Quote of the year, "Today is the best day of my entire life!"

Well, it has been another amazing few weeks since arriving in Uganda. It is so great to see so many friends again and especially the pastors who are doing the Bible School here. It has been so wonderful to spend time with these great men and women of faith and yet so humbling to have the chance to train them in how to study the Word of God. This trip to Uganda will be the longest time I will have ever had to work with the same group of people and it has been so wonderful to spend time with these friends of mine and work with them on a day to day basis.

A couple highlights of the last few weeks:

A couple weeks ago I was doing a workshop on interpreting the book of Luke and I had randomly chosen about 8 different passages to look at. After going through one of the passages, the parable of the tax collector and the Pharisee (Luke 18:9-14), I quickly went through a few possible applications. One that I mentioned was that Jesus looked past the tax collector’s sinful past and so too Christ has justified us and no longer looks at our past, etc. It was one of many applications we spoke of during the day. However, after lunch I was at the office and one of the students, an African missionary who has been ministering for a few years and plans to spend the rest of his life as a missionary in Africa, came up to me and wanted to talk. He sat down and asked, “James, is it really true what you shared today? Does Christ really look past our past? And if so, then why can’t other Christians look past mine?” We spent the next 45 minutes talking about justification, grace, and his past and the more we talked, the more his tears flowed. It broke my heart to find that he was still living under condemnation from other pastors and Christians who could not forgive him for his past sins and as a result he doubted Christ’s own ability to truly forgive him. By the end of our talk after we had prayed, he looked at me with tears flowing down his face and said, “James, today is the best day of my entire life!” I can not describe how humbled and grateful I was to God for allowing me the privilege of having a front-row seat in seeing such a great man of God set free by God’s grace.

Last week I had another great opportunity to teach the book of Acts on the Bible school and there are so many stories of what God did in me while studying it and in the lives of the students through sharing it. One that stands out was just this past Monday morning at the all-base worship meeting where the whole ministry here of about 75 people gathers together. The person leading the session decided to do a group discussion and had chosen Acts 1:8 as the passage for the discussion. I had just spent a couple hours the past week teaching on this very passage and was hopeful that one of the students would at least share something. Well, half of the students ended up sharing and completely dominated the discussion. Especially one student who gave a five minute sermonette explaining the passage within its context, looking at its contrast to the previous verse, and showing how it applied to all who were seated there. I was fighting to hold back tears of joy. I could not have said it any better myself and what he shared was not even what I had taught, but what he had understood from his own studying of the text. Again it was such a great gift to be able to see immediate fruit from the ministry here and it reminded me again of how blessed I am to be here and to get to work with such amazing people.

I could go on and on with the praise reports of what God has been doing. It has just been so exciting for me to come back and work with some of the same people for the 3rd year in a row. 3 of the pastors on the school I have seen trained up over the last 3 years and it is so wonderful to see the fruit of what God has been doing through this ministry. Especially because on a regular basis they come to me and share how grateful they are for this ministry and what God has been doing in and through them as a result of the work I have been able to do here. They send greetings to all those who have been praying and supporting me.

So thank you for all your prayers and support and I hope you are encouraged by all that God is doing through you here in Uganda. Please continue to be praying as this weekend I will be leaving for an IDP camp in the north of the country for a follow up seminar to a seminar I did last year in Aromo. For those of you who remember it is the one where there were about 150 pastors who went from morning until night, where I was teaching 10-12 hours a day and literally collapsed by the time I returned. They were desperate for another one and say they have gathered everyone together again. The only sad thing is my translator at the time, Bosco, can not come because he is a student on the school here now.

So please pray for God to move powerfully for that week and for Nico’s and my health and safety in travel and while staying in the camp, also please continue to pray for wisdom and anointing as I continue to prepare and teach on the school here. Things start getting even busier when I return and I won’t be able to do it on my own. Please also be praying for these students, some of them are starting to get a bit overwhelmed by the work load and by the applications that have been transforming their hearts.

Thank you so much!

Sincerely,
James Lunn
www.ToMakeHimKnown.com