The Uganda Report - Ephesians, 4:11-13
Ephesians 4:11-13 · Vern Peterman · Feb 8, 2009
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Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492612451738

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Good morning. Aside from having me start off with some aerobics and lunges, things like that, we are going to do something a little different this morning from the usual. And that is we're going to give the Uganda report. I'll make a few comments as a preface here. And one is that there's sort of an exception in this pattern here. to the usual and that is Bruce was very good at taking pictures.

I was not. So one of the things I'll have to credit most of the pictures here to Bruce. Now there's a downside to that. When you're behind the camera, you don't get in the pictures, okay? So I had to take special efforts just to include Bruce in some of the pictures. So anyway, you'll please forgive me for that. Two things. One is he apparently has a better camera habit than I do. And the other thing is, boy, were we busy. So anyway, if you'll forgive that.

Bruce and I came back from Uganda. Now, let's see, what day was that, you know? I think it was Tuesday, okay? But nonetheless, we came back, two-week trip, two days travel basically each way. And Bruce had been there previously. I had not, my first time. And I was glad that Bruce had been there previously, even though it was just once before, about half a year ago. Was it June of last year, I think you went, right?

I was glad that that was the case because there were a lot of things he could warn me about. And then there were other things there's no way he could warn me about. But anyway, that's sort of as a preface. We left on the 21st. And anyway, growing up mostly as I did on the farm, we learned about geography. And so I knew about traveling as it would be from, you know, Denver to Uganda. And, you know, we learned things like that. Yeah. So, anyway, nonetheless, I was certainly glad to have Bruce along. Now, what was interesting is we made certain plans and had certain ideas about what we were going to be doing there. They changed from very shortly after we got to DIA. That's right. They changed at DIA. And they changed rather miraculously at DIA. Let me explain. As we got there, shortly after getting into the airport, you might recognize this as the security area, okay? We had just gotten through the initial, you know, winding back and forth in the security area.

And right as we got about right here, Bruce called out, Morris! You know, who's he calling, you know? Anyway, it turns out, that he was calling out a fellow who was very significant to where we were going. Here's this guy, Morris Ogenga. He was the fellow from the very town where we were headed who had been instrumental in founding the series of churches that was in that area and is now expanding into Kenya and Tanzania. He was right in front of us.

He and his wife, Ada. And so while Morris was headed to Houston and we were headed to Chicago as the first step in our flight, it turned out that our flights left about the same time and we were in the same concourse and spent about an hour talking to each other. Bruce had been trying to get a hold of this guy for months, six months, is that a fair estimate? And had not been able to get a hold of him and we meet him in the airport right then as he's headed to Houston and we're headed to Chicago. This is like miraculous. And what was discussed there changed the whole course of the time we were there. So now our plans are all out the window. Everything's been changed. So that was one thing.

We got to Chicago and then on to London. We had about a 14-hour layover in London. Now, spending the time in some airport concourse for 14 hours was not exactly what we had in mind. So we discussed ahead of time going to the British Museum. Of course, I was very excited. about the idea of going to the British Museum. And so Bruce and I spent some time there just because we happened to have some time and it was a whole lot better than sitting in the airport concourse. We saw way more things than I should take the time to describe.

Just to give you an idea, we studied Isaiah in here just seems like a couple years ago now. The top one there is from a wall in the Assyrian palace of the ruler that attacked Jerusalem that we studied when we studied Isaiah 37 and 38. And that one in the bottom is called the Taylor Prism, a world-famous archaeological artifact, and that describes the Assyrian king's side of the same account. So we have two confirmations outside of scripture as to what took place.

And by the way, there are others. But that was interesting. The Rosetta Stone was another famous item that we saw. The Rosetta Stone was found by Napoleon's men. It was given to a French scholar because it has hieroglyphics on the top, Demotic, which is the more common Egyptian language and Greek, which was well understood and is now, all on the same stone. They were able to break the code on Egyptian hieroglyphics. So anyway, that's the Rosetta Stone. And here's Bruce in front of the British Museum, one of the few pictures we got of him.

