Uganda- A place I was always told that dealt with a lot of spiritual warfare. Did really understand what that meant? The answer to that would be a resounding no. I had no sense or desire to comprehend exactly what that could entail. Lucky for me, I’m in Uganda now and I have definitely gotten a taste of the battle between good and evil.
Where did this taste for the fight for what’s right come about? A direct feed from one of our ministry’s this month- evangelism. We go out into the community and talk to people about why we are in Uganda and about the love of Christ. Our first day was pretty sweet, seeing as almost everyone we ran into already knew the love of God. Our team was pretty excited seeing so many kindred spirits for Christ, allowing us to be filled up with encouragement as well as send plenty of it out to others.
The second day of evangelism could not be more polar opposite than the former. Dawn and I were going into a new section of the community with our Pastor, George. We came across a house with a bunch of people sitting in front of it, including a 21 year-old named David. When we told the small crowd that we were there to speak about Jesus, David was the only one who didn’t evacuate the perimeter. He did not believe in Christ in any sense of His name and began to grill us with some pretty direct questions.
Dawn, our pastor and I sat with David for about an hour and a half, conversing with furrowed but hopeful brows. David seemed to only care about his own vocabulary, constantly venturing to ask a question and suddenly cut you off so he could tell you that you did not understand anything about him. He would refer to Dawn and I as “you people” in reference that we were white people so we mush be like every other white person. He would say things like “you people come to talk about Jesus, one right after the other and don’t even stop and care for them” or “you people don’t understand poverty”, almost riding down the road of stating that there is nothing we could do to make any change in his world.
After about an hour of intense conversation of question and cut-off answers it felt like we had made no ground. He would not seem to listen to anything we had to say yet he continued to swallow us in a sea of questions. It was all I could do to keep grinding my teeth and giving up, until the Lord told me to just encourage and speak life into David.You know, tell him who he is in the light of Christ.
As soon as I had reached my breaking point, who would rescue me but my father and Saviour. Once I sent out a wave of exhortation, David’s attitude began to change. There was no longer and annoyed and almost angry man sitting with us but a newly opened book. Speaking love and life over David brought such triumph for Christ in his heart and the beginning words of a victory for the Kingdom of God. David then invited us to go and speak with his boss- the town witch doctor….. (stay tuned for part 2)
