SELINSGROVE — For days, members of a Selinsgrove-organized missions team had poured out their hearts by praying, working and sharing the love of Jesus Christ with those in the slums of the capital city of Uganda, Africa.

When they took a break at an Ethiopian restaurant on Sunday to catch the World Cup final, six of those team members, all with ties to the Valley, sacrificed even more for the cause when a terrorist bomb exploded, seriously injuring five of them.

On Monday, Kris Sledge, 18, of Selinsgrove, sat on a hospital bed in a Ugandan hospital, awaiting a transfer to Nairobi, Kenya, where he would get better medical treatment for a broken leg with a deep blast wound and shrapnel, facial blast wounds with small burns, and shrapnel in a swollen-shut eye. He was also deaf in one ear.

An update on a website created before the team left the U.S. thanked God that Sledge wore glasses, or it would have been worse. Sledge was one of six of the 15-member missions team that remained in the capital city of Kampala, Uganda, to complete work at Bwaise Pentecostal Church and Life Care School, including constructing a fence. The other nine had returned to the U.S. on Wednesday.

The pastor of the Ugandan church, Peter Mutabazi, died in the explosions. His wife, Alice, and their five children survive him.

The church began in 1984, and the school began in 2006 and was caring for 200 children, from babies through fourth grade.

Two of the team's Ugandan friends also died in the bombings, which occurred at the restaurant and a rugby club, where crowds sat outside watching the World Cup on a large-screen television. The attacks, believed to be from an al-Qaida-linked Somali militant group, killed 64 people.

Sledge's Facebook page on Monday included a verse from the Bible: "I can do everything through Him who gives me strength" (Philippians 4:13).

"He's an amazing kid," said Mark Gittens, Sledge's former youth pastor at Christ Community United Methodist Church, Selinsgrove, and current pastor of Higher Hope International Ministries, based in Sunbury. "An amazing young man of God. God has brought him through so many things in his life. I'm sure he'll get through it. I'm almost certain he will."

Gittens said Sledge wants to be a pastor. With this experience behind him, Gittens said, Sledge will be a great one.

Another teen, 16-year-old Emily Kerstetter, of Ellicott City, Md., was transferred to a Johannesburg, South Africa,  trauma center after suffering a leg injury that required surgery. Her grandmother, Joanne Kerstetter, of Selinsgrove, suffered a fractured arm and small superficial wounds, but was well enough to travel with Emily.

Lori Ssebulime, the team leader, who married a Ugandan, and has been helping to bring U.S. church groups to the country since 2004, told The Associate Press, "Five minutes before it (the bomb) went off, Emily said she was going to cry so hard because she didn't want to leave. She wanted to stay the rest of the summer here."

Ssebulime was shaken, but not seriously injured, while the team's website also stated that Pam Kramer, of Winfield, would require surgery when she returns to the U.S., and that her son, Thomas Kramer, is in need of immediate surgery on his leg. They also were sent to Nairobi.

The six were originally expected to return to Selinsgrove today.

The team members who had returned on Wednesday were Rhoda Weader, of Mount Pleasant Mills; Sue Heintzelman and Megan Heintzelman, both of Blue Hill, Selinsgrove; Dick and Alice Zeeger, of Kratzerville, and their granddaughter, Allison Zeeger, of Downingtown; Carla and Rich Gotshall, of Mount Wolf; and DeAnn Newhouse, of Middletown.

According to Gerald Wolgemuth, director of communications for the Central Pennsylvania United Methodist Conference, this missions trip is organized every other year, and he doesn't believe the bombings will keep them from doing it again in 2012.

"There are a lot of missions trips that go out of this conference," he said. "I think people are aware of the dangers of foreign travel. We understand that the world is full of evil ... but that doesn't keep us from doing God's work."

In fact, he said, "It becomes even more urgent that we get the gospel out to people who desperately need to hear the Gospel of Jesus."

He said there is no hesitancy to do so.

Gittens agreed.

"In life, the reality is that we're more safe where God wants us to be than to think that we're safe where God doesn't want us to be," he said.

These bombings, and other terrors like it, he said, should actually compel people even more to do what they know they must do — to reach out to all those who are hurting and share with them "a radical love."

"You can't stop a person who senses the call of God on their life," Gittens said.

It didn't stop Paul, or Stephen, or other apostolic heroes in the Bible, "and it won't stop any of the people today," he said.