Okay. Okay, so we did make it from there after the layover to Uganda. And we arrived there on Friday the 23rd. And I've kind of laid out the calendar and we'll step our way through this calendar here. What you see up at the top is the church at Shisenyo Village as it is with a reed roof and dried banana leaf walls. It has a mud floor. You can see a part of it in one of the photos there. And we'll see more of that as we step through this here. We arrived on Friday the 23rd and we got there to the airport in Entebbe.

This is, yes, the one that you've seen the movie about or heard about, likely, from back in the 1970s when Idi Amin was the tyrant ruler there. I'd tell you this is the way it looks when you're coming into it. It's a peninsula in Lake Victoria. Lake Victoria is the largest natural and freshwater lake in Africa. And this is what it's like.

We went from there to Kampala, the capital city. Basically, not that we had to go there, but just to get through it to end up where we wanted to end. We crossed the area having driving most of the time kind of a long or not too far from Lake Victoria. We went through the headwaters of the Nile. As you see there, this is the Nile River that goes all the way out through Egypt and then into the Mediterranean.

Houses like this are all along the route. This is a very common housing style, also one we saw up at Shisenyo Village. Mud walls, mud floor, and that's roof. Not the only style, but a pretty common one. We finally got to M'Bale, and we learned not to say M'Bale, that means something else. M'Bale, okay?

And that's the town we intend to be at. This is a shot of one of the downtown streets there. And this is a shot where I'm being taken in a vehicle, so I'm shooting it out the front there. I can give you a panoramic view of the downtown area. You see lots of bicycles there. As a matter of fact, what's right in front of us there, it looks like a guy that's got a seat in the back with a little orange fringe. That's a taxi. Okay? Okay.

Here is an overview of the town here. This is kind of the downtown area that I just showed you. We stayed at the Mount Elgon Hotel, which is located over in this corner. Here's a little more of a close-up shot. Looking downward, it looks out into kind of a valley area at the base of a mountain. We'll take a shot of that in a little bit. Looking the other direction, nice view as well. Now, what we started off, whoops, here's the problem we're having here.

Excuse me, I may be doing some lunges again. One of the things that happened every night, and often in the afternoon as well, is meetings with people. And they're at the, They call it a hotel, although, you know, only two stories tall. Nonetheless, at the hotel, they had a thatched roof hut in the back. That's what you see in the lower corner. And the upper corner nearby is an outdoor area.

And so we would have various people come over for meetings here. Then this is what we saw out of our window and about where you see the arrows, Chisinau Village. We'll soon see some closer up pictures of Chisinau Village, about seven miles to the southeast roughly. Then Saturday began. Before we step into it, a few things I'd just like to comment on.

One of the things that Bruce and I encountered everywhere, and I think Bruce actually had more opportunity to take advantage of it, and he certainly did, and that is that almost everywhere you go, as far as we could tell, even in the airport. People are interested in talking about spiritual things. A great openness. Not just interested, I would say in many cases eager to talk about spiritual things. One case in point, Because there would be some in-between times, you know, waiting, even just going to breakfast, waiting for somebody to pick us up or something like that, or waiting for somebody to arrive and meet with us. Even in-between times, there would be opportunities to talk to people.

People there in the lobby, people who worked at the hotel. A good many of the people on staff are Christians. And what we found from one end to the other is everywhere you go, people with rare exception are interested in talking about spiritual things. Bruce spoke to one fellow who is the head of security. And by the way, security is really secure. Two guys with shotguns all the time. the head of security, Bruce started talking to him and he said, hey, this guy over here is a pastor.

Okay, and so he arranged for me to sit down with this fellow and so I spoke to him for a while, but shortly after I began speaking to him, he brought out a little New Testament that he had and wanted me to show him some verses in it. Then there was a fellow about 100, 150 feet away who heard, and boy do they have good ears over there, who heard that we were talking about spiritual things. And he came rushing over to talk to us and join the conversation. And he said, when we were done, he said, you've got to let me know if you're going to talk about these things again. And when I was done, the fellow that I was talking to said very emphatically twice, pray, pray!

