Thank You For Your Prayers, It was An Amazing Week

I just want to first say THANK YOU!!! Thank you for praying for our team this week. It was amazing within a few hours of the email being sent out I had the most violent vomiting attack of my entire life and felt great from that moment on! I have since received your emails and it is amazing to see what God showed you and awesome to know that God is covering us on all sides! We were able to get a vehicle to come and take Molly and Ihn Hee back to Arua to get a check up and it ended up not being malaria and within a couple days she was feeling fine as well. So it worked out wonderfully. Everyone is now healthy and we are here in Jinja, in southern Uganda, teaching on the School of Biblical Studies. The girls were able to have a nice few days to prepare for their teachings this week on the Bible school and Jeremy and I had a phenomenal seminar out in Madi Okolo! Thank you for your prayers!

I know this email is a little long so you can skim to the bottom for prayer if you would like, but I think the stories are worth sharing.

From the first day in Madi Okolo refugee camp it was great to meet up again with the friends I made last year while in the there and most of them came again. It was like returning home. There were so many wonderful things to share about I will try to share just a few.

One of the highlights was on Saturday night I had no idea what I was supposed to preach on Sunday morning. I met with the chairman of the churches in the area when he came to ask for financial assistance with a few things. One of them was a lot of money to purchase a tray for communion as well as the required special cups and vase, etc. His sister church in Ariwa last week asked me for the same thing. When I asked why they needed to spend this large amount of money on a ceremonial tray, they told me, “that is our doctrine and we can’t celebrate communion without it.” I asked if Jesus used a tray and many small cups and they admitted that it was only their tradition, but that the people would be afraid of doing it any other way. After speaking with the pastor for a while, sharing on the value of communion, and showing how tea and biscuits could be substituted for bread and wine, he asked me if I would teach on Sunday the message of communion and hold the church’s first communion service! I must say that this has been one of the greatest privileges of my life! I was first able to teach what the Bible says about communion, addressing some of their stumbling blocks, and then we took their first communion with a cup of tea and a package of biscuits. To think that for all these years the only thing standing between them and celebrating communion was money. Yet now they see that money is not required to remember the sacrifice of Christ. The greatest part of all was after the service when I had set down the cup tea and the pastor set down the biscuits and he said to me, “we will definitely do this again.” As I sit here remembering this, I am again filled with awe in how awesome God is and humbled that I get to be here.

There were so many other awesome events from the week. We taught from John 13 about servant leadership and for application spoke on how we need to serve each other. I even went so far as to compare Jesus’ act of washing the disciples’ feet, which was only done by servants and women, to the pastors carrying their own water from the bore hole, cooking food for each other, and washing dishes, which the men in their culture refuse to do. It didn’t seem that they had really enjoyed the specific application and instead said they would serve by preaching the gospel. However the next morning a few of the leaders of the church wouldn’t come in to the training and I soon realized they had kicked the women out of the kitchen hut and these men were preparing the food and tea for the day. I then saw another leader walk by with empty jerry cans to go pump and fetch water! Soon the men were coming in washing the others’ hands and serving tea. They then finished preparing lunch and served everyone, fetching even more water, and even cleaned up all the dishes afterwards! I don’t know how to describe how amazing this was. I could not have dreamed of a more perfect way for them to apply the message to their lives and no one who was at the seminar will ever forget it! I put up a couple pictures in my photo gallery of them serving.

One crazy thing that happened while there was that in the middle of our seminar half of the church roof fell down. Luckily people were able to run out in time, but termites ate through the main support of the church and so we had half of the church to work with for the rest of the week. The only nice thing about this was that as a result people had to sit very close together and near the front. Jeremy and I were also laughing when after constantly chasing a chicken out of our hut I found it’s egg sitting behind his backpack.

Another thing that God did in my heart this past week was He bonded my heart closer to many of these men and women and a one question kept nagging at my heart the entire time. What is my responsibility to help the poor? Being surrounded by so much poverty on a week-by-week basis, I am always confronted with this question, but this week I received a new revelation of it and felt that even though I can’t help everyone, I had to do be willing to err on the side of generosity, not caution. It is amazing how a little bit can make such a huge difference out here and one of the greatest parts of the whole week was being able to invest in five of the church leaders to go back to school and obtain their high school diplomas. Without it, they are only able to dig in the fields; with it they can get a good job and have many more opportunities when they return to Sudan. There is also a woman in the camp who wants to be a missionary and do a DTS and I am hoping and praying that God will provide the 400 dollars she needs to do that.

