Our main ministry in Uganda has been door to door evangelism. Being from the States, this kind of has a negative connotation in the United States. We think of nagging salesmen and Jehovah’s Witness, knocking on our door and disturbing our busy schedules. In Africa, it’s a little bit different. People here love visitors, especially white visitors, and when you visit them at their business or home, you probably aren’t interrupting anything too important. They have all the time in the world, and you can normally draw a crowd just by being white, so this has great advantages for sharing the Gospel.
The last day of ministry, we went with a few church members to walk around the neighborhood and evangelize. I (Traci) was paired with the pastor’s wife of the church we were visiting that day. She was an older woman who had been in ministry for over 20 years and dressed in her African Sunday best. As we were walking, she mentioned she grew up in the area and knew most of the people in the village. We stopped at a couple of shops, offered encouragement and prayed for people, and continued on our way.
Little did we know where our next stop would take us…
We kept walking and she started telling me about an area right off the road the locals call ‘Hell’. This is where all the drunks go to get their fix and cause trouble. So of course, this is where we go to evangelize. This is where Jesus would have been to evangelize. We get to the area and walk into a shed- like building made of wooden plants with about six benches inside and seven men hanging out, drinking. They were drinking out of a communal clay pot with homemade alcohol inside and wooden straws for each of them.
We sat down and Mama introduced me, asked if they understood English, and I was up. Hold cow, what do I say?!? I had alread begun praying about our meeting, and God definitely showed up. I began talking about my life and how Dustin and I left everything back in the States because it was that important for them to hear about Jesus. I shared the Gospel, closed my eyes, and waited for the rejection, waited for the teasing laughter to begin.
They began asking questions and after a conversation led by Mama in Luganda, one man bowed his head, closed his eyes, and prayed the prayer to accept Christ. Another said he was not in his right mind to accept Christ right then, but he wanted to come to church when he was sober and talk with Mama. We even had one man say flat out that he was so tired of alcohol and desperately wanted to change. By the end of our time, he also prayed to accept Christ and begin a life transformation. at one point in our conversation, one man did get agitated about what we were saying and before Mama and I had a chance to defend ourselves, the rest of the men came to our defense and told him to sit down and be quiet. Can you believe that?!
Only by the grace of God is any of this believable, even to me, and I was there! We stayed for over an hour with these men, wrote down their names, and waved goodbye. As we walked away, Mama looked over at me and said she had never even thought of setting foot in ‘Hell’ before in all her years in ministry.
That made me start thinking of how many places around us are desperate for the Gospel, but no one is brave enough to go in. Who in our community is hungry for the Truth, but we are too busy in church to tell them who Jesus is?
I would ask you to pray for our new believers, Experito, Francis, and Martin, and they begin a hard life transformation if they choose to follow Christ. Pray that they woudl continue to pray and ask God for His strength to change their lives.
So my challenge to you is this: be Jesus to those around you and let God work miracles!!
