Ok well I have been back from Uganda for a few days now, and I'm just getting to this!
Wow! I don't even know where to start! I have so many stories and so many amazing things that God did on the trip! I guess I'll start with telling you guys what we did most of the time we were there.
While I was in Kampala we would do street ministry in the morning we would go to villages and to peoples houses and ask if they needed help with anything, then we would pray for them and shared the gospel with them. In the afternoons we would go to high schools and present an abstinence program which was a huge success! Basically the program talks about why it is important to stay pure until marriage. This is a big deal in Uganda because they have one of the highest percentage rates of HIV/AIDS in the world! We would break up into small groups after the presentation and have them ask us questions and a lot of times in that we were able to share the gospel. At then end we had them sign abstinence pledge cards saying that they were going to stay sexually pure until marriage.
In Gulu we went to a lot of elementary schools and played with little kids and put on skits for them. You can see the hurt in the kids eyes and you can tell that they need to know that they are loved and that's why we were there was to love on the kids and tell them that Jesus loves them as well.
Of course like in all trips we had lots of challenges! One of them being sicknesses! We had 10 people in the hospital sick with typhoid while others were sick with bacterial infections (mostly meaning stomach problems, but sickness did not stop us from spreading the good news and praising God! While they were in the hospital they would pray for other sick patients and they would be singing worship songs and just praising God no matter what!
My team leader had a phrase we used a lot "We plan, God laughs." Boy did we find that out quickly! God changed our plans a lot of times, like one time we were supposed to go to a high school but instead we ended up going prayer walking which was amazing to get a feel for the city and how much they need God.!
During my trip we reached out to 7,000 people (meaning that they all heard the gospel) and 700 got saved! Our work in Uganda is still not done! About half of my team is still there for another month and they are going to continue ministering and reaching out to the broken people of Uganda! They did have a big event happen this past Sunday there were bombings in Kampala about 20 minutes away from were I had been staying and were the team that is still there is staying. Thankfully nobody from my team was hurt, but there were 76 people killed, and the team there decided to go to Gulu (which is northern Uganda) just to wait it out until it's safe to go back. There was supposed to be another team getting there last night, but they had to relocate to South Africa instead because of this. Just be praying for Uganda and for all of the team that's still there that they would be safe and have peace!
Thank you all so much for your prayers and support!!
Jessie