News

When you hear about the Mission Direct work building and feeding and planting and caring in Kumi, Uganda, it is important to pause and ask a simple question: who are the people helping to make this possible? Volunteer teams come and go, each trip bringing new energy and fresh eyes to the work. But there are two people that are consistently present – who are there to greet volunteers on arrival and who will be there for the people of Kumi long after they leave. Their names are Richard and Janet Bacon.

Retirement? Not Quite.

Richard spent his career in property. Janet spent hers in accountancy. Between them, they accumulated decades of professional experience – the kind that teaches you not just a discipline, but a way of thinking: how to manage a build, how to read a balance sheet, how to make things work in the real world. When they retired, they had every reason to put their feet up.

Instead, God’s path, lead them to choose to go to Uganda.

Their path to Kumi is also a personal story. Both had been widowed; both found their faith at the centre of their lives; and it was through their local church that they found each other. When they came together, they brought not just their individual histories but a shared sense of calling. Separately they had each walked alongside mission partners and understood deeply what it means to serve communities overseas. Together, they chose to commit themselves to the work of Mission Direct in Kumi…and they have not looked back.

The Builder and the Bookkeeper

Between them, Richard and Janet draw on their professional experience to support the full span of what Mission Direct’s work in Kumi requires. Richard is Country Manager for Uganda and the construction manager on the ground. He oversees every build, he knows the site, he works alongside Joseph and the local team, and ensures that what gets built gets built well. He is the steady hand behind the teachers’ homes at Wiggins, behind the repaired roofs and the new windows and doors, behind every wall that has slowly risen across the years.

Janet brings her accountancy background to bear in a different but equally vital way: driving and overseeing fundraising initiatives to keep the work alive. The Porridge Fund, the Chicken Programme, the homes built for families like Dinah’s…Janet understands not just the heart of the mission, but the mechanics required to make it happen.

Both roles are entirely voluntary. Richard and Janet are unpaid. They fund their own travel to Uganda. They give their time freely, and they give it generously – sustained not by their own strength but by God’s.

Mama Jan and Papa Richard

In Kumi, they are known simply as Mama Jan and Papa Richard. Those names say everything about the relationship they have built with the community there. This is not the relationship of managers with a project, or donors with a cause. It is something warmer and more lasting than that. Something genuine that they feel the Lord has called them to do.

Richard and Janet are a consistent, regular presence in Kumi – the people who always come back. When a new team of volunteers arrives, Richard and Janet will be one step ahead, ready to welcome them. Even from the UK, in between trips, they are in almost daily contact with their friends and partners in Kumi. The relationship does not pause because there are air miles between them.

Playing the Long Game

Ask Richard and Janet what they are trying to achieve in Kumi, and they will not speak about projects completed or targets met. They speak about momentum. About getting a ball rolling. About giving a community a lift, not doing the work for them, but creating the conditions in which the people of Kumi can drive things forwards for themselves and their neighbours.

This is what you will read in ‘A Year in Kumi’. The Chicken Programme that is on the verge of self-sufficiency. The school results that speak for themselves. The trees planted in the hope of a future that will outlast any single trip or team. The women who started with a handful of chickens and now invest in land and hire labour and send their children to school.

None of that happens without the long game being played. And alongside the people with whom we partner in Kumi and with the strength and direction from God, the long game is what Richard and Janet are there to play.