Note from Naphtaly

On Sunday 13th February, we received news that the mother of one Leso of 10th Grade had passed on in a water accident involving a small paddled boat on their way to church in an island in Uganda! The young Leso happens to be one of our YCI leaders here and also our keyboard player in our worship services. The husband, Pastor Joseph Leso had moved into Uganda in 1999 after planting our home church here on Mfangano Island. Since then his village hut, which was made of grass and mud collapse and so at the time of death, the family had no house. The starting point was to retrieve the body from the crocodile infested lake point, which did happen on Monday morning. We sent a boat to bring the body and little furniture from the island, a distance of ten (10) hours round trip. Following the dire need for the Leso family, 45 members of our YCI group signed up to go to the mainland to serve this family. We used the USD 400.00 to purchase the building materials and our troop left GGCC for the mainland. The work was very hard as water was available from a well situated far downhill, while the soil for making the wall was also fetched from far away. On arrival, the young soldiers of Jesus prayed and launched out having grouped themselves according to the various tasks before them. The whole village watched in utter amazement at what was going on, which was least expected. To them, the Pastor deserved to be ashamed for having no house because he left to preach. For the five days since he returned home, he was sleeping in a polythene house with his little earthly belongings because tradition would not allow him to take shelter anywhere in such a situation. However, the God of heaven was on his case and things were about to change. The team worked while singing Christian songs and in that way their strength seemed to increase and not decrease under the hot sun. By 4:00 PM, the whole house was up and the Pastor moved his things into the new house! Working under the guidance of Teacher Jared Adams, the group turned to the villagers who gathered under a tree near the house and started a gospel crusade. They sang praises to God, gave testimonies and preached the gospel of the amazing love of Jesus Christ! One old man who stood to speak said, “We now know who you are and why you have done this. Truly God is in you and we have seen him. Anyone who left there in the morning would wonder how a new house stands complete on this ground.” The team left for the 4 kilometer walk back to the shore and traveled on the wild water of the lake, where the storm was very fierce. By 8:00 PM there were back to GGCC singing praises to the Most High God who had used them to touch many lives that day.