TOLEDO—The library at St. Josephine Bakhita High School in Kabingo, Uganda, was an empty room when Molly Troy saw it in July, but that will soon change.

Seventy boxes of books the 17-year-old Girl Scout collected for her Gold Award project were scheduled to arrive Sept. 28, two-and-a-half months after being shipped to the school.

The senior from Toledo Central Catholic High School had the rare opportunity to meet the recipients in person on a mission trip July 3-19 when she traveled to Uganda with Embrace the Children, an organization in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati that supports missionary outreach projects in Africa.

Molly learned of the group during a chance encounter at a restaurant with her neighbors and their cousins who were visiting from Cincinnati. One cousin, Katie Giuliano, is Molly’s age and was involved in raising money for a well in Uganda through Embrace the Children.

Molly decided to help by sending books, which were on a list of items needed by the high school.

The ebullient teenager from Toledo Our Lady of Perpetual Help spent about three months collecting the books.

She received textbook donations from two Catholic high schools and Toledo Our Lady of Perpetual Help School and Wildwood Environmental Academy, where her mother works. Two publishing companies sent boxes of novels, and Friends of the Library, an organization that supports the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library, also gave her free boxes of books.

To foot the $3,200 shipping bill, Molly organized a spaghetti dinner at her parish that earned $2,200, and she received a $1,000 donation for the project from the Ohio Elks Association.

She paid for the trip with money saved from her job at the local library and a loan from her aunt and uncle.

Before going to Uganda, Molly learned about St. Josephine Bakhita High School though e-mail communications with its founder, Comboni Missionary Father Richard Kyankaaga.

“Other than that, I really wasn’t sure, actually going over there, what to expect,” she admits.

What the teen experienced is a country she describes as being both beautiful and impoverished.

With Fr. Kyankaaga as their guide, Molly and 27 others traveling with Embrace the Children visited locals and worked on projects at St. Josephine Bakhita, like painting a bright mural in a lecture hall.

The high school is relatively new, and much smaller than her school in Toledo.

“I didn’t really see any books while I was there,” says Molly. “They might have had a few, but I didn’t see any.”

Throughout the trip, she was struck by the kindness of local residents.

“The people were just amazing,” she says. “They would always say, ‘You are most welcome.’ ”

Molly met other Girl Scouts, called Girl Guides in Uganda, and played games with students from the school. She also recalls a local woman who wanted members of the group to teach her how to dance.

“We tried to teach her the electric slide. That was fun. And then she tried to teach us their dancing, which is amazing – and impossible to do,” says Molly with a laugh. “But we tried it.”

The teen says she was inspired by the strong faith she saw in adults traveling with her group and in locals she met. Time allotted for daily Mass, prayer and reflection also helped her return home feeling stronger about her Catholic faith.

“I go to church on Sundays, but I’ve never gone to church for two weeks, every day,” explains Molly. “It felt good.”

Though some Masses were celebrated in the native language, she was still able to follow along.

“The fact that the Catholic Mass is universal, all over the world, even in a remote part of Uganda astounded me,” Molly says in an article she wrote for her parish.

Despite the distance and the fact that the trip marked the longest time Molly has ever been away from her family, her mother, Anne Troy, says she and her husband, Tom, did not worry too much about letting their daughter go to Uganda.

“I trusted very much the people she was going with,” explains Mrs. Troy. “I kind of just left it in God’s hands, because the way everything fell together it just seemed like one of those things that was meant to be.”

Before she submits the final paperwork for her Gold Award project, Molly will make a presentation about her trip for social studies classes at Wildwood Environmental Academy.

The Girl Scout Gold Award is the highest award a Girl Scout between the ages of 14 and 18 can earn. According to the Web site for Girl Scouts of the USA, last year it was awarded to about 5.4 percent of eligible, registered Girl Scouts in grades 10 to 12.

Molly started as a Daisy Girl Scout in kindergarten and now belongs to Troop 493 with four other area high school girls.