Pader

Pader was so amazing. First, thing I have to tell you is we traveled with 28 people on a 9 passenger taxi that was falling apart. It took 5.5 hours to travel there because the roads were so washed out and muddy. Many times I thought the car was going to get stuck or fall apart. When we got to Pader, we had a late lunch at about 5:30 pm. But sense dinner was also normally at  6:30, we had 2 feasts back to back. We ate as much as we could eat and then had to eat another HUGE meal. We were in pain by the end. It is cultural to finish ALL the food put before you but they cook for about 15 people when we only have 5 people. (We were in this situation many times with back to back meals and had to stuff our selves with a 6 course meal every meal.

MINISTRY

Now about the ministry. We had a 5 day seminar. 4 days we taught the inductive method and on the 5^th day we taught bible over view. The inductive method teaches them how to study the bible and bible overview shows God’s plan for redemption from creation to Jesus’ second coming. We taught the method through the book of Jonah and the last day (day to teach application) we taught how they should forgive. The Assyrians (people of Nineveh) did very similar things to the Israelites that the LRA has done to them so they could identify well with Jonah. So we challenged them to forgive the LRA for torturing their land and people. It was a very powerful service that even brought me (who rarely cries) to tears because I was seeing God move in these people’s lives. We learned more about what the LRA had done (even in that very town). They would cook children’s parents alive and make them watch. They are never aloud to look away or cry. Then they would force them to eat their flesh. It is really disturbing what these people have been through and hearing their stories but God is doing a greater work there and it is evident.

When I was working so closely with this church, I felt like I was living in the Acts church of the bible. Christianity there is relatively new to Northern Uganda so those who are “born again” are so passionate for God. They don’t have a traditional church to follow their example from, they just have the church in Acts to model their new churches after. It is so refreshing and encouraging to see.

HUT-TO-HUT EVANGELISM

In the morning everyday we would go do hut to hut evangelism. Evangelism here is very straight forward, we invite ourselves in, say, “I am here to tell you about Jesus, have you heard of him.” And the ones I had talked to said, “I have heard of Jesus but I don’t know anything about him”. Then we share, and they usually are eager to accept the free gift of salvation. One morning, we went out, we came to a hut and began speaking to a lady, she said that she needed prayer for some family issues and she had a lot of confusion as well. We shared Jesus with her and she decided to give her life to God. Then at the end (and after praying for her), a younger man came in, we tried to talk to him also about God but he was clear he did not want us Christians there and he did not want us talking to him about God. Our time was up so after some chatting we left. Later that day, we talked with the other girl who had gone out for evangelism. She told us how she spoke to a young man who needed prayer for his mother who was a drunk and mistreated the family. She told him about Jesus but he at first did not want anything to do with it. He was a Mormon and did not believe in heaven, hell, or anything spiritual. Eventually, he got saved too after a long conversation. As we talked with this girl, we found out it was the same guy that we had talked to in the hut who came later. So we saw how God was pursuing him (his name is Chris). And his mother who he was worried about and needed prayer for, was the lady who me an another girl had talked to and gave her life to Christ. So this family God saved on the same day, but in such a divine way. When we did the bible overview seminar, nobody showed up but then Chris came, and we decided to start and do it just for him and preach our hearts out. Unfortunately, he left early and did not hear the whole message. Pray for him that God continues to pursue him.

HEALING

One other thing that was really cool was a healing. On the first day of evangelism, we met this little 6 girl who was on a mat outside. She was drooling all over herself and did not have the strength almost even to sit up or keep her eyes open. She was SO sick. One of the Ugandan team members prayed for her and later that evening, we saw the little girl running and playing and all better again. It was really such a blessing to see because we know it was a God Story.

PADER GIRLS ACADEMY

One thing that really broke my heart was the Pader girls academy. It is a school with hundreds of young girls (even 12 years) who had been raped by the LRA and now have 1-5 children because of it. They give them education and they have services to pray. The thing that was sad was they don’t have any kind of discipleship for the girls. If you asked them, “What is salvation or eternal life” they would not be able to tell you. This is a very common problem in all of Africa. I had the honor to go to church service with about 300 of these girls. There was one girl introduced to the group who had been in the bush for 11 years with the LRA and just returned and came to the school 2 days ago. This school broke my heart because even though they don’t know much about God, they love God and Jesus and when you hear them pray, it sound like they are doing battle against the powers of hell. And when you look at their faces, when they worship, you can tell they really have a love for God. It broke my heart that they don’t have discipleship.

We had planned to go to Lira for a week but those connections fell through so we are back in Gulu. We are still praying about what to do this week sense we did not have anything planned for this week in Gulu. However, we will pray about what to do and make sure we keep busy.

ANSWERED PRAYERS

My teachings went really well which I know was the power of God. I became known in the town as the Professor. I was getting affirmed the entire time I stayed there. I know it was God because I was so unprepared, so tired, and actually in tears just before teaching.

PRAY REQUESTS

• One of our team members has gotten Malaria so pray he recovers quickly.
• Pray for the electricity to be turned on at our house. There is some wire that is down or some unknown reason why the power is not on AT ALL. Pray that gets fixed, the electricity company does not want to come out to fix it and we don’t have money to hire an electrician.
• If you would like to donate to our team, it is never too late, we are on a very tight budget so those from Uganda could go on out reach. Every little bit of money would help us.