Uganda 2008

It is hard to believe that today marks the two week mark since we arrived here in Uganda. We have done so much, yet the time seems to go by so fast! This past week with the faculty has been incredible. After the conference on Tuesday and Wednesday, we hit the ground running, or rather driving in a huge bus that seated both our team, the faculty team, and various members of the Hurley household. Thursday morning we hopped on the bus and took another trip to Luweero where the faculty got a tour of the Hurley’s property and got to sample the fruits of the land (the Jack Fruit and Pineapples are amazing!). They also got to meet some of the community and the people that the Hurley’s will be showering with the gospel in the upcoming years. It was great for our team to see the kids again and we had a great time playing with them for the afternoon.

After Luweero it was off to another district where we got a tour of an orphanage where the Hurley’s have a connection. The orphanage was incredible. It was clean, well organized, and built on a beautiful hillside with a gorgeous view of the surrounding area. The orphanage consists of several little “homes” that a single church pays for to be built. Each little home is complete with bedrooms, a living room and kitchen. It holds eight children and a “mom”. There is a school built on the property and the place just has a happy and encouraging feel to it! We didn’t get to stay long, but long enough to have several kids clinging to our legs when we boarded the bus again. While the kids were adorable and seemed happy, it is heart-wrenching to think that they don’t have parents and might not grow up with the family unit that God designed to work so well.

Friday was a busy day… it began with a visit to the Commercial Court in Kampala and a meeting with one of the judges. Our teams got a chance to ask him questions about the government and judicial system of Uganda and loved all of the interesting aspects of Ugandan politics. We also got to take a tour of Parliament and visit one of the members of Parliament who is a believer! We got to ask him all kinds of questions and were encouraged by his faith and his goals for keeping a strong moral stand in office. We all got to pray over him and encourage him as brothers and sisters in Christ in that way. Please pray for this Member of Parliament, Otto that God would use him mightily in his position.

Friday night was definitely a highlight for most of us… we got to go to the Passion Conference!!! Worship with hundreds of Ugandans singing and dancing for the Lord is an incredible experience and I was humbled when the whole crowd would spontaneously burst into chants of “Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!”. It was made clear that that night of worship was about one person alone and that was Christ. Louie Giglio talked about how God has told us who He is on His throne in His Word and how we need to live in light of that. Our team was encouraged by seeing brothers and sisters in Christ all the way in Uganda worshipping the Lord with the same songs we sing back in the states. The night was incredible. Praise the Lord!

Saturday started off at the Armani Baby Cottage in Jinja, the orphanage where Mark Tatlock adopted his children. The place was so cheerful and organized, and the kids were so cute. We played with them for a while and again, it was hard to leave. A few of them even started sobbing when they were pried away from the arms of our team! Throughout the conference and this week, we have been looking at the verses in the Bible that say to take care of the widows and the orphans. This puts places like this in an entirely different light knowing that God has commanded us in His Word to care for the orphans and is pleased when we do! Let’s just say that our interest in adopting has been peaked. J

A more humbling trip was the next when we visited the slums of Jinja with the pastor of the Nile Church. Compassion International works through this church and we got to meet the kids who are sponsored through Compassion! They sang and danced for us in songs of worship and we were amazed at the way that these children were cared for and educated. It is difficult to explain the slums, but I will do my best. The fields are filled with little tiny clay huts where whole families live in tiny rooms with little but pots and pans inside. It is hot and just reeks strongly like garbage and alcohol. The kids are wearing rags and the place is encumbered by poverty so much that it is overwhelming to walk through. The sad thing is that the mothers need to make money to feed their kids, so they work 12 hours a day brewing very strong alcohol only to make 1,000 Ugandan Shillings a day (that’s less than a dollar). When I walked past one of the areas where a woman was making it and I felt like vomiting from the strong smell. Yet this is what they do all day without many other options. We visited the hut of a witch doctor right in the middle of the slum and I know that all I could do was pray for the “patients” and for the witch doctor who are immersed in this evil. The cool thing was that when I walked out of the hut, I saw Laura Stewart five feet away with a crowd of about 12 kids and women and she was sharing the gospel with them! The light of Christ still shone even in this dark place!

Things got even better after that: we took a trip to the prison. About 1,500 inmates are kept there and we were greeted by the women prisoners who were believers as they shared a song of praise with us! Mark Tatlock gave them an encouraging message about Paul and Silas in the prison in the gospel of Luke. We then went into the main prison courtyard where the men were having a worship session and Mark again got to share with them the same message as well as the gospel! The pastor shared with us the poor state of the Ugandan prisons and we met a man who does prison outreach in all of the prisons of the area, sharing the gospel with these over-worked inmates. Praise God that his work is being done through faithful men who desire to see people be born again!!! From the prison, we made a short stop at the source of the Nile then dinner and back to the Hurley’s!

Thank God Sunday is a day of rest because our whole group was pretty tired and our bodies were screaming for some relaxation! We had an incredible encouraging church service and we were humbled by communion, worship, and a time of sharing and asking questions. In the afternoon, half of the team had an opportunity to meet the man who wrote, “A Distant Grief”, written about the persecution during Idi Amin’s rule. After that, a pretty intense game of soccer ensued and our legs are not thanking us for that. Ben led worship and Pete shared a message at youth group that night and it was a great time of fellowship and learning.

Monday we got the opportunity to visit IJM, International Justice Mission, and Mark Tatlock had the chance to share a devotion with the staff there. We also learned a lot about the injustices happening in Uganda and all that IJM is doing to stop it right now. It was exciting to hear about how God is working through these people in big ways as they meet people’s legal needs and also share the gospel.

Tomorrow we get the opportunity to go to Gulu in northern Uganda, which is an area greatly affected by the war and far more impoverished than here. The guys will be teaching about the gospel and basic theology to a group of 60 + pastors from Sudan, so please be praying for wisdom for them!!!  The girls will be staying at an orphanage and doing ministry there. We return on the 13^th so we will blog again then! Thank you so much for keeping up with our team and here are a few more things to be praying for:

·     Safety and protection on the long ride to and from Gulu

·     That the Lord would give the guys wisdom and a reliance on the Word as they answer these pastor’s questions about theology

·     That the Lord would give the girls the right words to share the gospel with the kids and women that they will be meeting and that they might see the fruit of that as the Lord works

·     For the health of our team as we eat differnt foods

·     For our hearts that they would be right before God and purged of sin daily

·     That we would have servants hearts like Christ