Recent Ministry:
We bring you greetings from God’s Embassy Kikarara, we also take this opportunity to thank all our friends and supporters.
We have seen God working through the unity of the Christians in our church as we have managed to lay our bricks for the church building, so far, we have eight hundred bricks and are hoping that God will continue to bless us with strength to make more bricks. We desire to make enough to build a permanent church structure.
- Our church needs and prayers are for a permanent church building. The structure we currently have is being eaten away by termites.
We praise God for the visitation of Pastor Steve this summer. The believers were happy to receive the encouraging message he brought and to hear him testify about his heart surgery. Also, we were encouraged by the visit of Dr. Jeremiah and his family to Kikarara.
As a church and a community one of the challenges that we face is the straying elephants that come looking for food and destroy the gardens. They are so big that we cannot chase them away unless we have a crowd. They come at night and that is also the time when you cannot gather a crowd quickly. The impact of these elephants is big, and they are threatening food security within the community.
We also face a challenge in our area as the government suspects rebels, especially in the areas around the park and on the lake shores of Lake Edward. These rebels are targeting churches and other big gatherings. Due to these concerns, the churches have stopped all overnight prayer events to avoid these raids.
We have the Sunday school and the Young Ambassadors choir that meets every Saturday for practices. They learn Bible stories and new dancing skills which they present on Sundays during the main service. They are being trained by Niwacungwire Pellon.
As a church, we are reaching out to the community through fellowships and home visits; this month we visited eleven homes and preached the gospel to thirteen males and twenty-five females.
Update regarding the Church Structure:
The members of Kikarara are now making bricks to replace their temporary wood structure before the termites cause severe damage. For our projects in Uganda, our team takes the initiative to engage the local church in constructing a public gathering place. Our funding provides a solid concrete beam system reinforced with sturdy iron rods to ensure the structure’s resilience against storms. The church community actively contributes to the project by providing bricks to fill the walls, resulting in a highly successful partnership between our team and the local church members. We need about $18,000 to build this structure and include a water tank so God receives glory for every rainstorm that produces fresh, clean water to drink.
Current Prayer Report
God has answered prayers! Ashaba is thirty years old, a resident of Kikarara, married to Pellon, who is twenty-seven. They have two children. Their home is a temporary two-room house. Apollo has been praying for a job, and God answered him with a teaching job in Kanungu, the neighboring district. He came back to give thanks to God in the church. We indeed give God all the glory.
- We praise God for His protection from the elephants. Though they have destroyed the crops, they did not destroy the houses, and the people are safe.
- We thank God that the government has brought hydroelectric power lines near our church; we are praying that we will be enabled to get power to use in the church.
- We are praying for the construction of a permanent church structure made of bricks because the termites are eating the wood of our current church, and our fear is that as time goes on, it will lose its capacity to stand.
Others who participate in our ministry include Pellon, leading the Sunday school, and Beatrice, leading the worship team. As ministers, we meet every Monday to evaluate the past week and plan for a new one. We also study the Bible together and develop leadership skills desiring to serve like Christ.
Brick Making for the Church Walls:
The Women’s Ministry:
Praise God for all the work Bryan and Elizabeth are doing in Kikarara!
Bryan Warugaba Testimony
I lost my mother to HIV/AIDS when I was six months old, and my father passed away from HIV/AIDS when I was seven. My father had three wives and a total of thirteen children. Because of our big family, some children were not able to go to school, but fortunately, I was. After my father passed, I went to live with family friends who raised me and sent me to school, thanks to them I received an extensive education.
In 2009, the family I was staying with invited witch doctors into their home to perform some rituals which later had an adverse effect on all of us. In the house some of us at times were possessed by demons, they made us run away from home, and were extremely destructive causing some of us to get seriously ill and sick in ways doctors could not discern. The situation became so severe that we were taken to an evangelical church in our community by our neighbors.
After praying for us, we got an opportunity to hear the Gospel. I responded positively to the gospel and accepted Christ Jesus to be my Lord and Savior and was baptized in October 2010. I joined that church and was a member there until August 2011 when I moved to live in Rukungiri. Since I accepted Christ, a lot has changed in my life.
My perspective of who God is changed. I have come to know that there is a living God to whom I was made a child through Christ. Before I thought God was what we worshipped whenever which doctors came and performed rituals, but I now know that was evil. I used to believe that witch doctors were a source of help and knew everything about life and considered them as priests of God. Since I accepted Christ, I learned that Christ is Lord over all things even over the witch doctors. I realized that witch doctors work for the devil to steal, kill, and destroy people’s souls.