My Uganda Trip - Part 4

Sunday morning we had the opportunity to worship in the church service which takes place in the Hurley's home. Following a time of worship and taking communion, Shannon preached a message he has titled, "The Kingly Reign of God." After demonstrating from Scripture God's right to reign, he asked the question, how can God rule over our lives today? One of the key answers to this question was of course meditating on the Word of God day and night. He also made a point that reading and studying Christian books is not the same as meditating and studying the Bible. While books are a great tool for understanding the Bible and for gaining new knowledge, if we truly believe the promises of 2 Timothy 3.16-17, then our emphasis needs to be on knowing the Bible.

Monday was our final day in Uganda, waking up to an awesome thunderstorm. In the morning, we visited the International Justice Mission in Kampala. The Uganda  director, Ali McKinney, and one of their lawyers, Daniel Kajubi, had been speakers at the UCU conference. IJM is a Christian organization that advocates on behalf of widows, orphans, and other victims of injustice who either have been denied legal recourse, or are unaware of how they have been wronged. Ali shared with us that the main focus of IJM in Uganda right now is property-grabbing from widows. While property owned by a couple should go to the wife upon the death of her husband, often the husband's family or another relative will come in and make a claim on the property, including the use of forged documents, etc. IJM has a team of investigators, one of whom is a retired 17 year veteran of the Ugandan Police, who look into these crimes and then work alongside the police in helping the investigation. IJM's lawyers, all of whom are Ugandan, then assist in the court-related issues. I learned that the cooperation between IJM and the police has worked so well that many of the stations have even put in an IJM desk for the investigators when they are there working.

The day rounded out with a trip to the Bugandan Palace. Buganda is the largest of the Ugandan tribes and the king's palace is located in Kampala. On the palace grounds is a tunnel that was used by Idi Amin as a prison chamber. The tunnel had rooms off to the side and then would be filled with water once prisoners were inside. Electrical wires would then be placed in the water and should any of the prisoners try to escape, they could be electrocuted. Some of Amin's prisoners would have included Christians and potential political opposition.

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.