When you combine the work ethic and forward push of an Equipment Manager with the opportunity to serve others as a MOAM volunteer, what results is an infectious outrageously enthusiastic bundle of energy.
We found that with the Managers On A Mission volunteers we spoke with and wrote about this week.
volunteers we spoke with and wrote about this week.
And we found it when Collen Ecoffey caught up with us overnight. He writes about his MOAM experience, serving others, getting baptized, and more here.
Enjoy.
My MOAM Experience
I really feel like I could write forever about how much of a blessing Managers on a Mission has been to me. When I first heard of MOAM I thought it was way to good to be true and honestly the experiences I have had in such a short amount of time with MOAM has really been just that.
Sports is such a secular and materialistic industry and I’ve been really lucky to work for a team in the Mizzou Women’s Basketball team that is Christ centered and holds an optional team chapel before games. However, I never really had a community of believers that also had a servant leader background as managers and being able to find that group of people through MOAM has really been special.
Uganda
Our summer Impact Trip to Uganda really has been an incredible experience for me. It was amazing to be able to grow in my faith with such a supportive community of believers within sport around me. Running the sports camps for all the kids was honestly amazing. I have never had an experience where I have felt that someone has showed me such incredible appreciation just for being present. Just by us coming and running basic drills teaching the fundamentals of various sports the best we could, the kids we were investing in, and the communities around them showered us in love and appreciation. I promise that the impact they made on me is far greater than any impact I could have made on them.
Another highlight of our trip was being able to attend three different church services with various churches at the places we were running camps. It was so cool to see the energy the locals had for God. My experience with worship in the states has always been with larger churches where the worship services are more like rock concerts and then a pastor will give a 45-minute sermon. However, here in Uganda, church makes time for people, people don’t make time for church. A Ugandan church service on a Sunday can take up to 3 hours! It’s honestly an amazing experience. Worship lasts 30minutes or more, and everyone in the room is singing, shouting praises, and the women are able to make these high pitched noises that I didn’t know the human throat could produce. The messages pastors deliver are a lot more in depth and people are respectful and hear them out. No one tries to run out early to beat traffic, everyone gives them as much time as they want.
Sharing the love of Christ
A final highlight was doing street evangelism. So far, I have had the privilege of helping pray over 7 people that accepted Christ as their savior! In Jinja, when we did street evangelism, myself and my teammates Nya and Molly were accompanied by two local Ugandans named Charles and Innocent. We were able to help a young college student, a security guard, and another young man all accept Christ just by taking the time to go and chat with them. In Kyunga, I went with my friend Maegan and another local woman and we had some very humbling experiences. Megan and I prayed over a pregnant Muslim woman who was surrounded by flies as her three year old child moved hot coals with a knife from one pot to another to cook food. We also prayed for an older man and his family. The generosity they showed us providing us with their only bench to sit on, while they sat on a pile of rocks is something I won’t soon forget.
Baptism in the Nile River
Towards the conclusion of our trip I also was able to publicly declare my faith and get baptized in the Nile river with two of my other teammates Cait and Raegan. Baptism honestly wasn’t something that was on my mind at all before our trip, because I had been baptized as a child, but after everything I had gone through recently with my walk with God, and the encouragement from my new MOAM family on our trip, I felt like it was time again to declare myself as a believer.
Since my team has left, I have spent majority of my time in Pawel, a village outside of Gulu, for the past three weeks through Mobilizing Uganda for Ministry (MUM), the organization that hosted us while we were in Uganda. I have been able to go through a leadership program ran by MUM with local pastors and other religious leaders called Shepard Leadership. I have traveled to Bidi Bidi the second largest refugee camp in the world to build a home for refugees there. I have also got to visit Bob Goff’s Restore Leadership Academy in Gulu where my friend James Ekanya is the Deputy Head Teacher (Assistant Priciple).
I have been so blessed by God to be able to continue offering up my talents of video production in anyway possible to different people and organizations in and around Uganda since my team has left and I’m looking forward to seeing what else God has in store of my in the rest of my time here!
Cullen's Background
- I am from Mason, Ohio and went to William Mason High School where I played basketball from 7th grade – 10th grade then was cut my junior year so I began pursuing my love for sports reporting, broadcasting, and video production – all my old work is pretty cringy to look back on but it’s there if you want to check it out:
- I was the President of Mason Sports Radio
- A sports reporter and associate producer for our TV station MBC
- I went to the University of Missouri for their Journalism School. (Fun Fact: Mizzou has the world’s first and best journalism school!)
- I major in Strategic Communications and Political Science and will be a Senior this upcoming year
- I work for our Women’s Basketball Team doing internal team video production, and the Mizzou Athletic Department producing creative videos for social media.
- I have worked with the women’s basketball team since my freshman year.