Wow! That has been my reaction so far as I think back over the last 15 days of my life. I have been amazed at the sights, sounds, smells, and stories that I encountered in Uganda.
Thank you all for praying for this last trip. Sandra did well at home for the most part and I have arrived safely back. I have been discovering that safety is a relative term in this world of ours.
The picture above:
A small church building right smack dab in the middle of the largest police barracks in Kampala, Uganda. This place is home to some 12,000 police officers and their families which makes the population around 70,000. A major portion of the entire police force of metro Kampala lives here and is bussed to their duty stations each day and night. There is only one pastor here (the man next to me, Rev. Davis) who is marginally trained and has to be very careful about the way he goes about preaching the truth. You see, the previous two pastors here were beaten and shot by the police. Kids are running around all over the place with nothing to do because they can’t afford to attend school. Three to six families live in each “shed”, spaces separated by a curtain alone. People live so close and packed in that the families must dye their chickens different colors to tell them apart. Ours are the only white faces that have been allowed in this camp in as long as anyone can remember. The man on the right (Francis Kalafa) is from Kenya and is a missionary here in Uganda. Francis arranged this meeting for me because he is well connected among the Anglican pastors here and has done a couple of outreaches here. As I began to learn about life here in the camp I discover that there are 5 services a weekend in this little church and they are all packed out. The need however is for any ministry to be outside these services. Rev. Davis is swamped each week visiting the sick and helping families as best he can. He has no time, training, vision or resources for discipling the people who attend this church. When I began to tell him about what Cadence has done in the past among the police of other countries was about to cry with joy and asked when we could get started! I believe Rev. Davis is doing the best he can but is really without the means to make anything happen. 12,000 police officers in a half mile square area waiting to be impacted. I wish I could have taken some other pictures to show you but we were not allowed to do that. Suffice to say that there is a big open door for ministry here and we are going to need some wisdom in figuring out if and how to proceed.
Will you pray with us about this opportunity? It will probably mean that I would be flying to Uganda from Thailand to do a training conf. at the barracks as a trial and then seeing where the Lord takes it from there.
Thanks again for your prayers.
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