Meet John Bosco, a security guard for Abaana's Hope

John Bosco has experienced two types of captivity in his life – bondage of sin and abduction by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels  at the age of 16 years old. John Bosco remembers the night in 2001 when he heard a fighter helicopter flying close to his home village. It was 5 p.m. at night in Kinene, Uganda. In the distance, he and his family heard bombs exploding as the UPDF soldiers (Ugandan People’s Defense Force) targeted the LRA rebel soldiers who were led by Joseph Kony. 

“I realized that they are coming to our home. I left home and went to the bush,” John Bosco said.

This was not the first time he’d been forced to flee his home to outrun the rebel soldiers. In 1988, he and his family, including his pregnant mother, fled a rebel attack on their village. The family escaped safely, but his mother went into labor and gave birth on the side of the road. John Bosco’s half-brother, Omony Denish, was born and eventually given the nickname “Bomb,” to remind him of how God saved his life from certain danger.

This time, as John Bosco was trying to evade the rebels, he ran right into them. 

“I thought that I’m hiding myself, but I did not hide well. They got me from the bush,” he said. The rebel soldiers grabbed him and dragged him back to his home. They questioned his mother then told her they would be taking John Bosco with them. There was nothing his mother could do but watch as they left with her oldest son.

John Bosco walked for five miles with the soldiers until they met up with a large group of rebels who questioned him then brought him to their leader. He was surprised to find the leader was his uncle. When the soldiers left them alone, his uncle ordered him, “Don’t tell them that I’m a relative to you,” and John Bosco promised he wouldn’t.

For one week, he lived with the rebels. The rebel soldiers tied rope around John Bosco’s waist and connected it to others they had captured, forming a line so they couldn’t escape. He and the others in the line walked through the thick bush carrying supplies and luggage on their head. Branches and thorns tore at his legs, creating deep cuts that left permanent scars. At night, they remained tied together by the rope around their waists. They slept in the bush with no food and nowhere to take a bath. 

“Before they train you to be a soldier, you have to first carry the supplies, and they do not buy anything. They raid somebody’s house. If they find simsim or gnuts, they just grab it and give it to you to carry” John Bosco said.

The first thing the rebels taught their new captives was that they should want revenge. They told John Bosco and the others to kill any civilian who talks to them with disrespect. If the civilian is humble, they can choose to forgive them and let them run. The rebels despised anyone who was kind and wanted to purge that character trait from the children they abducted.

One week of living in the bush like this with the rebels felt like one month. By the end of this week of travel, his uncle asked to see him. They had traveled far away from John Bosco’s home, so he didn’t know where they were. His uncle had a plan for him to escape.

He ordered his soldiers to escort John Bosco to the nearest town center and told these soldiers, “If anyone airs this issue out to anyone that this one is going away from here, I will kill you.”

The soldiers obeyed and kept quiet in fear for their lives. As soldiers, they knew if they disobeyed an order or even made a mistake they would be killed. John Bosco’s uncle instructed him, “When the soldiers bring you close to the town center, you run.”

So, when the time came, he ran. He ran to the IDP camp (internally displaced persons camp) and found UPDF soldiers. These soldiers helped John Bosco and drove him to his hometown in their truck. John Bosco was able to escape the rebels before they trained him to be a soldier. 

“When I think about it, every time I say, ‘God was there.’ Even after they released me from the bush and I came back in town,” John Bosco said.

He remembers another time when the Lord protected him from the hands of the rebels. After his parents divorced, his mother remarried and had 11 children (including Bomb). John Bosco lived with his grandparents, attending cattle instead of going to school, until his grandfather passed away. Then he moved in with his biological father on the edge of town where he could attend school. 

One morning, John Bosco’s father came to wake him up and he was crying. He told John Bosco that the rebels came during the night, went door to door, and took all the children in the village. John Bosco was the only child left. For some reason, the rebels skipped his door, and he remained inside asleep.

“That is a miracle I still believe in up to now,” he said.

Around 2006, when John Bosco was 21 years old, the Ugandan government declared it was safe for the people to return to their home villages as Joseph Kony’s rebels were starting to leave Uganda. By 2012, Four Corners Ministries was in the process of buying land in the village of Kinene and word spread to the nearby town of Gulu. John Bosco’s aunt encouraged him to return to the village to see if he could get a job working for the ministry. 

“I was scared that if I come back, maybe the soldiers would still be there. When I came back, my heart was full on pumping because I know the things I experienced happened there,” John Bosco said.

People he knew assured him that it was safe to return, so slowly he built up the courage to return. In 2013, Alfred, the owner who sold the land to the ministry, had heard about John Bosco leaving town to return to the village, and he wanted to recruit him for work. John Bosco was willing to help clear the bush and plant crops, and Alfred told him to return the next day with a garden hoe.

“I went back home and that night I was too excited to sleep because I had a job,” John Bosco laughed. “My heart was beating, and I could not even wait to the morning time.” 

The next day, he showed up to work with Alfred and others, ready to start clearing the land. They began to uproot vegetation and remove stumps, making a flat clearing for a building to be constructed. After that, missionary Royce Watkins asked John Bosco to become a security guard for the community that was named Abaana’s Hope. He’s served on the security team since then, and in 2014, he accepted Jesus as his personal Lord and Savior. 

Just as the Lord allowed him to escape the rebel’s captivity, the blood of Jesus Christ set him free from the bondage of sin, giving him eternal life through faith.

In 2015, he married Nighty, who works in the missionary compound. They were the first couple to be married in Living Stones Community Church at Abaana’s Hope. Now, they have two children – Eliana, who is a student at Living Stones Christian School, and Jeremy.