leg and facial injuries; Pam Kramer, who told her husband, Scott, that she was OK but will require surgery upon returning to the United States; Thomas Kramer, who will need surgery on his injured leg; and Joanne Kerstetter, who has a fractured arm. Kerstetter's granddaughter Emily Kerstetter, 16, of Ellicott City, Md., also was with the group. Grandmother and granddaughter were both flown to Nairobi, Kenya, with the other injured Americans.

After the blast, Ssebulime scrambled among the bodies to locate Emily Kerstetter. "Emily was rolling around in a pool of blood, screaming," Ssebulime said.

Though Sledge and Emily Kerstetter needed surgery, their lives were not believed to be at risk, Wolgemuth said.

"I remember blacking out, hearing people screaming and running," Sledge was quoted as saying in news reports from Kampala. "I love the place here, but I'm wondering why this happened and who did this."

The second fatal blast that rocked Kampala minutes later - on a rugby field where others watched the World Cup on a big screen - killed Wilmington, Del., native Nate Henn, 25.

Henn also was helping children. A University of Delaware alumnus who had worked for the YMCA before moving to San Diego, he was with the organization Invisible Children. The group helps protect children in Africa from military conscription, and Henn was in Uganda to visit students he had befriended. His last Facebook entry on Sunday said: "Been a great couple of days! Hanging out with Tony, Innocent and friends!"

The Selinsgrove group's efforts in Uganda date to 2004. The building project grew from long-standing ties between Christ Community United Methodist Church in Selinsgrove and Bwaise Pentecostal Church and the LifeCare School in Kampala.

Monday night in Selinsgrove, about 250 people attended an hour-long prayer service. A bishop from Harrisburg spoke.

Afterward, Mohammed Ssebulime, Lori's husband, said, "I don't know the last time I cried. This has been really tough. This is a sad moment. We're all grieving."

He said he was moved by the outpouring of concern and love for the missionaries.

"It's the beauty of a small town," he said. "It's a beautiful thing."

Two years ago, a group from Selinsgrove went to help build classrooms. A group of 15 flew to Uganda on June 16 to continue that work.

Susan Heintzelman, one of nine missionaries who returned to Selinsgrove last week, said colleagues stayed to work on the school and to distribute to impoverished Ugandans the contents of 30 suitcases the group had brought along.

Those suitcases brimmed with gifts from Pennsylvania: shoes, clothing, candles, toiletries, and school supplies.

Heintzelman said she had traveled with her 14-year-old daughter, Megan, to help build the wall around the school in Kampala.

The reason for the wall, she said, was fear of child sacrifice.

In recent years, reports of ritual sacrifice have surged in Uganda. Researchers blame "witch doctors" - who consider such acts good luck - and traffickers in human organs.

The AP reported in April that at least 15 children and 14 adults were killed in ritual sacrifices in Uganda last year, and police suspected sacrifices in scores of other cases.

Heintzelman, interviewed here Monday, said the mission group included seven people from Christ Community church plus others from the Susquehanna Valley Bible Church and another church in the area.

The missionaries, Wolgemuth said, "love Jesus and want to live like Jesus lived. That would mean reaching out to persons in need."

Debbie Bingaman - who with her husband, Tim, is Sledge's legal guardian and former foster parent - was dining Sunday night at a Hoss' restaurant in Selinsgrove when her cell phone rang. It was an official from the U.S. consulate in Kampala calling with news about Sledge.

"She asked if I was his mother, and then she told me there had been an explosion and that he had been badly injured," said Bingaman, 54.

"The blood just ran from my head straight to my feet and I heard a roaring in my ears. My husband actually had to catch me. A mom just can't hear that kind of news."

About an hour later, the Bingamans were able to speak with Sledge. They learned that his leg was shattered and his eye swollen shut by shrapnel, among other injuries.

"He was trying to reassure us that he was OK," said Tim Bingaman. "You could tell he really wasn't, but he was saying he was, so that we wouldn't worry."

She said Sledge, a sophomore at Messiah College, loves Africa and wants to become a pastor. "He just gives so much of himself," she said. "It's going to be hard for him to sit back and let others take care of him."

The returned missionaries said the Kampala church is in an area where people live in huts with no electricity or running water. Smoldering trash is piled everywhere. Goats and cattle roam freely.

But everyone took great pride in the school that was being built, Heintzelman said.

She remembered that the Rev. Peter Mutabazi, among those who died in the blast, had beamed with pride when he looked at the gate and the new entrance to the church and school.

"He would say, 'When people go by, it will look smart,' " she said.