Greeings from Jinja, Uganda

Greetings from Jinja, Uganda! These past days have seen much activity.

At Waama…

• last week was full of preparations for Sunday’s graduation festivities.
• for the students, it meant finishing up work in the fields, cutting grass, cleaning out flower beds, trimming bushes, and general cleaning of the various buildings on campus.
• for Ben and I, the days were spent taking care of final details for the Uganda/U.S. trip and packing up our house so that it can be used as a guest house while we are away. This packing involved storing some things in our office on campus, preparing some things to go to Uganda (mostly film equipment), and preparing other things for our later travel to the U.S.
• many guests came for our Sunday graduation festivities. On Saturday, there was a special time that the teachers and students had to say final goodbyes. The majority of the organized festivities, however, were on Sunday. Ben was the main speaker for the Sunday service and it went very well. For seven or eight days leading up to that time, he had not been feeling good (sore throat, fever, chills, etc) but we praise God that he was feeling good and able to speak boldly before the hundreds of people that came for the day. We praise God for truth that was proclaimed. Afterwards, people said his Swahili was perfect!

Right away on Monday morning, we left Waama at 4:30am to catch our bus to Arusha. We had some time to make final arrangements in Arusha before our bus left for Nairobi later that same afternoon. After about a 1-hour layover in Nairobi and 12 more hours in the bus, Ben and I arrived here in Jinja on Tuesday at 10am.

Here in Jinja, Uganda…

• only a couple hours after arriving, a meeting was held here at Nate and Rhoda’s house with Ben and I, the team of five from the States, and all the native pastors who are helping to lead this 3-week, evangelistic campaign. We were able to hear about the preparations that have been made in each village and get an idea of what our time in each place will be like.
• our first showing will be tonight (Wednesday night) here in Nate and Rhoda’s town of Jinja.
• we are so thankful for the replacement and back-up equipment that the team was able to bring from the States and I’m sure we will have many testimonies in the next weeks as thousands will hear/see the gospel presented very clearly on the big screen in their own language.

Thank you so much for your prayers for us and Waama as we finished up this first year. Thank you also for your prayers as we begin this time in Uganda. I look forward to the praise reports I will be able to send in the next couple weeks.

In Christ,

Jesse