Along those lines, the greatest thing about being here in Jinja is that we are teaching on the Bible School here and this is where Pastor William and Paul are studying. As I mentioned before on my website, a generous donor to Titus Project provided the finances to send these two men of God here to study the Bible for nine months. I can’t express in words how wonderful it was to see them again and see how joyful they are. We sat for hours as they talked about how much they praised God when they found they could get more training and Pastor Paul told me something I will never forget. He said, “James for a long time I wondered why God chose me to come here and study, but I got the answer a few weeks ago while studying 2^nd Timothy chapter 2. Paul tells Timothy to ‘…entrust these things to reliable men who will be able to teach others.’” I almost fell out of my chair when he continued and said, “James, you are my Paul and I am Timothy, and now I must go back and pass this training on to the pastors in my home and then in Sudan when we return.” I quickly assured him that I had nothing to do with it, but he said, “It doesn’t matter, I have a responsibility to now train others.” I have tears in my eyes just recalling these words! This is the reason why we do this ministry! We are not simply teaching a few people, but training them so they can go and train others. It was so exciting to hear this directly from his mouth.

I will be staying on until the end of January working with the Bible School here, but I want to spend even more time with these students who are so hungry for God’s Word. On the Bible school here we have six students, four of them are pastors and three of them are from Sudan. They have all told me that they would like more training on how to take what they are learning and teach it to others, so we will spend time on that in January. I am continually overwhelmed with joy as I talk with them and hear their passion to take their training and pass it on.

Thank you so much for all of your support and giving me the privilege to do this and thank you for your prayers that continue to sustain us as we minister. This week the girls are teaching 1^st & 2^nd Corinthians on the Bible School, Jeremy & I will be teaching in the village. Next week, I will go with the girls to another seminar while Jeremy teaches Hebrews on the Bible school. The following week is our debriefing time and then the team goes back. After that I will teach Matthew on the Bible School and then head to Kenya for a seminar there before coming back to teach on the Bible School again.

So please continue to pray:
- Please pray for our continued health and safety as we travel and minister. God continues to show me how blessed I am to have a prayer covering for my health. THANK YOU!!!
- Please pray for the team to be anointed with wisdom and power as they teach on the Bible School.
- Please pray that we finish out this time strong. It is easy to get tired after this much travel and teaching. So please pray for God’s strength and continued passion for each person to give everything they have.
- And of course, please ask the Lord to show you what to pray for and pray accordingly.

Thank you,

James
www.ToMakeHimKnown.com

The People of Ariwa Send You Their Greetings

Wow, we just had an amazing time. Not only did we just finish up last week’s seminar in Ariwa Refugee camp, but we spent the last 24 hours in Murchison Falls Wildlife Game Park on a safari. It was amazing. Last year when I came we also went, but this time we saw so much more. God’s creation is so awe inspiring. The animals are amazing, we saw hundreds of elephants up close, giraffes, lions, hippos, crocs, baboons, etc, but this time we spent a few hours on top of the most powerful surge of water in the world where the entire Nile river flows through an 18 foot wide gap in the rocks. It was mesmerizing to sit at the top as I had worship music blaring in my headphones, watching the sun set over the falls and worshipping God and his majesty! You can see some of the photos in my photo gallery under Murchison Falls, I have also added more photos to the Uganda 2006 section from our time in Ariwa. www.ToMakeHimKnown.comOur time in Ariwa was also amazing, though very different from what we were expecting. Last year our trip to Ariwa was the best seminar we had, with almost every pastor in the camp coming out each day. This week we were surprised to find that we arrived right in the middle of harvesting time for sim sim (sesame seeds). They told us two days before we were supposed to come, but it was too late to change our plans. As a result, very few were able to come, each family spends almost all their time harvesting their sim sim for the short window they have after it is ripe and before it spoils. Those who came to the seminar made a huge sacrifice to be there as some of their crops spoiled during the week. We started our seminars around noon so people could have time to work in the fields in the mornings, we would then go until about five when they would return to the fields to work. Also many of the people we really connected with last year were not around this year. Yet even though it appeared to be very unfortunate timing, God was of course not surprised and had His own plans for our time there.

From the first day we struggled with our teachings as people were clearly distracted by their other work, few had attended last years seminar, and most who came had little to no education. As a result we had to change what we were doing and focus on meeting the people where they were at. At first I was quite disappointed as it was clear they were not ready for the teachings we had prepared, but we took our teachings and simplified them to the greatest extent possible and it was so encouraging to see people begin to study the Bible for the first time in their lives. We had awesome testimonies from the pastors who came on how they clearly saw for the first time that there was so much more to God’s Word than they had ever seen and that they now felt they could study it on their own.

