The Pearl of Africa Revisited

Gulu, Northern Uganda, Thursday 22 March 2007: After Flame International’s teaching on forgiveness, an old lady shuffles up to the stage where there are two large crosses, with hammers and nails nearby, together with a pile of red paper discs.  Her face is frozen in grief.  She hesitates, and then stoops and clumsily selects some discs, a nail and a hammer, and nails the discs to the cross.  This is her act of forgiveness; but who knows what is going on in her mind?  I can guess – for I’ve prayed with her and her husband.  Their story?  The Lord’s Resistance Army, who have been running amok in Northern Uganda for over twenty years, have killed three of their sons.  There are plenty of other such stories: there are several women who have been abducted into sex slavery and there are people who are dabbling in witchcraft.  The poverty is extreme; several are sick or crippled.  But the delegates – mostly church leaders and their wives – soak up the teaching; many are scribbling away in their notebooks, to better equip themselves to take the teaching back to their parishes, churches and refugee camps.  They love the dramas we put on – enactments of The Fall and The Unmerciful Servant and a depiction of a wedding haunted by previous sexual partners.  And even one drama featuring Marmite and Peanut Butter!

Uganda, Churchill’s ‘Pearl of Africa’, has a special place in my heart; some of my earliest and happiest memories are of the mission school in Kabale where I was sent as a five year old.  But the country has a troubled history, which includes such martyrs as Bishop Hannington in the 19th century and Archbishop Janani Luwum in the 20th – and with him many others under Idi Amin.  AIDS has scourged the land – many people we meet have lost a relative to the pandemic.  The refugee camps are pitiful centres of gut-wrenching poverty, despair and misery.

But we have witnessed change, hope and renewal – even during the short missions we conduct. In September, when we went to Lira, I spent some time listening and talking to Richard, a carpenter.  He went through a dramatic change during the trauma workshop we ran there.  A depressed and traumatised young man was renewed overnight.  One of the first people I encountered at Gulu, some six months later, was Richard, whose smiles told their own story.  He couldn’t wait to tell me about his plans for developing his business.  I was encouraged – the ministry at Lira had not been a mere flash in the pan.  In Kitgum, the response to the teaching was remarkable; they kept on coming for more ministry! And since returning to UK we have had a wonderfully encouraging report of dramatic healing of key relationships in the diocese that had been badly fractured for a number of years.

The leaders are insisting that we go back and deliver yet more teaching in the areas of healing, forgiveness and reconciliation.  Having run healing conferences at the three main centres of Northern Uganda, the emerging plan is to revisit the area later this year and conduct more in-depth ‘train-the-trainer’ sessions. 

 

So - please join us in our heartfelt thanks to the God who calls us and who is faithful and please pray for the land of Uganda, for healing, forgiveness and reconciliation, that the Pearl will be restored and renewed.