Hello friends and family! We are so excited to have the chance to send out a mid-outreach update. We are a few days away from finishing up our one month in Uganda and then will be leaving for Papua New Guinea Monday morning. We have had an incredible time thus far and are eager to share with you some of the experiences and stories. We want to start off by thanking everyone for the incredible support, love, encouragement, prayer, and financial support we have received not only over the last 6 months but especially in this last month as we have been on outreach. We want you to know that we are very aware that we could not be doing what we do without all of you. And we truly feel the importance of your role in everything that we do and everything that happens. So when you read this update, please know how a part of each of these stories and just our general experience you are.
Our first 2 weeks were spent in Mityana, Uganda with all 39 students, 11 staff, and our base leader. Our base leader John, his wife Naomi, and their children spent 3 years in Mityana where they developed great relationships with pastors, started a pastors training school, feeding programs, and travelled around the area passionately preaching the gospel. So during our time in Mityana we were working with contacts that our base leader has good and trusted relationships with. Our track of 8 students and us spent most mornings and afternoons going into different schools in the area with a pastor that has created a ministry specifically focused on schools. We would share testimonies, preform dramas, play games, and most importantly preach the Gospel and give students the chance to make the decision to follow Jesus for themselves. We were humbled by how many students took this step to follow Jesus. When they made this decision we were able to immediately give them a bible and the pastor we worked with gathered their information so when they come back to each school (which they do regularly) they can make sure the student is in their discipleship classes. It can be easy to get sceptical and wonder, “how genuine is each decision to follow Christ?” but when you see students up at the front of their classrooms weeping and praising Jesus for their new life, that scepticism leaves and you are in awe of how powerful the Gospel of Jesus Christ is and what a Loving Father He truly is. We also were always careful to check our hearts and remind ourselves that even if only 1 person really meant it and would actually live a life after God, it would still be worth it.
The two other main types of ministry that we took part in were seminar classes and campaign evangelism—these ministries worked together. Campaign evangelism is the type of ministry that we read about in Acts, where the Gospel is proclaimed very boldly in specific areas. Each of the two weeks we spent in Mityana, our team worked in an individual village. In each village, we worked with local pastors who helped us understand the context we were in. In the evenings, we ran the campaigns in an open field on a makeshift stage. Similar to in the schools, there was worship, dramas, testimonies, and the preaching of the Gospel followed by prayer for the sick and others. We partnered with the local church to preach to hundreds of people each night and saw many give their lives to Christ, be healed of physical ailments, and be freed of demonic oppressions. After this, we recorded each person who accepted Jesus and they were invited to the seminars in the mornings. We sent two people each day to teach in the seminars where church members and new believers could come for “immediate discipleship”. Through these, we were able to connect right away with new believers and draw them into a faith community. It was amazing to see these seminars grow each morning as more people made decisions for Jesus!
Doing the campaigns was a humbling thing as we realized the impact that the Gospel is capable of. Because of the scale of these campaigns, however, they often felt impersonal to us. Some evenings it felt difficult to take on the need for Jesus that we saw. Despite these feelings, we learned through countless testimonies that through the Holy Spirit working, the campaigns were more significant than we could have imagined. We heard how the Holy Spirit touched individuals, not only through prayer, healing, and deliverance, but also through the preaching. Each night, Jesus spoke to individual people through us and He ministered to them among hundreds of other people! In addition, we met so many people who gave their lives to Jesus back when our base leader was living in Mityana over ten years ago! They had not only stayed in the faith, but were starting their own ministries and bringing other people into the faith as well. We were humbled even more as we saw churches that were started through a one-week campaign like the ones we were doing. Going forward, we are convinced that there is no limit to what God can do through faith, zeal and a yielded life!