So that amazed me just from day one, is the openness to talk about spiritual things, the desire, even if people are not Christians, they may be Muslim, they may be pagan, they may be something else, but still a desire to talk about spiritual things, even an eagerness to have you talk about spiritual things.

So that was one thing that I would just want to convey. Before we took off to Shisenyo Village, which we did on Saturday, this is Aisha at the front desk and we gave her and showed her how to use the MP3 player and she was delighted. The hotel staff were some of the first people that we actually passed some of these along to. The MP3 players with the New Testament in Lugandan, which is the language of a good many of the people there, not all. was just over-the-top phenomenal, really exciting. People were extremely excited to have this, and I'll talk more about that later, but that was one thing.

Through the course of the week, we ran out of MP3 players, we ran out of CDs. Even up to the very last day, I wish we'd had more to pass along because they had never heard of such a thing. They were not aware that their language was recorded for the entire New Testament and available for free. They had no idea. And yet it is. And it's freely and openly available. Here is Shisinua Village. Like I say, you can see it from our room, here is the building of Chisinau Village Bible Church. That's it. It's a reed roof.

It's more keeps out the sun than any rain. The walls that you see there are dried banana leaves. By the way, they do everything possible with bananas. And I don't mean just the fruit. I mean the fruit is obviously eaten. The leaves are used for things like this. They even chop up the trunk to feed to the cows. So the whole tree is used, every little bit of it. It's all made use of.

Here is the church gathering inside. This is not with everybody there, but gathering inside. Now, imagine this. Okay, here is a population of people out in a village, and by the way, the vehicle that we first rode in to get there was challenged to get there. So the road was something. That's a misnomer. A road? It's not a road. Anyway, we did get there. So here's this village, rather remote.

We were told that many of the younger kids there, probably 90 to 95 percent of them, Bruce and I were the first white men they'd ever seen. In the villages, it's mostly, I'd say a fair assessment, most of them cannot read. Most of them cannot read. So if you give them printed Bibles, a great many of them can't do anything with it. They just keep it. As a matter of fact, the tendency is to want to keep it clean and untouched and wrapped up, keep it safe, not read it.

So you imagine here's this village. It starts off like that. And then what do you do when you say, okay, church starts at, say, 10 o'clock? That's nice. What's o'clock mean? Okay, no watches, no clocks. So here's the way church starts. A couple people get there and they start clapping.

And then they start singing. Now remember, they can't go through all the verses and all that stuff like we do here. They don't have any hymn books because remember they can't read, right? And so the songs are the ones that you can remember easily, okay? And so it's a lot of clapping and all that. There's love in the name of the Lord. There's power in the name of the Lord. There's grace in the name of the Lord for a long time. For a long time.

I played some of the music because I was able to record it. I played some of the music for Randy. And he says, well, that's kind of African reggae. And so anyway, and now, The music, also the words alternate between English and Lugandan. So that tells you I understood about half of what they said, right? Or sang. And then as you're singing, more people come. Oh, by the way, nothing like this or like that over there.

I saw two instruments the first day. Both of them were drums. And they were pretty rugged. I was surprised they weren't made out of something from a banana tree. But anyway, a couple of drums. And so this went on for at least an hour. Because the singing time, it's loud. And because they don't have words, it's simple. But it goes on for at least an hour because that is the call to come and worship. It's the call to come to the church because there's no other way to do it. Okay? There's no other way to do it.

So anyway, and they come like this. Now, this blue and the green dress you see there, that's dressing up for the African ladies. And so, anyway, that's the pattern now. One of the things that goes on there is that everything that is said is said in English and Luganda, which also means that everything takes twice as long. And as I'm talking to you, I can speak continuously. I couldn't do that there, because what you do is you say enough that the translator can remember it, and then you stop. Wait for them to translate, and then you say the next thing. So that pattern the whole time goes on and on. The teaching time, is fairly lengthy then, right? Because everything takes twice as long. And basically they spend hours at the church building, okay? A long time.

