Rev. E. Anderson
GREAT GROWTH OF CHURCH PLANTS IN UGANDA
As the year ends, I thought to give you some quick updates on what is happening in the field and some of the testimonies might sound like not real, so bear with me.
1. The training/ deployment phase is almost over with just 12 teams that shall be training in 2 weeks, because we had many things in December and did not do it this month.
2. We carried out monitoring visits to 38 districts (half of the teams) and the other half we shall visit at the beginning of January. We went in three different teams and directions and took one and half weeks going from sub-county to sub-county covering villages where churches are planted. This was needful because we felt some of the pastors might leave for Christmas and also we needed to assess the needs for phase two to train and guide the pastors as well as the overseers. We returned just 2days before Christmas.
3. Here are some of the testimonies:
We have churches planted beyond what we had anticipated in the last 4 months(August-November).There are more than 400 New churches planted.
One of the teams we visited, we expected to have one church, and only to find the pastor in the middle of training- he has 6 churches and aims to finish the 12 churches by February ‘09. He is training 13 men and 12 women for the church plants and is ready for new assignment. It all started with praying for a mad man whom people knew and got healed instantly and now he is one of the trainees.
Another team went to a village where the community did not want preachers but gave them a condition to heal a demon possessed man who lived in the forest for 30 years and no one could reach him. But the pastors went into the forest and prayed for the man and brought him to the trading centre when they cut his hair, nails and cleaned him and immediately 40 people came to the Lord and today they have several churches in that sub-county.
One of the pastors was preaching and they brought him a man who was bitten by a snake. He prayed for him and asked him to sleep, after 3 hours, the man was perfectly healed and it is in the man’s home that he started his first church.
It seems like the anointing to heal, perform miracles and delivering the demon possessed is the key for church planting in this context.
From the last training in November, a pastor went to Busia and prayed for a mad man and a few days later close to 30 people got saved and he started a church under a mango tree. Seeing what had happened, one man gave them apart of his land to build a temporary structure which he did with the help of the members and now they are going for the second church in about a month.
I have sampled for you some testimonies, but the rest will come to you soon.
Please note that from 5th Jan’09 we shall be out to help the pastors in the field and will return on 13th to do training of overseers and Regional Missions Coordinators to handle phase 2.
Julius Ebwongu – Superintendent of Assemblies of God
