My Uganda Trip - Part 1

Well you can see by checking my posts that it has been a significant amount of time since I last posted. I think though the Uganda trip provides me good motivation to get back in a habit of posting.

Tuesday afternoon I returned from an eleven day trip to Uganda. The main purpose in going was to be part of a conference at Uganda Christian University which was led mainly by faculty from both UCU and The Master's College. This two-day conference was titled "God, Law, and Justice" and was directed toward law students at the university (the second largest university in Uganda) but there were also some outside attenders, including a member of the Ugandan Parliament.

Some of the speakers at the conference included Vice-Chancellor of UCU (equivalent of the President) Stephen Noll, Dr. John Stead, Dr. Mark Tatlock, Dr. George Crawford, Josh Mack, as well as members of UCU's Law and Theology Departments. Particularly powerful was UCU's Dean of Law, George Kasozi who spoke on religious persecution and the legal perspective. Kasozi speaks with authority since in the late seventies he was imprisoned by Idi Amin and was set to be executed for his faith when the Lord spared his life at that time when the man who was to oversee his execution was involved in a car accident on the way to where he was imprisoned! Overall, the purpose of the conference was to communicate ways your chosen vocation can be used for effective ministry. 

My small contribution was a seminar titled "A Biblical Perspective on Law Enforcement." While many of those attending the conference are headed into careers as lawyers, many will also be the future leaders of Uganda. The main theme I hoped to communicate was you can have the most honorable and ethical national/district government, but if your police force is dishonorable and unethical, justice is not properly meted out. Further, I hoped to communicate from God's Word the picture of a godly police officer. Following the seminars we took questions from the audience and some of the questions I dealt with included how it was possible to trust the police, was justice at the enforcement level even possible, and what do you do if your leaders give you an order that violates the law? Those issues, as well as issues of bribery and payment for services are issues that face Ugandans in their relations with their police force. 

The highlight of the conference was at the conclusion of the second day. A young man who is a fourth-year law student (final year) approached one of his professors, Daniel Kajubi, (who is also a lawyer for the International Justice Mission) and told him he was convicted of his sin from all the teaching, realized he was unsaved, and asked Daniel how he could be saved. Daniel then had the opportunity to take this young man outside and lead him to the Lord. Please pray for this young man that he will continue to grow in godliness.

The conference was a tremendous two days of teaching from God's Word. I was truly humbled speaking with such great men of the faith as Kasozi, Stead, and Tatlock. 

Tomorrow I'll attempt to update the next couple of days of our whirlwind trip to Africa.