So then, but they did take a break or two and so Bruce was able to get a snap. Bruce is not in any of these pictures, well not many of them. Anyway, Bruce got a good shot here of some of the kids. It's interesting for a lot of these kids, I mean this is a whole new experience for them. Having their picture taken, seeing a couple of white men and then turning around with a digital camera. and being able to see the picture of them. The whole thing is a new experience for them. But they seem very eager for it, whatever it is.

Later on that evening, Bruce and I went out with three of the guys that are involved in kind of getting that church started. There is, on the one hand, there's myself and then Khalid, someone that we actually had on the prayer chain here. And by the way, that situation was well settled by the time this picture was taken. It actually cropped up again. We had to deal with this issue with Khalid. While Bruce and I were talking to them, they got another phone call that this thing had stirred up again. So that's it. Thank you. Yeah. And then Joseph, who has been calling him the pastor. I kind of think I need some training. But nonetheless, that's Joseph. And then Bruce. And then Issa. Khalid and Issa are brothers. Isa means, it's Arabic for Jesus. And so you'll see these fellows crop up a few times here. And, as you would expect, more meetings. More sitting around. And so, meetings each day. The next day, we're back to the Chisinau Village Bible Church, and a similar event in general.

And I think one of the things that struck me, of course, as you see, here's Vern with a suit and a tie, and you're saying, well, boy, that's weird. What you don't see is that I'm wearing boots. Okay? Suit and a tie and boots. And it's because of Bruce. It's his fault, but it's actually good. He says, because I first started putting on these shoes.

And he said, no, I'd really urge you to put on some boots, which surprised me. He says, it's because of the critters out there. They've got mango snakes out there. He says, you're out there so far that if the mango snake bites you, you're just dead. We're not going to get you to the hospital in time, so wear the boots. Coat, tie, dress slacks in really way too warm, humid weather and boots.

So anyway, this is our next venture out there. This time the kids were far more eager. See, the first day I would come up to the kids and try to shake their hand. A lot of them were really kind of terrified or puzzled at that because not having seen someone like me before. The second day it was a novelty. And so they were far more eager that day. Oh, one of the other things was interesting. The women, whether they were young, like some of these girls are, even of all ages on up, when they would be introduced, first they would go down like this and then shake my hand. Bruce said that, because I kind of wondered, boy, that's kind of strange. He said he tried kneeling once, you did that, and that wasn't well received. So I figured I better not do it either. But that was something, it was a little shocking at first.

This is a fellow who gave a testimony this Sunday and then the following Sunday taught. And this is Ibrahim. Ibrahim is an ex-Muslim. He was raised Muslim. But then as he got older, his life, he said, was consumed with alcohol and women, especially the alcohol. And he even sold his bedroll for alcohol. And then a little over 10 years ago, came to the Lord and is now a pastor among the churches there.

This is a gathering of people. You might recognize some of them. There's Joseph, the fellow who owns the land that the church building is on, and then Esau. Now that's Esau, the next fellow with the lavender shirt. That's Esau's uncle. He's a 75-year-old ex-Muslim.

And what was really fascinating is on the first day I taught what we call here the identification truths. And that is that you've been identified with Christ and his death and burial and resurrection and ascension and seeding. There was a sharing time the next morning and this fellow with the lavender shirt got up and he was just overwhelmed to learn that he was with Christ when Christ died, and with Christ when Christ was buried, all the way to being seated in the heavenlies.

And then he came over and hugged me and I just broke up. It was too much. But it was really, really wonderful to think, here's this guy who, correct me if I'm wrong, but he's only been a believer since about last June, is that right? And otherwise, a lifelong Muslim, and now then to realize, I was there with Christ. I was there with Christ. That was an overwhelmingly wonderful thought to him.

And what an amazing thing. I will say this also, that one of the things that Bruce and I encountered, a number of ex-Muslims, in some of the pictures you'll be seeing and other people we spoke to, and really, Islam is lacking in so many things. And one of the things is that with Christ, God's Word says that it is God's very intent that we know Him. Allah is unknowable. Allah is unknowable. But just as Kurt read for us that we have a knowledge of the Son of God, that is a wonderful thing. Islam has nothing to compare to it, nothing to offer.

