Free State senior Kara Evans will be heading to Uganda this summer for a mission trip.

While most students her age are spending their summer going to the lake or studying for the SATs, Kara Evans, an incoming senior at Free State High School, will be spending her summer before senior year in Uganda.

“I’ve always wanted to do an overseas mission trip,” Evans says. “I assumed it would be in college, but when I heard about this trip to Uganda, I just felt called to go.”

Evans is going to Uganda through Teen Mania’s Global Expeditions, an organization that works to change the world through teen missions in more than 16 countries.

Evans will spend the first half of her three-week trip in Kampala, Uganda, working with a growing church that teaches AIDS prevention. She leaves this week.

“We’ll be doing skits, singing songs, teaching AIDS prevention, while also trying to spread Christ’s message of love,” Evans says.

She will then go to Hope Village orphanage in Gulu, Uganda, where she will interact former child soldiers. The children she will be working with were abducted at a young age to serve as soldiers in the LRA, Uganda’s resistance army. They were then re-abducted and brought to the orphanage.

“That will be the hardest part,” Evans says. “Seeing those kids who have gone through so much, hearing all of their stories, seeing their scars. I’ll probably come home wanting to adopt all of them.”

Evans has had to raise more than $4,000 to pay for the trip. She held a fundraiser at Spangles, where she works, and collected change in teachers’ classrooms.

“I’m about 70 percent of the way there,” she says. “Total strangers have come up to me, like ‘Here’s some money.'”

Even though it’s her first time out of the country, Evans says she’s not scared.

“Safety was a big issue at first, but they trust the organization I’m going with,” she says. “They (Global Expeditions) did this trip last summer, and they’ve gone to 36 other countries. So I’m not really worried.”

Evans’ mother, Janet, says she’s excited for her daughter.

“It’s far away, but we trust that she’ll be safe,” Janet Evans says. “We’re just excited to see her following her passion, and we’re proud of her decision to go and show love to these kids in Africa.”

But Evans is hoping to get more than just an experience for her resume.

“I can’t wait to see how I grow spiritually, I don’t really know what God is going to teach me,” she says.

Evans says that she hopes this won’t be the last time she works with impoverished children.

“I have a passion for justice and human rights,” she says. “After college I’d like to work for a non-profit organization like Compassion International.”