Bucky and Julie Rogers say God has called them to Uganda for life.
The Spartanburg couple had known for a few years they were being called to provide orphan care overseas in some capacity. After multiple mission trips to Uganda through their church, Anderson Mill Road Baptist Church in Moore, that calling turned into a vision three years ago to rebuild Ugandan families by helping the country’s growing number of orphaned and vulnerable children.
“It became apparent that (Uganda) was the place God was calling us to plant our lives,” said Bucky Rogers, who had been pastor of students and worship arts at Anderson Mill. “The situation for orphaned and vulnerable children is very dire there, and generations of exploitation have made it exponentially worse.”
The Rogers sought to invest their lives in seeing things change and in spring 2016, the couple and their four adopted children moved to Kampala, Uganda, to establish an orphan care and family restoration ministry called Benjamin House Ministries.
Right now, the organization is assisting 140 children and families in Uganda through its programs.
“We have been on the ground in Uganda for about 18 months now…and have no plans to return back to the states to live,” Rogers said. “We believe God has called us here for life.”
Providing basic necessities
Among the priorities of Benjamin House Ministries is to help provide basic necessities for Ugandan children like food, clean water, safe shelter and education.
The average Ugandan lives on less than $1 per day and eats one meal per day, Rogers said.
Streams, wells and run-off pipes are where most Ugandans get the water they use for drinking, cooking and bathing. Every year, more than 10,000 Ugandans die from illnesses related to drinking dirty water, Rogers said.
“Many of (the children) became separated from their parents and have been living and sleeping on the streets, begging for food and using drugs to numb the hunger and make themselves sleep,” he said. “Some reach a point of desperation and want to go home, but don’t know how.”
The Rogers and their staff of eight in Uganda also work with the country’s local leaders to get homeless children into transitional homes and prepare them to be part of a family again.
“We want to see the millions of children who are growing up in abject poverty without mothers and fathers be reunited with their birth family or tribe of origin,” Rogers said.
D.J. Horton, senior pastor at Anderson Mill Road Baptist Church, said like any new ministry in a challenging place, the organization’s first two years haven’t been without some difficulties. The organization has evolved and adjusted, but what hasn’t changed is the Rogers’ desire and call to help the people of Uganda, he said.
“Bucky and Julie had everything here with us at The Mill — great job, thriving ministry, beautiful home and tons of loving friends,” Horton said. “Yet, because of their heart for Uganda, they gave all of that up to go live in a third-world country and simultaneously start a new ministry.”
Helping children thrive
Uganda has one of the youngest populations in the world. The median age is around 16 years old.
The AIDS crisis in sub-Saharan Africa and the war in South Sudan and northern Uganda wiped out much of the adult generation, Rogers said.
“It’s literally a nation of children,” he said. “Well-meaning people came to Uganda and established orphanages to care for the children who were left behind. Inadvertently, they created an even bigger problem.”
Bucky Rogers said as a result, Uganda has a generation of adults who grew up in orphanages and boarding schools and who don’t know what it means to be a family. The majority of children are either raised by grandparents or placed in boarding schools and visit home only a few months a year, he said.
“This breakdown in the family has caused ripple effects that are hard to overestimate,” he said. The role of Benjamin House Ministries is to provide donors, churches and other groups an avenue to inspire hope across Uganda. The organization does this by assisting orphaned children and preparing them for their futures, subsequently building up the country’s next generation of leaders.
An important piece of this preparation is education, which can lead to job skills training and empowerment.
According to the organization, some Ugandan children begin working as young as 5 years old to help their parents earn a living. If they sell enough items like rice or bananas on the street, they might be able to pay for school.
“All education in Uganda costs money,” Rogers said. “If a family cannot afford the school fees, including a school uniform and school supplies, then their children may never learn to read or write.”
The organization’s sponsorship program helps take care of schooling expenses, along with medical care and other minor needs, allowing parents to keep children in their families. The organization also has a program that equips teenagers with leadership skills.
“Kids who were struggling when we first placed them in school are now thriving, and we even have several who have advanced to the top of their classes,” Rogers said.
Restoring healthy families
Another way Benjamin House Ministries helps to restore families and get abandoned children off the streets is by building transitional homes in Uganda.
The organization broke ground in June on the first of multiple transitional homes. Children will stay in the homes between three and six months as they receive counseling and rehab for any drug addictions.
“The kids we are rescuing from the streets are alone. On the streets there is no hope for them,” Rogers said. “Our transitional homes are a safe place to land and prepare to be a part of a family.”
Each home will have a set of house parents and between six and eight children. The organization’s staff will work to find the children’s families or tribes and make sure these are safe options for the kids.
Where that isn’t possible, suitable foster parents will be trained and assume the role of parents in a child’s life, Rogers said.
Parents or guardians also will receive counseling through the program in order to adequately care for any children and provide them with a forever home. This can be a complicated process and often involves helping parents or guardians gain skills so they can find a job and provide for their children.
“We want to see families lift themselves out of poverty and brokenness, not simply receiving a handout,” Rogers said.
Building future success
Back in the United States, one part-time representative and a board of directors help spread the Benjamin House story and raise financial support to help the organization continue its work in Uganda.
“Our ministry is completely dependent upon our supporters in the states,” Rogers said. “So the timing of our vision depends wholly on the giving.”
The organization’s major fundraising avenue is through its annual unveiling events. This year, such an event will be held on Sept. 28 in Chattanooga, Tenn., and another on Oct. 5 at the Upward Star Center in Spartanburg.
The ticketed dinner events are open to the public and will involve an intimate discussion with Bucky Rogers about the basic needs of Ugandans and how Benjamin House Ministries can help meet them.
“The work that Benjamin House does is transforming the lives of Ugandans by inspiring hope while meeting their basic needs,” said Kevin Drake, publisher of the Herald-Journal and a Benjamin House Ministries board member. “By caring for others we enhance our own life experience. This banquet gives us an opportunity to make a difference in the lives of these children.”
Michael Lord, who also is on the organization’s board, said the future of Benjamin House Ministries is bright because the need is still so large. The board’s role is to give the Rogers the tools they need to do what needs to be accomplished in Uganda, he said.
“When you look at Benjamin House and its aims and its goals for the future, the potential to reach every child is just overwhelming,” Lord said. “We want to impact the lives of as many children as possible, but it all starts with one child. And I think the Rogers know how to build those relationships with that one child, and then another child and another.”
Through ongoing financial and community support, Bucky Rogers sees the organization expanding in the coming years with an entire self-sustaining village in Uganda.
He also wants to see the organization reach more children and families, plant hundreds of new churches, and shift the general mindset of Ugandan families.
“Basically, we have a huge dream, and we believe God can do it,” he said.

