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“WHY SHOULD THE WORK STOP?”

Nehemiah 6:2-3 “I knew they were scheming to hurt me so I sent messengers back with this: “I am doing a great work; I can’t come down. Why should the work come to a standstill just so I can come down to see you?”

    I praise God for this opportunity to present the Makerere UBF mission report.  Makerere University Chapter started with a new vision of renewing our collective delight in the Law of the Lord. At that time, we took Ps 1:2 as our 2016 Chapter Key Verse, “But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night”. The previous year 2015 had been an exceptionally difficult one. We faced several challenges from both within and from outside the ministry. Our young leaders were not taking up responsibility and were infected by some strange teaching at the university. In addition, our house-church ministry also suffered some spiritual attack. The ministry had also undergone leadership change with Msn Livingstone Kang succeeding Msn Luke Lim. Through this Key Verse we wanted as a church to grow together in the word of God through deeper meditation, prayer and better co-working. We prayed to have collective responsibility and individual honor for the ministry.  

FIRST, the state of our ministry. In this year, we studied 2 Corinthians, Nehemiah and we are now studying Mark’s gospel. Through these three books we were able to gain a new desire to live as a new spiritual community and to rebuild the broken walls of our spiritual house.  In step with our New Year direction, we changed our weekly fellowship meeting design. Instead of the once-a-week group meeting, we now had individual fellowship leaders leading weekly fellowship meetings under a structured fellowship program. In these fellowships growing bible students would be introduced to preparing messages and testimony sharing. Five fellowship leaders also prepared monthly reports for better spiritual accountability and the helping of bible students. We also started regular prayer meetings every Friday evening as a means of strengthening our collective prayer lifestyle. Several brothers and sisters started praying consistently through these meetings. In September, we had the 2016 Bible Academy, which was attended by about fifty students including eleven freshmen. The theme of the Academy was “At the Cross roads” taken from Jeremiah 6:16. This one-week Academy was meant to welcome freshmen to university life and to challenge them to take the right way when they stand at the crossroads of campus life. After this conference, several freshmen were immediately attached to individual fellowships where they could get proper spiritual induction and bible instruction. All the leaders actively participated in this Academy through testimony sharing and message preparation.  Through their humorous testimonies, we realised that most of our senior leaders have been UBF members over 15 years. We challenged them to pray and support a new group of young leaders with a sense of responsibility. Many junior leaders now actively take on new roles within different parts of our ministry especially for praise and worship preparation. Several young leaders still remain in our mission field even after they have graduated. This is encouraging to us and, I believe, a sign that our church is maturing into its identity as a disciple-making ministry. When we studied Nehemiah, we received Nehemiah 6:2-3, “I am doing a great work; I can’t come down. Why should the work come to a standstill just so I can come down to see you?” Through this our zeal for campus ministry grew when we realised the urgency of God’s work in the campus. 

SECOND, The mission field. During the year, our mission field was in constant turmoil. There were two strikes at the university involving both students and lecturers. Due to repeated strikes, the semester opened quite late and eventually after another strike the President closed the university. Many of our sheep had to go back to their hometown suddenly. Because of this unstable environment, we couldn’t help them effectively until now. Those who tried to stay slowly retreated back to their villages. Although we communicated with some of them by phone, we pray that God may secure their spiritual condition and help them to be examples in their hometown. Also two co-workers Missionaries Joseph and Esther Chung returned to the USA. They faithfully served Ugandan students for five years. They left behind about thirty bible students. Most of them still faithfully attend the SWS. God further comforted us and sent us a brand new missionary family from Chicago: Msn. Francis and Theresa Choi. They now actively support our Cornerstone fellowship and serve in the Bethesda Mission Clinic. As part of a public outreach, we launched the Makerere UBF website (www.makerereubf.org) as a useful tool for e-evangelism and to help students understand God’s call for campus mission and our vision for Uganda.  

THIRD, One Lesson. One spiritual lesson that we learned during this year was the best way to help students. In the beginning, our leaders tried to help students with their own strength. However, when we did this, we became spiritually tired. It was difficult to help them. One student graduated and got a job and stopped attending the Sunday worship service, while another student received some strange religious teaching and stopped being faithful to bible study. Although these problems were going on, we learned the best way to help such students is to show them love despite their apparent rebellion against God’s word. We learned that we can help them more with the word of God which can eventually convict and change them. We decided to strengthen our fellowship meetings. Each fellowship leader could serve his fellowship directly and help his members one by one. Slowly, we could see some change among students. We realised that helping students is a collective effort. One of Missionary Joseph’s and Esther’s sheep who had hardened his heart to biblical instruction slowly changed his attitude. Nowadays he is a humorous presider full of joy. When all leaders play their role, then we can effectively support the growing sheep. This year we also had a joint missionary and House church fellowship meeting. Through this, we want to have closer co-working between the missionaries and native co-workers. During this year, we could start new fellowship in the Makerere Medical School hostel where about seven young doctors regularly met once a week to pray and have Bible study. These include Tom, Enoch, Michael, Stella, Innocent, Ivan and Marion.  Our prayer is that they may grow as spiritual leaders who are responsible and faithful servants of God. 

    Personally, this year was also quite challenging especially serving as a deputy shepherd for our ministry. In the beginning we had to deal with some negative spiritual influences among our young leaders residing in the common tent. However, God gave us the best wisdom from his word on how to deal with specific situations. I repent that in 2016 I have lived as a survivalist. Professionally, I had to travel several times to serve in other countries. However, in spite of this, God was gracious to give me three faithful students. Among them, two men (Jonas and Dan) have matured graciously in the knowledge and wisdom of God’s word. They have potential to be great leaders. I have also learned the best way to help them is to listen and try to understand them. When I did this, they could share their prayer topics with me for prayer support. As a fellowship, we have also grown to mature in trying to understand the spiritual problem of our sheep and the best way to help them. Praise the Lord, who taught us the secret of helping one man this year. Praise the Lord who helped us to meditate on God’s word and made us effective for His service; May God grant us the heart never to give up on one man. 

CONCLUSION, we thank God for 2016. We were able to grow in knowledge and service. Although we endured several challenges, when we meditated on the word of God, day and night, our faith was strengthened and our hope was renewed. We are full of thankgiving to God who gave us a new direction for Uganda mission. Although we are still weak, God chooses to use us for his glorious work! Many of the young leaders are having a sense of honor. For 2017, we want to meditate on Col 3:16, “Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts.”  Though this verse, we want to continue in the message of Jesus Christ through deep study of God’s word. We want to continually grow as a healthy spiritual community of young people bonded to each other and to Christ through deeper fellowship. Through the upcoming Regional Africa Conference in Kenya, our prayer and hope is to increase the vision of our co-workers beyond Uganda.  

Prayer Topics

• Preparation of the Africa Regional Bible Conference, in Kenya.
• Reopening of the Makerere University. 
• To acquire land near the University. 
• To establish two faithful and Biblical House-churches (James/Charity; Zacchaeus/Sylvia).
• To strengthen co-working between local leaders and missionaries. 
• Pray for God's hands upon Bethesda Mission Hospital project and Bwebajja development, sending more mission co-workers, partnership with other organization.
• To send a permanent missionary for Rwanda Ministry.