Then we went around from that afternoon into the evening, looking at some different church buildings, different orphanages. Here's several of us gathered at Abraham's home church building. Obviously, the church congregation is not there, but we were gathered there.

Yes? You might point out that the man second from the left is an elder in Abraham's church. And this fellow is currently a student at the Bible school. It's the intent of Abraham to have this elder because people within the village are accepted much more. Even though Abraham's been there eight years, he's considered an outsider. of that church and Abraham would find.

That's a very good point because having lived in a village myself when I was on the farm, reception of outsiders, that takes time. A long time. And to have somebody from the village end up being the one who's a pastor is a huge advantage. And that would be really good.

Here is Abraham's family. And so they took us inside. The way they do it in this kind of association of churches is they got one size pastor's house fits all. Okay. Basically four small rooms. This was their front room or living room. And you've got a kitchen area. You've got a front room. You've got two bedrooms. That's it. No matter how many kids you got. And so anyway, here's Ibrahim in his home.

And then we went to other, this was a church building under construction, so I, you know, met one of the local fellows there who was friendly enough. Of course, I wasn't coming in from outside to be the pastor, so. Then we went to Little Wanda Children's Home. I went there once. It ended up Bruce, off and on through the course of the week, ended up, you know, making various kinds of contacts in order to assist with proposals for improvements and advantages for the children's home. This couple that you see off in the corner there is Edward and Harriet Mukibe, and they have adopted Get ready for this. Adopted 90 children. The children that you see are theirs by adoption. So quite a deal.

There is a huge orphan problem. in Uganda. Huge. At one point in time, not too far from the past, 30% of the population had AIDS. HIV, AIDS infections. And so it's just devastating. You end up having, you know, parents dying when children are very small. So, a huge orphan problem. There is, in addition to that, a great number where the parents just basically let loose the kids or give them away because they just can't take care of that many. The poverty level is just too high.

By the way, just to let you know, the people at the hotel that we worked with, I had mentioned a number of them that were Christians, they work 12 to 18-hour days, typically six days a week, and if you make a couple bucks a day, you're doing pretty good. Okay? So.

This was a fellow we met that same day. His name was Jared. I was very glad to meet Jared. He was a fellow who kept popping up, seeing us. I would estimate I saw him probably every other day, sometimes a little more often than that, but at least every other day. Jared is one whose mother died of AIDS and then the father just abandoned him. I asked him, he had a really good sense of humor. I asked him, I said, how old are you? And then his face got not so humorous looking. He said, they think I'm about 22. So he doesn't know.

But nonetheless, he is a believer. He works as a volunteer at the children's home, at the orphanage. He actually has a lot of responsibilities, but he's not paid basically. The orphanage doesn't offer a wage for everybody that works there. But a really neat guy.

We gave an MP3 player to him and he was pleading for more. And I'd say he was the guy that picked up how they work and what could be done with them as quickly as anyone we ever saw. And by the end of the week, we'd put more into his hands. And also at the children's home, we'd given them a couple of dozen. They handed them off to him. because he knew what to do with them, knew how to work them, and could train all the children in how to use them. He was very excited about this and is willing to work on that end to whatever is necessary to make better use of them.

In addition to his work there at the children's home, he also has a key street ministry in Tampa. Yeah. Yeah, he's got a street ministry in town. One of the reasons, you know, we saw him regularly, but he'd ride his bicycle everywhere, rain or shine. He had concerns one day for some events surrounding me in the children's homes approximately 30, 35 kilometers outside of town. And he daily, generally rides his bicycle all the way to town. He went through town and came all the way to the hotel.

And then we had our usual meetings. Meetings and more meetings. Here was a typical pattern. Vern would usually fade about 10 o'clock. Then Bruce would stay up for an hour or so later. By the time he came in, I was zonked. Then I was up at five, which was earlier than he got up, and I was gone.

