THURSDAY – MBALE

We are in the second part of the week now. The crusade will continue until Sunday night in the School ground. The School is about three kilometers from the church so most of the people at the conference walk there after lunch and walk back to sleep after the crusade. No one wants to leave early because of that. They probably would in Australia. There is clearly a hunger for God here. When you remember that relatively few people have Bibles it’s a matter of comparing Christian meetings to reading the Bible. It’s not quite like that but there is a strong hunger that surpasses self interest. That’s the key. There are great things happening in this nation. It is interesting to be here and to get a different perspective on things than the video presentations show. Its not that the videos are covering up the truth. They tell a part of the story.

The other part of the story has to do with all the usual suspects. There are some pastors who belong to a National Fellowship of Born Again Churches or some such name like that and some of them have more access to the political leaders and they have often tended to attract the interest that has been created outside Uganda by the videos. And, you could guess it, they attract more of the money and support that comes whether or not they are doing the front line ministry. The other side of it has to do with the other usual suspect of parochialism. The Kampala driven ministries are often restricted to the city and there are large regions of the country that need church planters and pioneer workers. Due to a hundred and twenty something years of missionary endeavor there is usually a residual of Christian awareness, but when people turn away from the things of God they turn to traditional paganism and witchcraft and the like. The enemy tends to rush in like a flood.

So there are very few who are pushing up through the centre to the north west areas. These, as you may be aware are the ones that have been most affected by the LRA terrorists. It seems that Joseph Coney is still around breathing threats. His power has been very significantly weakened as you saw in the video (if you haven’t seen “An Unconventional War” contact Toowoomba City Church and they will send you one. It is a great story. Very inspiring). People here have been aware of the fact that a journalistic team recently came to Uganda and somehow managed to arrange a meeting with Coney and they interviewed him. He is like the Osama Bin Laden of Uganda and the people here feel angered by the fact that a foreign team would find a way of getting to him but not do anything to help get him arrested. One of the claims he made was that he lives by the ten commandments. I think he might have a few less than ten in his book. Murder would be a glaring omission.

Soroti, where we are going next week, was a town that formed its own army when the Ugandan government would not come and protect them. Coney targeted the town to take it over and use it as a base. He had taken over other towns just through people leaving. But Soroti resisted him in two ways. They formed an army and got guns from the government to do so and the churches came together to pray. Before each attack the Christians would pray for the locally formed army and while they were in the battle they would engage in unceasing intercession. The result was that Soroti because the first town that Coney did not capture and it was a turning point in the war against this terrorist.

One of the reasons I am glad that God has brought us together with Bishop Patrick is that he has a huge heart for this region and has already been planting churches back up toward the north west. We will be helping them plant a new church in Soroti itself and I will be preaching at their first service. Patrick also works well with pastors in this eastern and central region. He is a real father figure. We would definitely call him an apostle because he has gained so much broad respect and because he provides a structure for churches to relate much like Crosslink. Here is a true pioneer. The church here in Mbale was only started in 1999. In the last twelve months it has doubled in size. Patrick is definitely Mr. Perpetual Motion. Everyone knows his mobile number and they text messages asking him to pray for them. And he does. He is on the radio every evening at 7:00 pm once again receiving prayer requests and praying for people’s needs.

We had another great day today. Conference session included Jaemin preaching for an hour between 8:00 and 9:00 and then I preached from 11:30 to after 1:30. Today was a bit more of a challenge because they were not only translating into Luganda (the most common language in Mbale) but there was an interpreter into the language that they speak to the north west of here, which I can’t remember the name. I have enjoyed working with Joseph, who does the first interpretation but the second guy was a bit slower and so I had to speak and then Joseph and then the third guy. It was okay once I got used to it. What I had to do was to speak in full short sentences rather than half sentences. Once I got that right it was okay. You can see why humour takes some doing in this kind of situation. You have to wait for the second group to get the words before they can react, and the first group react when they hear the first translation; and there are quite a few who speak English so they get it right away. Can be a bit confusing.

There seemed to be an even greater anointing in the crusade meeting this evening. There was a much bigger response to the altar call. One exciting story came from Jaemin. He had been scouting around the perimeter looking for people to talk to and had met this Muslim man. He had been at the meetings each night but when the appeal was made and Jaemin asked the question he always refused. Well, tonight he responded. It was so terrific. We were praying for sick people till much later. One of the difficulties is that Emmanual likes the sound to be totally full up. When you stand in front of the stage area praying for people you can’t hear a thing. The worship team always bring worship during the ministry time so that means you just lay hands on people and pray for all you are worth.

Tonight we came home and had a meal and headed straight for bed. Much much nicer plan, despite the great food last evening.