Karen Maximos has been working for the past seven years with the Coptic Orthodox Church in Uganda through the nonprofits Life With Purpose Uganda and its sister organization, Life With Purpose Foundation in the U.S. (which she helped found!). We asked her to share with us what first brought her to this work in Uganda, and why it continues to be a vital part of her life today.

Axia Women: Karen, could you tell us a bit about why you first started taking trips to Uganda? 

Karen: “Uganda has become such a huge part of my life, and so there are so many intricate sectors to it. But I'll start from where I started. I am by trade a graphic designer and animator. I double majored in college.

“While I was in college, I would hear about people doing missionary work, and it sounded so fun and lovely. I loved serving in the church. Our bishop, Bishop [now Metropolitan] Youssef, of the Southern United States Diocese, usually takes a group trip every year.  When I graduated university in 2019, he was going to take a group to visit Uganda. That was going to be my graduation gift, going on that trip.

“My last year of university was one of the hardest years of my life. It was the deepest and the only pit of depression I've ever been in - thank God. It was a really dark year for me. 

“On the plane to Uganda, I was journaling and praying for the first time in a long while. I didn’t feel ready for this trip, and I didn’t feel like I had anything to give, and so I was just praying to be able to meet God there. I asked God: ‘Just show me Your grace for a little bit on this trip, because I have nothing to offer anyone else.’

“God answered my prayer. I really did get to see Him: I got to see Him in the people there, and I got to see Him in so many miraculous circumstances and interactions. I don't feel like I played a big role in the mission trip itself. But I felt like God was filling me. And so Uganda became a river or a stream of grace for me, in more ways than I could have ever imagined. 

“In Uganda, the group that was hosting us and working in many of the ministries there were from the Coptic Church of Egypt. They've been working in Uganda since around 2012. One of the youth around my age that came from Egypt was a guy named Pola. Pola and I became really good friends on that trip. We were a huge group, we all became best friends with each other. We spent two incredible weeks together. And then, it was time to go home.

“I didn't want to go back home. I had found God there and I didn’t want to go back to normal life, But I knew that, if there was something I learned on that trip, it was that God is everywhere. If I can find Him in one place, I can take Him with me to the next. And so, it was very much a challenge to just hold on tight to God, and continue our journey together. And so I did. 

“I stayed in contact with the leading priest from that trip, named Abuna Marcos. I messaged him when I came back, and told him that I didn’t want this to be a once-and-done trip. ‘Uganda means a lot to me,’ I told him, ‘and if there's anything I can do to continue my service for Uganda from the U.S, I'd love to.’ Father Marcos put Pola and I on a team together to create a social media presence for them, and do some graphic design.

“We were figuring it out together. We didn’t have enough pictures, we didn’t have enough content, so we would just put out daily Bible verses. Slowly, this social media group grew. That was especially important because in March of the following year, the entire world shut down for COVID. Because nobody could travel anymore, we started to move some of our services online. We would do Bible studies, we started working on a website, etc. 

“A few years later, when the world began to wake up again in 2022, Father Marcos reached out to me. He wanted help opening a bank account in the United States in order to raise money for projects that we have in Uganda. I was totally clueless about what that entailed. Eventually, I learned that to do this, I would have to register a nonprofit. How do I open a nonprofit? 

“I'm so glad nobody knows my Google search history from that time. It just shows how completely unqualified I was for any of this. But there was a very clear, repeating message to me that God does not call the qualified, He qualifies the call. And every time I had a question, someone would cross my path who had the answer to the exact question that I had. 

Axia Women: That’s incredible. Where did it go from there? 

“Eventually, we opened a nonprofit, and then we opened a bank account, and now it was time to raise money. Like, where does money come from? I don't know. I'm a graphic designer, we don't make money!

“All of this was in 2022. That year, Pola and I spent more time together while I was visiting Egypt. We started dating, and months later I decided it was time to leave the U.S. and do something different. I moved to Egypt, and shortly after, Pola and I got engaged, and now I'm on the evangelism team here in Egypt. We’ve gone to Uganda multiple times since we’ve been married. Last August, we were there for a month. "

Axia Women: Tell us more about what ministries the Church offers in Uganda.

“In Uganda, we focus on two aspects: a development side of things, and a pastoral side of things, We have the church there in Uganda, and we work through the church in two different areas: the capital, which is Kampala, and a very small village on one of the islands, in a little region called Kalungala. We target wholistic care: body, mind, soul, and spirit. While the pastoral care and evangelism takes cares care of the spirit, our development projects cover the rest. We developmental side of our service focuses on serving the Uganda people through education, physical health, psychological health, and a means to provide for themselves. This includes: school programs, sponsoring children and teen education, vocational training for young adults, providing clothing and supplies for underserved regions, providing sanitary products for women, needed supplies for prisoners, regular medical missions throughout the year, a medical clinic in Kalangala, a pharmacy in Kampala, and many more.

“All this time, we were trying to raise money to be able to build our church in the capital, in Kampala. Thank God we were able to start and finish constructing the church last year, which was a series of miracles. We didn't have the money to start, nor did we have the money to continue, nor do we have money now. But there's a church now, 

“I've been so privileged to see these kids grow. They were children in 2019, and now they're in middle school and high school. They have opinions now and they are just so full of love, and it's amazing. Today we have a standing church on the island and an orphanage where we've adopted kids who have really difficult cases, and raise them in the Orthodox faith. I don't know how this is happening or where it's coming from, but it's amazing to be a witness to it.

“We have a vocational center in which we give courses and training. This last trip, when Pola and I were there for a month, I was asked to teach graphic design for 3 weeks, and Pola taught public speaking. I had to figure out how to teach everything I know for someone to be able to work, that I learned in 3 years. For me, it was mind-boggling, and it seemed like an impossible task, but it was such a fun opportunity, and I got to be close to the seven students that I had. And by the end of it, they were doing significantly better than I was doing after my first year of university. Some have even started working with it. 

“I think that's when the best things happen, is when I don't know what I'm doing. Now that I look back on it, all the times where I thought I was the perfect person for this task, or I knew exactly what I was doing, were the most unproductive sections of the work being done there. 

“Saying all of this to you, it sounds like it comes out of a book. Knowing all the details behind everything that I'm saying seems very surreal, but it's amazing how this has become just part of my day-to-day life. Those photos don't speak to the reality of it. And that goes in both directions. It can be so difficult getting anything done in the service or in any project. And yet how ridiculously easy it is when we let go of the service and let God lead, and He lets things happen in their time without a pencil and paper.

Axia Women: Your story is so inspiring. Why would you say you keep going back? 

“God is very generous. Uganda continues to be a place where I meet God. Whether it's the hard way, or the nice way, God continues to visit me there. Every time I go there clueless is when He works the best.”