So anyway, it was an interesting daily pattern, pretty much. Then we got to Monday. And on Monday, one of the things that took place is Bruce and I went over to what I'll call a pastor's school. And here is the school. There's actually a building within that yellow box there that doesn't show up. So it must have been built more recently. But anyway, here is where they have a school there for pastors. The other building is this building here, which is a church building. And more about that later. But I ended up spending most of the days, all but Saturday, for the rest of the time I was there at this place.

There we met Boaz Mungau. And Boaz is the administrator there at the school and has a leadership position in the church building that you saw from the overhead view there. Later on that day, Bruce and I met with Isa and his wife Lugose. And that was the only time we actually got to speak with Lugose personally and directly. But really amazing. Isa and Lugose, they've only been believers for about a half a year and formerly Muslim. What was amazing is after the time that we spent with them, Lugose was just overwhelmed. She was astounded.

It's interesting, the passage that I spoke from almost everywhere I went in numerous different circumstances was Ephesians 5, 21-33, where this is about the husband's relationship to the wife as Christ to the church. And I spoke again and again, and I spoke with them as well about this passage.

And here again, here are ex-Muslims, and the idea of the husband loving the wife sacrificially, as Christ loves the church, blows them away. Because Islam, again, has no equivalent. The wife in Islam is barely a person. The wife, that's I think at least in part where there's custom, you know, the woman greets from her knees. So to say no, the husband is to love the wife sacrificially and as Christ loved the church was a message way over the top.

She was just astounded. What was interesting was Every night after that, when we saw Issa, the first thing Issa would say, just a minute, and he'd dial on his cell phone, and he'd dial Lugosi and say, here, your friend wants to talk to you. Because even though I never saw her again after this night, learning that was just so over the top for her. It rung in her ears, so to speak. She was so delighted to hear the things that God's Word has to say.

And we had more meetings into the evening. Okay, on Tuesday. On Tuesday, you know, more dealings with Shisenyo Village Bible Church. I would say from that point on in the week, Tuesday, Bruce and I often took different paths. So much would happen during each of our days that we could barely catch up with each other about what had taken place.

Bruce was working more on, you know, getting things moving along with Chisinau Village Bible Church. And he would also work with getting various kinds of resource development and support for the children's home. So he'd work kind of on those two themes. And so his time for the rest of the time we were there tended to be focused not entirely but substantially on those two areas.

And from that day until the end of the week, I taught at the pastor's school. Now, this was the week where they were gathering up students during the course of the week. In other words, they hadn't started their semester yet. So this was sort of pre-semester time. So what you see in the picture is a small number. Every day there were more. So that by the end of the week, there were about 60. So it was interesting from that standpoint. Oh, here's something else.

I talked to the administrator, this is Boaz Mungau, I said, what would you like for me to teach on? And, of course, I was partly challenged because I had no idea I was going to be doing this. But what would you like me to teach on? He says, well, they need something about the cults. We've got Mormonism and Jehovah's Witness and Seventh-day Adventists, all these different cults here.

I said, no problem. And so I had some things on a flash drive to be printed out, and I wanted to have the students have copies. Now Bruce is starting to chuckle here. Copies cost 50 to 70 cents each. And this in a culture where a decent day's wage is $2 a day. So even though I gave him the money to make some copies, I think you gave him some too, right?

It was really painful for him to go and make that many copies. Really difficult. So by the next day he made copies only for people to share. He made copies only for people to share. Nonetheless, we did cover the material, but I never again asked for copies. Because the administrator, Boaz Mangao, he just, it was really tortured to make copies. So I just didn't ask for that.

So anyway, I taught there through Friday of that week. Here's some of the students gathered on just like the first day there. And then I went into the library because I was wondering, you know, what kind of church or in school is this? And because, after all, they call this association of churches the Presbytery. Now, what kind of Presbyterians are these people? Well, so I went into the library and kind of thinking maybe I'd get some kind of indication. Well, first of all, it wasn't very big. Not very big at all. But I looked.

