MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 07-11-2011

Hello again! Good news! God has provided the car we needed to get out to Nakivale. Our friend Ssuemko hunted high and low, and finally located a newish Toyota Land Cruiser with low miles, good engine, good shocks, good transmission, working A/C, and a body shop that could put the bull bars and roof rack on for us, and this is the result:

I went out on Friday to get it from the capitol. The man who purchased it took our old car in trade-in at the price we were asking, so we were able to reduce the cost of this car by that much money. We drove out to Nakivale as a family yesterday, and it performed very well. It has excellent pickup, loads of power, and handles the rough roads effortlessly. It’s exactly the sort of “bushmobile” we need for the work God has called us to do. Praise the LORD for His gracious provision!

I preached at Ngarama and Sangano yesterday. The service went well, with one responding to the invitation for salvation. Remember how the roof was ripped off a few weeks back? It is repaired now. They are making bricks to fill in the gaps near the roof that were made when the roof came off, and then a few bags of cement should be sufficient for the plastering. Once that’s done, a few coats of paint will be adequate to make the place look as good as new. Djuna told me the Pentecostals and Church of Uganda guys were standing around mocking because of the disaster, because obviously “God is against you.” Now they are marveling it was repaired so quickly and are saying “Only God could have done this.”

 

Now that we can go to Nakivale again, I’m going to get back at the English classes, and expand them to include Juru and Sangano also. I will be teaching through Genesis with the men and women’s classes at Sangano on Wednesdays. Pray for wisdom. Also pray for God’s provision. Our money is extremely short this month on account of needing to replace a church roof and buy a car. We will need money for fuel and a few other essentials. Also, I am going to need to begin work on a building for the Juru church soon. We don’t just swoop in and do everything, but we do assist with some things, like iron sheets, and transport for sand and other bulk construction materials. I will need funds for this as well. It’s a pleasure, helping get these infant churches going, and then husbanding them and watching them grow. Pray for the Sangano Baptist Church as it takes it’s first steps as an independent, organized church.

Pray for the ministry here. Pray for Uganda’s economy, which is struggling against the dollar at the moment. This is driving up the costs of fuel and food, among other things. There have been multiple strikes, first shopkeepers, and then the boda drivers in Kampala in response to this. We are also having a sort of energy crisis right now. Mismanagement and corruption (BAU for many agencies here I’m afraid) has caused the electrical grid to come up short on power for Uganda’s energy needs, since two of the largest independent energy plants (one hydro, one geothermal) have not been paid by the government for energy purchased to the tune of nearly 300 billion shillings (114 million USD). So, they have simply stopped generating power until they get paid. Consequently, we are on 12-hour load shedding every other day for the foreseeable future. This means I will have to run the generator more than normal, which increases our fuel costs for the month. Pray for Uganda, that good changes will come.

God bless you!