MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 01-16-2023

Good morning, my friends!

I got the news on Saturday that the mother of one of our deacons had died. So I knew on Sunday we would need to do a burial service for his family.

In Uganda, when a family member dies, the whole community rallies around the bereaved to comfort them. The close female relatives prepare the body for burial. It is kept in the house for usually a day so the family can grieve. It then falls to the close male relatives to dig the hole, carry the casket to the grave, and inter the coffin. All the male family members then participate in filling the grave with soil. Burial always happens to the rear of the family home, in their field, in their land. So the family can be near their loved ones always.

I have always admired how Ugandans deal with death. Americans, in my opinion, have sanitized death to an extreme degree, because death makes Americans very uncomfortable. They fear what comes after, you see. We aren’t allowed to grieve, so people are often forced to carry griefs that were never fully healed.

Not so here. Here your whole community joins you in your grief. You are allowed to sit with the body. To mourn. To cry. To say goodbye. All of your family gathers to comfort you, to speak in memorial of the deceased. Everyone participates in preparing the body, and then burying it. It is very personal. Very hands on.

I take these opportunities to speak directly to the community about the Gospel, about death, and most important what comes after. Death is a journey we all must make. For many, it is a future that holds only terror and uncertainty. For the follower of Christ, however, it is our Blessed Hope.

Jesus has defeated Death and Hell. He has paid the penalty of sin with His own blood. All those who confess their sins, and believe in their heart that God has raised Him from the dead shall be saved. We will grieve for a time, but we can have hope in the midst of that grief because we know that while we will suffer one death, we will never experience the Second Death. We shall journey to see the face of Jesus Christ, and to be reunited with all our loved ones who through faith in Christ have been secured in Heaven. They wait for our coming. And we shall all pass through the Resurrection and dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Pray for the grieving family, and for all those who heard the Gospel, that God’s word would work in their hearts. There is a lot of false religion here, and these life events, as terrible and as painful as they are, grant me the Preacher a rare opportunity to appeal to the souls of many who otherwise would never enter our church, or hear the Truth.