For my fellow Atlantians; sorry to say this isn’t for you. But thanks for reading 😉
ATL stands for: Ask The Lord. That’s what we did last month in Uganda. This posting of the blog is delayed, but here is what I wrote last month.
This month I’ve been in Kampala, Uganda with Team Fly. However, we were SUPPOSED to be in Rukungiri, Uganda- quite a ways away from the city. Unfortunately, about a month ago, a small ebola “incident” occurred close to where our ministry site was. SO due to World Race protocol, we moved 222 miles east to Uganda’s capital, Kampala, for an “ATL” month.
Our goal was simple in that it wasn’t a lengthy instruction. We were told to Ask The Lord what it is we were to do. “Hmm that’s odd” you may be thinking to yourself. As a real type A guy, the idea of unstructured ministry felt odd to me as well, especially since I decided to give up coffee this month. I wanted structured ministry. I wanted the 8+ hours of assigned work from sun up to sun down. However, that’s not what I received. I received my biggest nightmare, a month where we HAD to depend on God with no schedule. A month where we had to be totally lead by God to accomplish His goals.
Day 1 I was praying and I felt the words “yellow”, “brick” and “pizza”. I sheepishly told my group that those were the words I heard. I was so embarrassed to say that, but those were the words that came to mind in prayer. We went around the circle and some spoke on where they felt led to go and some felt they had no idea. Both are equally acceptable. Nonetheless, we ended up at a mall to do some evangelism because that seemed to be the place that fit all of the other people’s inclinations of what The Lord had told them.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t a large amount of people at the mall, contrary to what we had hoped. I walked around praying, wondering what the point of this was going to be and if the whole ATL month was going to be the same. As I contemplated what was going to come of the day, I looked over to the food court to maybe grab a snack. Sadly, every single food place was closed. There wasn’t anything to eat in this food court.
Except: Rex Pizzaria. A small pizzaria whose front appeared to be made of yellow bricks.
I kid you not. I became so giddy, I immediately snapped a photo and sent it to the group.
In an anticlimactic conclusion, nothing crazy came from the pizzaria. No one came to Christ and God’s name wasn’t even mentioned. Maybe if I would’ve taken initiative it would have. However, something substantial came away from this for me. I continued to learn how to discern God’s voice and be obedient to what He asks.
Say what you want. You can say it’s coincidence or that there was divine involvement. I know my conclusion.
For the REST of the month, we participated in an array of activities. We prayed over people, we attended church services, we went to hospitals and evangelized; we made the most of every opportunity. We made connections and spread the love of Christ.
Our main ministry, though, was working with Word of Life-Entebbe. A distant relative of mine did mission work with a wonderful woman who works with a Christian organization, Word of Life, in Entebbe, about 45 minutes from where we were. So, after some back and forth we were able to spend the rest of the month with them!
We helped with construction and other manual labor activities for their facility, lead their chapel, visited local schools to speak to students and staff, helped in the kitchen and assisted in any way we could. It was an incredible ministry, and they have been put in contact with AIM (our parent organization) so that future World Race teams might be sent there.
The month certainly didn’t look like I had pictured it, but it was one of the best months so far on The Race. I was able to learn how to go with the flow, while still being productive and accomplishing our goal: to spread the love of Jesus Christ.
I apologize for the delayed post and jumble of thoughts above. I’ve been in the hospital for the past 11 days helping out another racer (she’s better now) and tomorrow our team heads to a remote village where there will be no WiFi or electricity.
Love you all.
-Jon B
