MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 10-19-2012

Since the move kept me so busy that two months went by, I thought an addendum might be in order to keep from deluging you with everything in one letter.

I have finished preaching through the section in Ephesians about the family. All in all the teaching went well. We plan to review it again in the near future with a marriage conference but have yet to set a date for that. Home and family life seems to be a struggle for the folks here in many ways and the only way to fix that is with Biblical teaching about it. I taught to the children in the church service when we talked about Eph. 6:1 and then Anna did teaching specifically for the children during Sunday School. Remember how on the week I was to teach about the woman’s role in marriage that none of the women came? Well, when Anna taught the children about obedience, at one of the churches not one child was there when we arrived (4 or 5 eventually trickled in, way down from the usual 15-20) and only about half came at the other church. Figures. 🙂

Now I’m teaching on Spiritual Warfare from Eph. 6. This is so important because there is a lot of wrong teaching about angels, demons, and Satan from the Catholics, Pentecostals, and even Muslims.

Back in September we had a baptism and marriage service. Several folks were baptized and 2 couples were properly married. It was a big day with a meal following the events and I think the last time we will do a service like that since it seems as though we’ve outgrown the auditorium. There were around 200 there and there almost wasn’t space. The afternoon finished with a huge rainstorm when we tried to crowd all the children into the building as well. With the rain on the tin roof and the nearly 300 people talking you couldn’t hear yourself think!

We had planned to do a VBS in August and then again in September however, due to the extreme expenses of moving and multiple major car repairs for both ourselves and the Bassetts, we were unable to afford the fuel to go out there and other related costs. Now that we are through our move this month, we are making plans to do a VBS in the next weeks. We’ll be teaching the children about the Armor of the Lord in conjunction with what we’re teaching in church. We will also be able to use the opportunity to teach them how to present the gospel using the Wordless Book and Wordless Book bracelets that have been sent to us. Thanks to all who have provided these!

I have finished teaching through the book of Genesis in our Wednesday class and will begin teaching about Church History. It will be exciting to give these men a bigger picture of where their spiritual history comes from since the Bible was completed.

The church in Juru has been struggling in the last couple of months. Some of the men whom we’d thought were leaders in the church have been found to be struggling with sin (drunkenness). Despite hard preaching on this specifically, they continued in this sinful habit. This was damaging the reputation of the church. Recently, it seems like these men are beginning to walk in real victory and that maybe the preaching is finally sinking in. Please be praying for these men to not cave to the pressure of their culture to drink and that they will stand strong and have a good testimony in their community.

In the next few months, the two churches in which we’re working now will be organized under a constitution. One of the men has translated the constitution into the needed languages and we’ll begin teaching through it in the weeks ahead, in preparation for that event. Consequently, we’re praying about which of the trading villages along the way to start another church. There are a number of places without a church of any kind or with a church of some sort started that doesn’t preach the Word of God by people who aren’t qualified to be ministers of the gospel.