Days 40-52‏: Evangelism

30.10.09: DAY FORTY EIGHT
I got really pumped by a Simon Guillebaud talk (know the feeling?) on the 7th and wrote down some life goals & ‘Uganda goals’. Did you know people with written goals achieve 50-100x the success of people who just have goals in their head?! The first two things I wrote:
- Lead several people to Jesus.
- Do evangelism and make friends in Soweto.

They were really things I hadn’t gone anywhere near but would be gutted if I didn’t do. I’d never led anyone to Jesus in my life, and there was a cholera outbreak in the slum at the time. But this week we led 2 guys to Jesus in that bar, and last night I bumped into, and finally agreed to go back home with the painter guy called Sam who started talking to me on the street once and keeps wanting to meet again. Guess what? He lives in Soweto.

Just a single room in the twilight (no power this week) – a bed, two chairs and a packing case desk cover almost the whole floor. It smells of damp. You get to it down an alley then along a run of bricks above a little open sewer. He gets a couple of sodas, lights a candle and we trade life stories. And I didn’t know what I was going to do between drama club and getting lift home. God is good.

22.10.09: DAY FORTY ONE. Meeting Juko.
The guy’s an Emir. That’s no.2 in the local mosque. So he’s interested, but in a difficult position. All 3 of us visited his home (a crumbling room in the back of the Imam’s house, by the railway track out in the swamp) for lunch. I remembered, to visit someone’s home in this culture is how to honour them, rather than invite them to yours. He’s a good guy. We had a good time. Ezekiel shared his story of leaving Islam for Jesus – apparently for the first time ever – and was very impassioned. He shared it in Luganda so that’s all I got. Juko told us how a pastor charged him for his friend to be healed, and the guy is still paralysed 2 years later; how a producer told him ‘born agains are more honourable in business,’ then ripped off his song. I’m so sorry. Thank God we don’t believe in Christians! It does seem Jesus is drawing Juko to himself – he works with Christians, coaches a church football team, his sister’s become one, he’s open & interested and now we bump into him. We left him our numbers and Joel’s Luganda Bible. Pray he reads it and meets Jesus!

29.10.09: DAY FORTY SEVEN
Joel said, ‘that place is no good in the rain.’ But I remembered Hebrews 11.6 ‘Without faith it is impossible to please God’, and thought ‘He would totally love it if we just went out and trusted Him to hold off the rain.’ So we went for it. For much of the next 2 hours it did rain. Unanswered prayer? Nope. Jesus had a much more cunning plan.

Literally the first place we came to, through a couple of houses on the main road, was a bar. Now there are a few differences between bars in Uganda and the UK. Firstly, it consisted of a bench lined thatched hut with half height walls, about 2 metres across. Second, the men sitting round were drinking through long hollow sticks from a few odd pots on the floor containing what looked like Waggamma’s excellent apple & lime juice; only we could smell the alcohol 10 metres away, and when the first guy I spoke to took a draught, blister patches appeared all over his face. Uganda has a drinking problem. The guy told me work is temporary, as and when. Thousands of men sit in bars like that across the country all day, sucking up slime and massive debts.

So along come Joel and I, roll in out of the sporadic rain, a few greetings (we are quite welcome and the atmosphere is jovial throughout); then Joel says, “We’ve come to preach to you about Jesus.” And it’s not ‘clear off’; it’s ‘go on, then’. So I get talking to Tom, trying to find out where he’s at so I know how to help him, even though he’s mainly just like ‘tell me what you want to say.’ Him and the last guy we talked to (not so good english) were both “born Christians”, and really struggled to see ‘being saved’ as anything more than just a stricter religious deal (e.g. ‘no drinking’).

However, word must have spread about out us, because suddenly a couple of young guys, one with a faded hip-hop cap and the other a broken front tooth, tap me on the shoulder. “We want to get saved”, says broken tooth.

2.11.09: DAY FIFTY TWO
Yesterday was another evangelistic adventure. Almost a catalogue of organisational failures and ‘misfortunes’ (we know who didn’t want us going), God still saved 5 people in the hour we actually spent in the postnatal recovery ward at the main Mulago hospital. I got stuck in an interesting but unfruitful conversation with a family of 7th day Adventists – perhaps partly because I was well attracted to the ‘born again’ sister of the patient. I asked to go then, to get back for my rehearsal, but that was the moment it all kicked off.

The room of mothers waiting and hoping for their premature babies wanted prayer. We went and prayed together. We go to leave – the lady by the door asks to get saved. She doesn’t speak English so I get out the way. Joyce wishes aloud we had bibles to give these new believers. I have one – we go straight & give it to a Muslim lady who’s just given her life to Jesus. Get back, a bulging lady wants prayer to deliver. As we pray, I see a lady stop behind us, watching, waiting. One of the others prays with her. In the premature deliveries room, I see Joel kneeling with another lady, holding hands and heads bowed. Sylvia said when they caught us up at the taxi rank, “They just kept asking, ‘can I have a special prayer?’”

I guess God was really at work. The funny thing is, it never feels anything but completely normal when such things happen. I wonder if that’s just my insensitive side, or if there’s also so some truth that such things are normal with Jesus. Certainly it is in the Bible. I don’t think anything magic happens the moment you step on African soil. Maybe we still handicap ourselves by considering healings, miracles, conversions as ‘amazing’ things. Maybe if we just regarded them as normal, but desirable, we’d make space for a lot more.

30.10.09: DAY FORTY EIGHT
On the taxi, in the street, people don’t seem any less ‘secular’ than they do in the UK. They’re equally cynical of the men who stand at the crossroads with a bible and a mini-PA, shouting at the traffic. Which makes me wonder: if I was bold enough to approach people in the UK, and say ‘I’ve come to tell you about Jesus. Who wants to hear?’, would people start coming to me and saying, ‘How can I be saved?’

This week’s just been really positive all round. Something about crossing the halfway stage – suddenly it seems I’ve only a short time left. Suddenly I’m getting up early, I’m writing, I’m battling circumstances to get to rehearsals, I’m on top, I’m here. Suddenly I’m thinking, ‘this is pretty cool’. I hope this is more than a trick of the mind. Father, let it be a change for life!


Do pray for Humphrey & Pious, the two lads from the bar. No response to texting; no sign of them at church Sunday. Hoping they went to Humphrey’s mum’s church. Also for me – keeping positive, ongoing rehearsals, Wednesdays in Soweto, and Saturday morning I’m preaching at a student service in Iganga, all of which I really need Jesus’ help with!

Also, do let me know what you think about all this stuff; especially if you're not a christian! If these emails get a bit exclusive do let me know - I want them to be for everyone.

Love and Shalom, Tim