I said, there's some books there. Hey, wait a minute. There's eight books by Schaeffer. And there's some books over there by Charles Ryrie. And there's some over here. Okay, we're okay. So anyway, and there's some other, you know, things we'll bring up after a while. But anyway, great time. And oh, by the way, we also had more meetings in the evening. Just so you know. Yeah.

Now, about Wednesday of the week, things are changing. Again, Bruce is heading off in different directions than I am, because I tend to get up about an hour or two earlier than he does. Sometimes we'd just get together at breakfast, sort of, and then be off and heading in different directions. But more focus by Bruce on Shiseido Village Bible Church and on the Children's Home.

I taught some more in the classroom. This is another shot. I still had the paper copies, although by this time the administrator was in agony over the copies that I was making. So this was the last day with copies. Just couldn't handle that. And, oh, we also had meetings in the evening, just so you know. Thursday rolls around and Bruce continues to work on Cicinio Village Bible Church issues and on the children's home. And by the way, some of the things that were discovered there were found from other people who are staying at the hotel, particularly one fellow by the name of Russell, who was also working on trying to make improvements at another orphanage. And so there was a sharing of information there. There are opportunities for some real improvements, especially when you start looking at things like, you know, water is not something you just turn on a faucet get out of the faucet. You get it out of a well.

And then the question becomes, how good is the water? Usually the answer is not so good. Don't drink it. And then the other question is, how far do you have to walk to get it? At some places, two or three miles to the nearest well is not an uncommon answer. So it can be tough. Two to three miles to the nearest well and the water isn't that good.

Matter of fact, it's a little too close to the outhouse. I don't know how much fish you can have in there. Often times they do not even make it to a well but go to the river and there are some shots of women doing the laundry up river and some cows in the water and some other women and children below all that because it gets filtered through a ridge and we've found a great drop spot where they can fill their water jugs with all this other stuff, and they're happily carrying along this one picture of a young girl. to three times a day. Yeah. Yeah, matter of fact, I think the description at one of the other orphanages, it was like a bunch of ants walking out, you know, to the well, which is two miles away, and then coming back to provide for the orphanage. So almost everywhere, water is an issue. The water quality, how far you have to go to get it, it can be a huge challenge. More at the school by this time, although the picture here shows paper, by the third and the fourth days, they did have a PowerPoint projector and a laptop that they worked from. That's the good part.

The bad part, since the power goes off and on and off and on and mostly off, they ran from a generator. So here I am teaching with this generator going bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop in the background, right? And, of course, that makes me have to elevate the volume. But that's nothing when the generator's going bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, and then the rain hits the tin roof. Oh, then I was yelling sometimes for two or three hours, okay?

With no amplification or anything of the sort, the fact that there weren't any lights on was actually a help because it was easier to see the slides, right? So I taught Bible backgrounds for a couple of days then. and which is what, you know, we've had here a few years back.

Here's another fellow, you know, with the MP3 players. And what we found is, and I got some shots of the guys just wandering around the hotel just listening to these things. To have, because a lot of them, uh-oh, going crazy here. Because a lot of them have, you know, really very little ability to read, and they can get these MP3 players.

Once they get them, they just don't want to let them go. In fact, I had two instances where the husband said, no, heaven, I had two instances where the husband, I know, there's nothing I can do about it, where the husband said, can you give me another one? My wife won't give it back. Yeah, that's sacrificial love.

Now, at the end of the week, then Boaz Mungau says, you know, this has been great. Can you teach this Sunday three times? Oh, okay. And then at the end of the week, the students were at the end of the time. And I told them, I said, well, it looks like we're done here. I'll be gone. It's been good to teach with you. And it's been great to have you involved and all that. And then I saw the students looking at each other. And then one of them stood up and says, you must endure a speech.

I thought, oh boy, okay. And he says, we have never had anybody teach us like this. I thought, well, you're probably having anybody yelling over the roaring rain and the generator before. But he says, you must come back. And one of the guys says, and teach in our language. And the other guy says, no, not yours. I don't understand it.

