Well our time in Rwanda has come to an end and so its time for our team to split up. Dave and Jen Adams, Ron Johnston, and Catherine are on their way back home. Pete and I are traveling to Uganda to spend a few days at a ministry that IT Canada is partnering with in Kampala. It was bit of a challenge getting our flight to Entebbe today. We had flight delays and had to get re-booked on an alternative flight which required lots of negotiations and pestering along with being trapped in the lounge in Kigali airport for 7 hours. But we finally made it to Entebbe and were delighted to meet up with Anne Mwangi, the director of the Discipleship Leadership school, and her assistant Moses.
Anne is an amazing woman with huge vision, and equally huge compassion. I like her a lot.She has a heart to show God’s love to the marginalized. So she runs a training school to provide quality Biblical education to church leaders who would not have access to other training opportunities, she provides spiritual and practical support to refugee women who have fled to Kampala, she feeds and clothes the orphans and extremely poor children living in the slum community around her home.
Each of the students in this school has come for 3 months of intensive training to prepare them for ministry. Each of the students has a story of struggle. And a story of hope. Moses is a refugee from Congo who even today faces attempts to take his life. His parents and brother have been killed and not too long ago someone tried to poison him . Mary is a refugee from Kenya who fled with her kids (but left her husband behind) during the most recent conflict in Kenya last January. Gracious is a converted Muslim who faces constant persecution because of his choice to follow Jesus. Rebekah and her husband, a bishop in the church in Congo, are refugees who fled the violence in their homeland and who have applied to the UN to come to Canada. They have 14 children, some of whom are still in Congo being cared for by relatives. They all love Jesus and they all exude a spiritual wisdom, a deep hope that sustains them through incredibly hard times . This hope I think only comes through struggle.
“Pastor Peter” as they call Pete here, is doing a superb job of teaching . The translators are a bit sketchy and I think some of the content is ‘lost in translation’. But the heart of what Pete is teaching is coming through and well-received. It is challenging as there are so many different languages being used -Lugandan, Kinyarwandan, Swahili, Lingala, French, English etc. Anne asked Pete to teach on Servant Leadership, and the Father heart of God. He is also doing a couple sessions on the Gospel of John -kind of a condensed version of what he taught in Rwanda. As in Rwanda the students have tons of questions. Some are tricky to handle as they are connected to very controversial issues here -like the use of alcohol. This always comes up when Pete teaches on the Miracle at Cana and Jesus turning water into wine. Definitely lots of interesting dialogue happening.