We also had the privilege of being able to speak on some important issues in the church. We spent a lot of time dealing with Biblical leadership and had a great time discussing the importance of ministers having a strong family life. To give you an idea of some of the mindsets, I explained a situation I encountered here last year where a pastor would never go to his home because his wife was sick with Malaria and wouldn’t serve him food. So he would go out to get food for himself from other people instead of being with his wife and he left her to fend for herself while deathly sick. When I asked them what is wrong with this scenario, one of the pastors answered, “the wife does not have faith, the husband does!” I was truly shocked and it lead to a wonderful discussion of what it means for a husband to love his wife. It was awesome as some of the other leaders stood up and spoke of what it really means to love your wife. We also spent time dealing with the issue of divorce as many of the pastors here believe it is okay to divorce if their wife is distracting them from ministry. A couple people stood up and left during that discussion, but they came back later when we had moved on to a different topic. It was just so cool to be able to have a time of looking at leadership from a Biblical perspective, not just cultural.

There were so many other cool things God did during the seminar, I wish there was time to share. However, outside of the seminar it was also a great week. This was the first week that we lived among the people and it was awesome to share life with the family we stayed with and those that lived around us. One wonderful thing that God allowed us to be a part of was the head pastor’s young daughter was extremely sick. He had run out of medicine for her and couldn’t afford more. When I went to see her at their home, she could not stand as she had had a terrible case giardia and worms for at least a week. Well I and the pastor prayed for her and then I asked how much the medicine she needed cost. I couldn’t believe when he told me he only needed less than two dollars. I quickly gave it to him and he went to the clinic and bought the medicine right away. Two days later the pastor came over with his young daughter and she looked great and was even carrying her baby brother on her back. She was smiling and happy.

It is sometimes hard because you do not want to come in as a westerner and throw money around. There is already way too much dependence upon the west and expectation for westerners to give away money, but after an experience last year in Madi Okollo I just want to do whatever I can while still trying to respect the culture. Last year in Madi Okollo one of the pastors who was in our seminar saw his daughter die of malaria during our teachings. However, if we had known of her condition, we had Malaria medication in our medical kit that we could have given him. After attending that girl’s funeral last year I decided that I don’t want to attend any more preventable funerals if there is any way in which I can help to prevent them.

Another time I saw a young boy had a gaping wound on his ankle the size of a quarter and very deep. He had hit himself with a hoe and flies were literally inside of his ankle and he was running around in the dust and mud with no protection. Again we were able to help clean his wound from our medical kit and then arranged for him to get ongoing treatment from the local clinic. His parents are away in Sudan and he has to take care of himself, who knows what would have happened if he allowed it to get infected. Even with all the amazing stories from our seminars, it is often these simple practical things that stick with me, how something so little can make such a big difference.

One other highlight from the week for me, was being able to see John again. It was so wonderful to see his bright smile as I saw him on the side of the road. I was happy to find that his eyesight has not gotten any worse from last year and it was neat to take another picture with him as he proudly wore the sunglasses I gave him last year.

There are many more stories I could share from the week, but I have to get back and prepare for our next seminar in Madi Okollo tomorrow.

So please continue to pray for me and the team. This week we are in another refugee camp, then next week we head to Jinja. Half will teach on the Bible school and the other half will do a pastoral seminar, then the following week we switch.
- Please ask the Lord how you should pray and pray accordingly.
- Also, Please pray for health and safety. We have all been a bit sick in the past week, some more than others. Please, please continue to pray for our health.
- Please pray for John, I attached his picture, pray that God would restore his eyesight. He can’t go to school because he can’t see and can’t work in the fields either for the same reason. So if you think about it, please lift him up in prayer and pray for his healing.
- Please pray for anointing this week as we prepare and teach. Things are getting very stressful for the team as they are preparing this week’s teachings as well as preparing to teach on the Bible school the following two weeks. Each person is overwhelmed so please lift them up in prayer, Molly, Jeremy, Ihn Hee, & myself.
- And again, please continue to pray for wisdom and guidance for me. God has stretched me a lot during this trip and I am growing a ton and continue to be desperate for his guidance and wisdom.

Thank you so much for your support.

Sincerely,

James
www.ToMakeHimKnown.com