A group of Hendrix Elementary School students want Ugandan children to enjoy an upcoming solar eclipse as much, and as safely, as they did this week.
Amy Flynn’s fourth-grade class has started collecting used eclipse glasses to send to Ugandan children later this year. School officials are working with Benjamin House Ministries, and the glasses will come with notes from Hendrix students about what the eclipse was like.
The African country lies in the path of a 2020 solar eclipse.
“One of the students said, ‘Well, we could keep them until the next eclipse’ and we said, ‘That’s not really possible,’” Flynn said. “That’s when we started looking, who could we even give these to?”
The idea built steam after Flynn reached out to Benjamin House staff. The organization works with orphans and families in Uganda.
Spartanburg School District 2 spokesman Adrian Acosta said other schools have been asked about either sending glasses to Hendrix Elementary or starting similar donation drives.
Friday, Flynn encouraged her class to bring in the glasses the district gave them for the eclipse.
She taught another lesson about the eclipse and its significance before having students write messages to the Ugandan children who will receive their glasses.
“I think it’s the right thing to do,” said Grayson Smithson. “I hope they’re thinking that, ‘Hey, some kid was nice enough to donate these to me.’”
Hendrix Elementary is an International Baccalaureate school, encouraging students to use lessons to take action, Flynn said. The eclipse provided a perfect opportunity for learning, because it it led to classroom lessons and a lesson in giving back, she said.
“I think that’s what they’re going to remember about fourth grade,” she said. “They’re going to remember all the learning about this specifically. I hope when they hear about the eclipse in 2020 in Uganda, they remember someone will be holding their glasses.”
Addison Posey said her “mind was blown” by seeing the eclipse with her parents and family friends. She hopes children in Uganda have the same feeling in a few years.
“I hope they get the message that the solar eclipse is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and they’re really experiencing history and now they have the glasses to actually experience that history,” she said.
Any residents who want to donate their glasses can drop them off at the front desk of Hendrix Elementary or mail them to 1084 Springfield Road in Boiling Springs.

