Team Uganda hit the ground running
Jet-lagged and tired, our team managed to stay up until 8 pm or so the first night at the Hurley’s. An intense game of sardines with the Hurley kids and Danielle kept us awake, even though we were propping our eyelids open for most of the evening and were uncommonly quiet. We all slept through the night and were eager to get going in the morning!
For those of you who might not know much about Shannon and Danielle Hurley, they are the missionaries that we are staying with and the founders of SOS Ministries (Sufficiency of Scripture) here in Uganda. They have four children: Emma (12), Elisa (9), Ethan (5) and Evan (2). It has been so much fun getting to know their family and seeing the way that they keep their home and lives God-centered. It has also been very very exciting to learn more about their current ministry and their vision for ministry in the future. Their ministry is based on and can be summarized in discipleship. Their goal is to go and make disciples for Christ, just as he commanded us to do. You can see their methods the second you step in the door of their home as they have four Ugandan men living with them who have been brought to Christ through their ministry and are now being discipled by Shannon. They have at two Ugandan women living with them as well and their floors are more often than not covered by mattresses with people from the church, people having health problems, people curious about the gospel, or teams from the United States! Their home is a true picture of biblical hospitality and let me just tell you, Danielle is an amazing cook and feeds 20+ people every single meal while our team is here! We are truly blessed and encouraged by staying with them and feel very at-home and well cared for.
Luweero is a big part of the Hurley’s plans for the future, since they just purchased 100 acres of land there and are planning on moving their ministry there over the next couple of years! Luweero is a district about 1.5 hours north of Mukono, where they currently live. It is far more impoverished than Mukono and the need for the gospel as well as mercy and lovingkindness there is great. This brings me back to our team’s wild ride. Monday night we found out we were going to Luweero and cooking for 25+ people with nothing but an open fire to cook with! Set for an adventure, the girls shopped for pots, food, cooking utensils, and a coal burner (a little mini barbeque to put pots on basically). Not knowing what to expect, we squeezed 13 people (4 Hurley’s, one student who lives with them, and our whole team!) into their 8-seater car and all bonded over the smashed journey to Luweero. Luweero is quite a distance from the main road and basically right in the middle of the Ugandan jungle. We arrived in the dark, but were greeted the next morning by a beautiful African sunrise over the canopy of the jungle when we stepped out of our tents. Shannon took us for a walk around his land and we greeted the kids of the community and had our first real taste of African life in the jungle. Families live in one-room homes that are nothing like “homes” in America. They grow enough food for their family or don’t eat. Many of them basically have no money and their lives are very simple and hard. It is amazing that though these people have nothing, they seem happy and content. They greeted us warmly and the kids started playing with us right away. The Hurley’s and the Graingers* had already made connections with the families and knew most of the kids names already. Those who didn’t know us called out “muzungu!” (white person) to us as we passed and gave us friendly waves. Shannon told us his first goal for the land was to build a seminary and dormitories to train Ugandan pastors to be grounded in the Word to make more disciples. After this project, anyone who wants to come and do ministry in Uganda will be welcome to come and help SOS with anything such as medical or educational help. The doors are wide open!
*The Graingers live in the home directly above the Hurley’s and are a great example of a family who followed the Lord’s leading even when it seemed crazy and irrational. Deane and Sherrilyn with their kids Zach (15), Sam (14) and Brianna (11) moved here from New Zealand at the beginning of the year to help the Hurley’s clear out the brush and begin building their ministry base in Luweero. They are a great encouragement to us and our whole team is planning a trip to New Zealand in the near future to visit them! J Well, we really love them a lot.
Back to Luweero... we were there from Tuesday night until Saturday afternoon and accomplished a lot over the course of that time. First of all, we got to hack a path from a pineapple plantation to the area where the Hurley’s future home will be. It was hilarious for me to see the team (in particular the girls in skirts) with these huge machetes hacking at the Ugandan jungle! But everyone did a great job and were rewarded at the end with a huge downpour of rain. Speaking of rain, the weather has been absolutely beautiful here! I don’t think it has gotten much hotter than the low 90’s and the humidity has been bearable. Uganda is gorgeous and green and our whole team has been very impressed with its beauty.
In addition to chopping down the jungle, our team also passed out shoeboxes that we received full of gifts from a secular organization in Europe. Community in Uganda is very important, so we passed out the boxes full of goodies to all of the kids in the community for an entire afternoon, telling them about SOS ministries and playing with the kids. We loved the interaction with the people and it was so great to talk to them and start forming a positive connection between them and SOS. It is our prayer that those people whose hands we shook will embrace the gospel in the upcoming years. As we picked up the kids, hugged them and played with them, we sought to view these people through Christ’s eyes and show them love as well as praying for their souls.
Every morning in the jungle, Shannon sat down our team and the Ugandans and gave us a talk about what the gospel is. Our whole team’s perspective and understanding of the gospel has been radically enforced by Shannon’s emphasis of using Scripture to explain the gospel. The good news of the gospel, according to Romans 1, is the righteousness of God! We do not meet that standard but through the righteous life of Christ and his final sacrifice, God sees us as being righteous in Christ! We used to be enslaved to sin and under its bondage, but now we are slaves of God and have the hope of eternal life! This gospel is very real and exciting and has made us even more excited about being passionate for the gospel and for being here in Uganda to share it.
Joining us in Luweero are several Ugandans that have become friends of our team. Nine Ugandan believers (two women, seven men) who either live with the Hurley’s, work for them, or go to their church accompanied us on our trip. Most of them were saved through the Hurley’s ministry so it was exciting to be living with evidence of God’s work in Uganda. We learned a lot from the Ugandans such as how to get army ants away from tents by pouring hot coals and gasoline all over their gathering areas! They also taught us to make matokee (a traditional Ugandan dish) the good way as well as how to do dishes and cook with no electricity, kitchens or refrigeration! What an experience. The meals went very smoothly with their help and Sherrilyn’s wisdom and assistance.
When we weren’t hacking down jungles or passing out shoeboxes, we played endless games of jump rope and let the kids climb all over us like a jungle gym as we tried to communicate with them in English. Some understood more than others, but our Ugandan interpreters were never far! The girls tent had quite an experience the second night when we were attacked by big black ants swarming our sleeping bags and biting us pretty hard at 12:30 am! The girls were studs and just got up, systematically killed them, gave our tent floor a firm layer of deet, and went back to bed slapping away any survivors. We love the jungle!
Back to the Hurley’s from Luweero on Saturday, our team was tired and very dirty, but encouraged by seeing just the beginning of the Lord’s work in Uganda and excited to see more! We are praying for the people that we came in contact with that they might embrace the gospel and grow as disciples in Christ under the biblical teaching of SOS ministries. We are also praying for a smooth move for the Hurley’s as they relocate to Luweero. There are so many needs there and they will definitely be Jesus’ hands and feet to the people in the village.
Sorry this blog has been so long! We have been without electricity for a few days and the internet works spontaneously, so it is hard to find opportunities to blog. At one point, we had no electricity or water in the house for a day with 20 people sleeping in the house! But God has been sovereign and good to us, proving His faithfulness every day. Please pray that our team would be able to be more encouraging to the Hurley’s and the Grainger’s as they serve the Lord here and that we would have opportunities to share the gospel. This week the Faculty/Staff team is here from The Master’s doing a conference at Uganda Christian University (a liberal arts school of over 4,000 students) on God, Law and Government. I will leave the blogging on this exciting event to Ben Blakey... but thank you for caring enough about Team Uganda to read this whole thing and we will be keeping you posted as much as possible!
~Amanda Cech