Sam spreads the word in Uganda

Sam originally visited the central African state last year part of a Fields of Life team who built a primary school.

During that time, he became friends with Pastor Samuel Byakatonda, who invited him to speak at this mission-style event, which was organised by the Miracle Revival Church International in Mawale.

On the first day, Sam preached to about 100 people. However, numbers attending rose steady and by the end of the week as many as 450 people heard his message.

Says Sam: “We started off by asking the question ‘What is a Christian?’ Then we looked at Christ and who He was and why He was so important to Christianity. Then we looked at God the Father, His role in the whole thing and how everything starts with Him.”

“We carried that on by looking at the conversion of Saul, his encounter with God and how that has to happen and then talked about practical Christianity”, he added.

“Finally, we thought about the idea of presenting yourself as a living sacrifice to God and talking about how you should live because of the salvation you have gained through Christ”, explained Sam.

God moved in the hearts of Sam’s hearers. Pastor Samuel reports that as many as 126 people made genuine commitments to Christ during the conference as evidenced by their continued attendance at Church.

It was during visits to two primary schools and four secondary ones that Sam was reminded of the hardship faced by many people in Uganda.

He stated: “In that kind of area of Uganda there is a lot of poverty and hardship. Some of the schools were really a ramshackle of cardboard boxes and other bits and pieces to keep shelter on. Some of them, like the one we built last year were more substantial constructions.”

“Most of the schools that we went to were privately run by individuals or churches, so in that sense the reception was quite warm, two of them were government sponsored and were a bit run down”, suggested Sam.

Again, Sam said that the Lord spoke to many of the children and young people he met in schools, with around 20 of them giving their lives to Jesus.

Ongoing prayer is needed is needed for everyone who got saved as a result of Sam’s ministry at the conference on in the schools.

In terms of the Christian workers who remain in Uganda it is also important to ask God for health, strength, unity and of course, safety as they travel on difficult Ugandan roads.

Sam also reports that the population of rural Uganda are in many cases a forgotten people. Therefore it is important to pray that they will realise their true value in God’s eyes. This was something they began to understand during Sam’s visits.

He adds: “They had very low self-esteem. However the fact that people from another country were prepared to visit and engage with them gave those people a sense of their own value and a bit of hope that hadn’t had before.”