A former Spartanburg pastor who moved to Uganda was back in the city Thursday night to update a large crowd of supporters about his first six months in Africa and the project he started there.
Bucky Rogers, executive director of Benjamin House Ministries, his wife, Julie, and their four children packed their lives into about 10 duffel bags and moved to Uganda in March to dedicate themselves full-time to Benjamin House. Rogers started the ministry to help orphans in the country.

It took about two months to get settled, Rogers said, but over the past six months Benjamin House Ministries has opened a church that about 300 people attend and started a family sponsorship program.

The next project is a transitional home that will help children transition from orphanages to a family setting. The home will give them a place to get comfortable with living with a family before moving into that situation, Rogers said.

Before moving to Uganda, Rogers took several trips to the country and saw firsthand how great the need was. Living there has allowed him to see the need in a different way, he said.

“It’s everything I expected it would be, and yet everything is different than I expected it would be,” Rogers said. “Every day is hard. It’s not hard in that it’s hot or we don’t have ice or we don’t have Chick-fil-As on every corner. We’re OK with that. But it’s hard helping 44 kids in a slum right now and seeing thousands more who need help. We’re asking God to open up the floodgates and let us help these kids.”

Kelly Clark, a member of Anderson Mill Road Baptist Church, went with Rogers on his first trip to Uganda. They were on a mission trip with the church, and Clark saw how much the trip and people there touched Rogers’ heart.

Clark said it wasn’t a surprise when Rogers announced his family was moving to Uganda. It seemed natural, she added.

Thursday was the first time Rogers had been back in Spartanburg since leaving. Clark said she was excited to hear about his experiences and had her handkerchief ready.
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“They moved in March and I’ve seen the Facebook posts but I haven’t heard Bucky’s heart,” Clark said.

In a neighborhood on Spartanburg’s westside, Bucky Rogers and his wife, Julie, take a needed break on the couch. A small film crew is documenting their home life and their mission to build Benjamin House Ministries, an organization with the goal of helping orphans and rebuilding families in Uganda.

The last few months have been a whirlwind of activity, and from an outsider’s perspective, their lives would seem to be more exhausting than many others. Bucky and Julie Rogers have four adopted children — Sasha, Xan, Brennan and Becca, who has special needs.

A Tennessee native, Rogers has worked as pastor of students and worship arts at Anderson Mill Road Baptist Church — The Mill, for short — in Moore since 2006. After several mission trips, he and his wife felt called to pursue a life helping children abroad. A 2013 trip to Uganda solidified in their hearts that God wanted them in the African country.

Named in honor of the stillborn son of friends, Benjamin House celebrated its global launch in June at an event featuring presidential candidate and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. The event made headlines nationwide and ignited a fundraising campaign.

Brightly colored T-shirts bearing the Benjamin House name are donned regularly by followers across Spartanburg County, and a social media campaign has seen supporters post photos wearing the shirts in 40 states and 13 countries, so far.

For his part, Rogers has become a reluctant front man for the movement. A pastor, with more than 14 years of experience and a passion for music, he appears more comfortable in the presence of young people, helping guide them through life’s troubles, than in soliciting money for the mission.

“I’m kind of used to meeting people’s needs,” Rogers said. “I thrive on that. So, asking people to partner with us financially to help us accomplish this task is something that doesn’t come easily. But, for these kids and these families, I’ll do whatever it takes. And, I’m seeing more and more that people are just waiting for an opportunity to be a part of something like this.”

In July, Rogers and members of the Benjamin House team spent a few days touring orphanages and discussing potential partnerships with existing Ugandan organizations. At one possible future home, surrounded by students, Rogers said the dream of Benjamin House — up until then only envisioned on blueprints and in his head — was becoming real.

A documentary chronicling the last several months and the effort to build Benjamin House will be unveiled at an event at the Upward Star Center on Thursday. Rogers plans to return to Uganda in October to finalize more plans and, in March, he will move his family there to begin building Benjamin House. His vision is that the organization will be more than a group home for orphans, that it can repair families and be a conduit for education and change.