Some were from the area we were in, Uganda. Others were from the other side of Uganda. Others were from Tanzania and from Kenya. And Swahili is one of the other more prominent languages. As a matter of fact, that's one of the languages that people ask for in the MP3 players. Do you have any in Swahili? I said, no, I don't have any. Oh, you've got to get those. Yes?

Well, and this is the thing, there's some kind of question marks about what would happen, what will happen next. As Bruce is going over in May, the administrator there, Boaz Mungau, said, you know, can you come back and teach our pastors and teach the students again at the end of the semester? We'll get all of our pastors together. So I said, well, I don't know. haven't made that decision yet.

So I told him I'd let him know. Pardon? Okay. Yeah. I don't know where that is. Nope. Yeah, it's towards the beginning. Let me see if I can move this down here. The technical difficulties that we're having at the moment are nothing compared to what I encountered. I'm not screaming to you over generators and roaring. Need it back there. Got the words. Oh, okay. Yeah, Bruce and I did make it back.

The return route was from Entebbe By the way, getting there is a little bit, you might notice my arms are different colored. This is the window seat. on a British kind of car, you know, or the drivers over there. At any rate, we did head back towards Entebbe. From Entebbe, we went to Nairobi for a stopover, and from there to Brussels, and then to Chicago, and then back. As I was packing up my stuff, I said, I can't wait to get home, and I don't want to leave.

It was it was just a phenomenal time. and to see the just almost universal hunger for God's Word and for the eagerness for people to hear the gospel. The group that's going over in May is substantially for the purpose of evangelism as I understand it. And great receptiveness. Even if people will ultimately say no, They want to hear it. They want to hear it. So anyway, I'm not sure what the Lord has next, but it has been a phenomenal trip. I'd just like to tack on that the folks here really need to know. Vern worked 14 to 18 hours every day.

The people do have this hunger and thirst. They have a genuineness about them and a humbleness about them, too. Just the people in the hotel, you see them dressed in their clothes. And yet, they get a few days off and they go back to their village, move into their mud homes. And they think nothing of this interaction.

And to see the impact of these MP3 players, it is nothing less than incredible. for 20 years there. And they're excited to learn about this. In fact, I had one pastor from Hawaii write me. And it turns out he owns a radio station there. And now they're going straight on the airwaves in Ubale to put out the Ugandan Bible. Just anyone that wants to hear it.

The hotels, where in America do you go and hear Christian music playing throughout the whole day? Where can you go where, whether it's a chef in the kitchen, or a chambermaid, or a front desk person coming up and warning you about things to be on the lookout for? Where can you have a man ride a bicycle to want to make sure that you as a Missoula are safe?

The school could not believe. In fact, Edward, who was driving Bernholm, And it was rather quiet in the car, I understand. But Edward finally turned to Vernon and said, you know, we've had many people come, but never have we had somebody speak such truth as you have spoken. And I think it just speaks so well of what Holly Hills is about and what it teaches us. And we're so fortunate to have Vernon and all the other teachers within this church.

But there is a thirst over there. And Roy Smith and what he had did put together the computers, the MP3s. The impact is so far reaching that I have challenged at least 20 churches to just each person going over and taking 10 MP3s. That's 4,000 to 5,000 more MP3s going into that country.

And we were blessed on this whole trip. In England, we were late, possibly, for our airplane. And they decided that they needed to test each turns to this group of people that are all travelers, and they're stacked up behind me and say, please pray that this does not result in a bomb ringing, because I'm going to have to go and test all of them again. And then they took me over to the customs office, and they were going to charge us duty. And I said, look, these are Bibles. And the duty customs officer just waved them off and told us to proceed.

In each and every case that I spoke to, there was a Lord walking right before us, from Morris, and Ogenda, or Aida, to the teachers, to the elders of this group of loose-knit, or not loose-knit, the churches over there, to the students, to the people in the bush. They were so thankful and grateful that you would send the pastor over. Words just can't begin to explain what has occurred. I see his tears, and I know what they are, It's a life-changing experience to find out the graciousness of these people. Yeah. Well, we've kept you long enough, Kurt.