Dear friends,I want to thank you for your prayers for the Pastor's Bookset Conference last week. We had a very blessed time together and the teaching was excellent. We stayed in a small guest house for the three nights and walked to the conference site through bussling Kampala each morning. There were over 400 pastors and church leaders in attendance from every region of Uganda as well as Sudan, Burundi, Rwanda, DR Congo, Kenya, Tanzania, and Ethiopia. We heard very practical teaching on leadership, preaching, studying, ministering to Muslims, ministering to those suffering with AIDS, as well as a study in the Gospel of John. One of the biggest blessings for me was to spend extended time with the pastors. Each evening we spent time together at the guest house discussing what we had learned during the day and how it applied our ministry. We also spent one evening shooting pool which was a first for most of them. There was a lot of laughter and the 25 cents per game went a long ways. A large part of our ministry here is building relationships with the people. Shared experiences is the best way to grow depth to a relationship. The final event of the conference was the distribution of the booksets. They were heavy and the road was muddy from the rain, but there was great joy as those books made their way to every corner of Uganda. The books (52 total) included: NIV Study Bible, concordance, Bible dictionary, English dictionary, atlas, Africa Bible Commentary, books on leadership, discipleship, ministry to Muslims, spiritual warfare, and many others. They will be a blessing for many generations to come and a wonderful tool that we can use in the ELCU to train other leaders. Thank you for praying for us this past week.
Let me share quickly about my experience yesterday. Hudson (pastoral assistant in Jinja congregation) and I travelled to Pastor's Sospeter's village to attend a meeting where Sospeter has been training the pastoral assistants in his area. Many of these young men (seven of them, 18-28 years old) are functioning as pastors because there are more churches than ordained pastors in the ELCU. Sospeter has been mentoring them and training them for pastoral ministry. The meeting was very encouraging as these young men are desire to serve as pastors. Here were some of the highlights: a 70-minute ride on the back of a bicycle, 31 people in a 14 passenger van, good fellowship with Hudson, and a great meeting with the assistants and leaders from the local community. Your prayers are much appreciated! May God bless each of you as you fulfill the Great Commission in your villages!
Nate
