My training partner, Pastor Wescott, and I just returned from a very interesting training trip to Uganda that had some unusual components. For one thing, Uganda recently changed their visa system, so an e-visa was required in order to board the plane. The system has some problems, and we were barely able to get ours in time, while many others (as we found out in the immigration line in Uganda airport) had even more problems than we did. Add to that the Covid requirements, and there was no shortage of stress prior to departure.

We arrived very late Wednesday night, and managed to get to our training site in Iganga the next morning just as the training was scheduled to begin. I had planned on giving a “refresher training” for participants from a previous network, but it ended up only four of those showed up, while 30 new participants attended, hungry to learn how to study the Bible. So we quickly pivoted, and offered a “pre-launch conference” to the group toward potentially creating a new network in Iganga in December. The six U.S. pastors that I’m close friends with, who will take over the network after I get things started, all enthusiastically agreed to train both in Iganga and the intended training location of Gulu several hours to the north. A downpour of rain one day paused the training for 45 minutes, but other than that, the group seems well poised for an effective Pathways launch.

Following the training, Wescott and I were blessed by our host, Charles Magumba, with a fun experience – a trip to the source of the Nile in Jinja, Uganda. 4000 miles, 90 days, from Uganda, through South Sudan and North Sudan and Egypt into the Mediterranean – what an amazing (and biblical) river!

The next day, Wescott and I were invited to preach at a large Anglican church, and received clerical robes to preach in! About 600 people attended each of four services, and I took one of the services and Wescott another as we brought God’s Word to these dear souls. I was encouraged that one young man stood to place His faith in Christ following my message from Mark 2 about the authority of Jesus to forgive sins and heal spiritually as well as physically.

Following the services, we made our way through Kampala and the next morning we were at the main bus station heading north to Gulu. What should have been a 4-5 hour ride ended up taking over eight hours.

The main highlight was crossing the Nile River, and on the other side we saw baboons and elephants right next to the road. Wow! That was the first time I’d seen elephants outside of a safari park.

In Gulu, we were again blessed by our host, Moses Andruga. He and his wife Mary graciously cared for us and fed us wonderful meals of rice, beans, greens, and “chips.”

The “pre-launch conference” training the next day went very well, although our time was cut a bit short since many of the pastors had travelled long distances, even from South Sudan, and needed to return that evening.

We ended up with about 35 participants, and flowing from that training, the group chose five coordinators to begin preparations for a December launch of Pathways.

While we were in Gulu, we heard that there had been two (later found out three) IED (homemade explosive devices) that detonated, one on Saturday in Kampala at a restaurant, a second on a bus the same day as our bus ride to Gulu, and the last on Friday as we made our way to the airport. In concert with our mission, we decided to avoid public transport and congested areas as Islamic extremist groups took responsibility for the bombings. So we ended up booking tickets on a small MAF cessna plane that proved to be a great adventure, landing and taking off from dirt runways and very small, remote airstrips. We safely made it back to Entebbe and our plane flights home.

All in all, it was a great, exhausting, exhilarating, epic journey. Setting up the two networks toward a successful launch was a ton of administrative responsibility, but Lord-willing it will be well worth the work. I am scheduled to return at the beginning of December to help launch both the Iganga and the Gulu networks.