On a lovely day in Uganda we started off the morning with door to door evangelism. Its not particularly my favorite type of ministry and I’m not going to get into why right now. I just know that this is the ministry our team was set to do so all I could do was be obedient. But what helped alot is that the church we’re working with is really good wih follow up and they go back to the homes they visit – this is awesome.
So April and I set out with Pastor Jane and another lady who works in the church named Josephine. Josephine is so amazing and such a servant. She is beautiful and has such a sweet, gentle and quiet spirit but is so bold at the same time. I also love her like crazy. So off we went from the church walking down the red dirt roads past mud huts with grass roofs, random cows, goats and chickens grazing in the grass and all sorts of knotted and beautiful trees. We come to a home and a man welcomed us. After we shake hands he tells us to go stand in the shade of the house while brings us some chairs for us to sit on. He is tall and very skinny with short curly gray hair. But what I noticed the most was the large tumor/growth the size of a tennis ball on his neck just beside his adam’s apple. I’d never seen anything like it before. He came to shake my hand again and spoke something in Ateso, the local language. Jane laughed, smiled and translated, “he just greeted you as he would a daughter.” He seemed very pleased to have greeted me that way and I thought it was very sweet. He began talking to Jane and Josephine would whisper the translation to me.
Andrew is in his late 60’s and still going strong. He has 11 children, but his wife cheated on him and he was very bitter and angry at her. He had fallen out with some of his kids but some of them still visit him sometimes. Bitterness oozed out of him and you could hear the edge in his voice when he spoke. He told us that he was struggling with suicidal thoughts and sometimes he thought he should just die cause he doesn’t see a point in living. I just couldn’t keep quiet anymore. I told him that God has a plan and purpose for him. He said he accepted that but now I had to tell him what that purpose was. I shared John 10:10 with him and said that God came to give him life and life to the FULL and the enemy comes to do just the opposite. I told him that he needed to believe truth instead of lies. He said he wished he had a Bible so he could read it when the lies came. He had said earlier that over time, lots of people had come to visit Andrew from different churches and all of them doing door to door evangelism. One of the groups was Jehovah’s Witnesses and he had brought out a handout they had left with him. It was the only reference to scripture that he had. April and I told him we’d come back in two days with a Bible for him.
Then I shared some more about Jesus and how Christ can heal his heart and help him forgive his wife and let go of his bitterness. “Can God really heal that wound?” he asked. I said yes, but he had to let Jesus into his life so that Jesus could heal it. He said he could accept what I was saying, but could this bring his children back? I wanted to say yes so badly, but I have no idea what God’s plans are and I wouldn’t play on his desires and dreams to get him to Jesus. “I don’t know” I answered honestly. But I told him that he can pray and ask God to and the only thing he can do is work on himself and trust God.
Then he said that he wanted to accept Jesus.
I lead him in a prayer repeat-after-me style which Josephine translated and then he repeated. Then I told him he was a new creation and that the old had gone and the new had come. Then we prayed a prayer of blessing and healing over him. What followed was a beautiful thing. He looked up at us with a beaming smile and his hard dark eyes had softened and were now full of light and practically sparkling. Then he began to laugh alot and he reached out to shake our hands multiple times and say thank you. I have never seen such an immediate change in someone. His growth wasn’t healed, but I’m going to keep praying that it will be someday.
Later I was thinking that I wish he would have been healed. Why wouldn’t God do that? I was pumped that he accepted Jesus, but I wanted more. I wondered if that was wrong and what Jesus thought about that. I discussed this with my team and two of our squad leaders. Mike said that its not wrong to want more. Expect and ask for more but be happy with what we’ve got. That made sense to me.
I figured out why it was different that day. Normally when we go door to door I feel like we ask the basic questions like “do you go to church? Where? Are you a Christian? Do you have a personal relationship with Jesus?” etc. and then we talk, discuss, encourage and pray accordingly. I don’t always know what to say and sometimes I feel like I’m supposed to manufacture a word or something and I don’t like doing that (actually, I refuse to do that) so sometimes there’s a bit of an awkward silence until someone speaks up. So what was different today was that we made relationships with people and we heard their stories and that made it so much easier for me to talk with them.
So we waved goodbye and with our promise to return in a few days with a Bible, we continued down the path to the next house and I couldn’t wait to go back and see Andrew.
To be continued…