There were countless stories of people being saved, healed, delivered from demonic oppression, and transformed. One in particular stood out to us from our location for the first week’s campaign in Mityana. On the first day there, before the first night’s campaign, Sam was able to speak with a young woman and her family and share the Gospel with them. The young woman had walked away from the church and given up on her faith. After discussion and getting to know this family, the young woman gave her life back to Jesus! Later that night at the campaign, this young woman was dancing and worshipping Jesus with new life in her. She listened intently to everything that was said and when the time came for prayer, she came up asking to be prayed for. After about a minute, she started to manifest a demonic presence that was oppressing her. After prayer, she was set free completely—praise God! The next night she was at the campaign again. This time she was dancing, interceding for the night, and very clearly was loving her new life as a daughter of the King, completely set free. We continued building relationship with her and praying for her. By the end of this campaign, we saw a completely transformed person whose hope, joy, and faith are restored!
The third week was spent in a combination of Kampala and also Entebbe. As many of you know we spent a bit of our time in Kampala in the hospital where Sam was quite sick. We also had some of our students that were sick and needed to stay back from ministry. Since we were still with the entire team for these few days we sent what was remaining of our individual team of 8 students with other leaders to do ministry and Karis focused on making sure all the sick people were taken care of, getting medicine, and getting taken to the doctors. It was a bit of a scare when the doctors were so concerned with Sam and wanted to admit him but we were so grateful that his recovery happened so much quicker than they had told us—God was so faithful to all of us through out this time. We felt so incredibly loved by the amount of people that were praying for us and specifically for Sam’s recovery. The original plan was to leave on Wednesday for Entebbe, Uganda where we would have team debrief until Friday morning when we would leave for the next location. By God’s grace and healing hands we were able to be discharged from the hospital and make it to the debrief with our team.
From the debrief, all 5 teams went their separate ways for the next 4.5 weeks of outreach. Our team was picked up by a pastor that our friends have worked with in Kampala. There, we partnered with the ministry His church does. The church has a partnership with Compassion, so the children that are sponsored come to the church each week for games, skills training, lessons, and to hear about Jesus. Many of these children come from non believing and Muslim families but are allowed to come to the church for the programs because of the partnership with Compassion. Our team has really loved our week here and the ministry we have had the honour to be apart of. Our days mainly consist of games, dramas, youth groups, discipleship classes, teaching, and sharing the gospel. The joy in this place is contagious and we are so grateful to be apart of it for even a short time.
The DTS students on our team have been absolutely amazing. We love leading this track of students and love what we do. Many of them are way out of their comfort zone in so many ways, whether that’s food, culture, teaching or preaching, or just being away from their families for the longest they ever have been. Despite this, they have taken on the challenge and are thriving in it. It’s beautiful to see their hearts, minds, and faith grow and be challenged all at the same time. They spent the last 3 months learning so much but this really is the time where they have to put into play the things they have been learning and believe.
Leading this outreach together has been such a joy and adventure for us. It for sure has it challenges, hardships, and uncomfortable moments, but we wouldn’t trade it for anything. We love the honour of doing life and walking along side these students as they continue on their journey with the Lord and in missions. And we thrive being in other nations and cultures and having the privilege to boldly proclaim the Gospel and tangibly spread the Love of our savoir Jesus Christ.
We are getting excited to head to our next location, but the emotions of leaving Uganda are very real. Knowing that we leave but the people and children we have been doing life with and fallen in love with will stay in hard life conditions is difficult to grasp. Everyone deals with these emotions differently, but when we remember the immense joy the people of Uganda have showed us and the incredible faith of the believers here, the sadness turns to joy and hope for this incredible nation.
We would appreciate prayer as we continue on this journey for another month! Prayer for safety, health, continued team unity, and protection for our marriage. We have felt so blessed in all these areas thus far and can feel your prayers! But most importantly we ask for prayer for the people we are leaving that have entered into relationship with Jesus, that that seed would grow and flourish. And for the people of PNG that we are going to, that their hearts would be soft and eager for a deeper and more intimate relationship with God.
We will send another update at the end of the next month and will also have a video of the outreach that will hopefully bring some of these words more to life. Again thank you all for your love and support, we love you!
Samuel and Karis
* We will try to post some photos on instagram or facebook soon!
Kommentare