Pastor Nicholas’ Testimony
In my clan, drinking alcohol was not a problem, and before accepting Jesus Christ, I could drink alcohol as if there was no tomorrow. I was also a hard-working person, but I could not save any money because I spent all I earned on alcohol. I sold things at home like house chairs, source pans, and family food purposely to buy alcohol. My family continuously advised me to stop drinking alcohol.
I joined a savings association at the advice of a friend trying to help me with my situation. The association helped me reduce the amount of money I spent on alcohol by reducing the amount of money I had on hand. But every time we shared our savings, I still used all the money I had on drinking. So I ended up benefiting nothing from these money-saving groups. I started borrowing money from these groups and joined gambling groups in which I also lost most of what I borrowed. I am still paying those debts. I got addicted to alcohol and gambling to the extent that I valued them more than my daily food.
Watch the testimony of a church member to see how God reconciled this family after Esther severed her husband Dickson’s arm. Pastor Nicholas was prepared by God for this ministry.
Pastor Nicholas’ Testimony continued.
I decided to marry, but my marriage was very challenging because of my addictions. Due to increased debts in the area, I ran away to Kampala and looked for work. I was there for almost one year. When I earned enough money, I started a bar but incurred more debts while operating this bar. I continued with my addictions. I got arrested for gambling and eventually got out of jail on monetary bail.
God’s Embassy started a home fellowship in Ruteete, which I started attending. After some time of visiting the fellowship and listening to the Word of God, I believed and gave my life to Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior in 2016. The fellowship leader, Jackson Turinawe, who is now the pastor of God’s Embassy Ruteete, helped me overcome addictions through prayer and reading the Word of God.
I thank God for God’s Embassy and White Field Ministries because, through them, God has been gracious to my family and me and allowed us to serve God and His people as pastors. We are now living a life of hope and blessed to be ministers. I started serving as an assistant pastor in God’s Embassy Ruteete in 2017 and 2019 as Pastor for Kigaaga. I found 27 people in God’s Embassy Kigaaga; by God’s grace, we are now 79 people in attendance. More people are still showing interest in the Gospel. We give all the glory to God.
Pastor Nicholas, Shallon, his wife, and Derrick are 11 years old, Honest is six years old, and Vincent is three years old.
Recent Ministry:
A Growing Church
We greet all our friends warmly in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. We thank God for you, our friends, and for your prayers and support. We pray the Lord blesses you in considerable measure. Thank you, indeed, for standing with us in the ministry work. God is doing great things, and we give Him all the glory. We train in Bible reading and provide opportunities to serve in fellowships, Sunday school, and church service programs. The adults are in the Praise and Worship Team, intersession, ushering, building, and other church departments.
We praise God for our growth from one hundred twenty to one hundred sixty-three members. With this growth, we need more church space and land to build the children’s Sunday school classroom structure. We have Sunday school, where our children gather to learn Bible stories and memorize Bible verses and songs, which they present in the Sunday services and their classes. Some Sunday school children are also in the children’s choir, Young Ambassadors. They rehearse every Saturday from 3 to 4 p.m.
We reach out to the community through home visits, fellowships, and open-air evangelism crusades. We have six fellowships Monday to Saturday; Sunday is our service at the church building. This month, we visited twenty-seven homes and shared with seventy-five males and one hundred twenty females. Some were happy to hear the gospel in their homes and promised to visit the church that was reaching out to them. We pray that God will touch hearts with the Gospel we shared and convict of sin, so they believe in Jesus Christ for their salvation.
Reaching the community
Greetings in the name of the Lord in whom we live, move, and have our being. We thank the Lord for you. The love, counsel, guidance, encouragement, prayers, and financial support you render to us have helped us reach the Kigaaga community and surroundings in more effective, tangible ways. We pray the Almighty God blesses you, your families, and the work of your hands.
We train others to participate in the ministry by giving them opportunities to lead fellowships and foundation classes every Sunday morning. We discuss their areas for improvement privately. Our church worship team consists of both adults and youth. The youth also serve through dance and drama, the Kingdom Steppers, the children’s choir, and the Young Ambassadors, who are also a part of Sunday school. These groups meet on Saturdays from 3 to 6 p.m. to practice and prepare.
We reach out to the community through home visits, crusades, and overnight prayer services. We recently had an open-air Gospel rally where over 200 people from Kigaaga and the surrounding communities came to hear the Gospel message. We were blessed that pastor Onesimus Ngoboka came, and the people were blessed with the Word of God. We visited 46 homes and shared the Word of God with 101 men and 172 women. We praise God that seven community members were saved and have joined us. The Lord has been gracious, and we praise Him for bringing many to Himself. We ask God that all the families we have visited and prayed for will come to Jesus. We thank God for using us as vessels to His people.
We thank God for our neighbors who have promised to sell more land when we get the money to buy land for the church, and we are praying to God in this direction.
We see God working in the life of Niwandinda Silia, age 27, married to Niwagaba Jorum, age 34; they have four children: Agaba Witness, Atwendeza Victor, Aijuka Evans, and Niwahereza Jorum, ages 13 to 5. Silia is one of our church members. We visited her home this month and found her very sick and in great pain. After praying with her, we helped her seek medical attention, and because she was in a very critical condition of pain, the family took her to Kisiizi Hospital. She was diagnosed with stones in her urinal bladder and needed to be operated on; because she and the family did not have the money for the operation, she asked to be discharged back home to look for the money. When she reached home, she began to cry to the Lord for healing and finances to help in the operation. With time, the pain went away. After they had raised some money, she went back to the hospital to be operated on. The doctors checked, and there were no stones; they told her she no longer needed any operation. She came to church to testify that the Lord healed her as David said, “I sought the Lord, and He heard me and delivered me from all my fears…” (Psalm 34:4, 6).
The family of Musinguzi Hammed, age 42, is married to Pellon Ayebare, age 35, with three children, and all are residents of Kahihi in Kigaaga. They have a temporary three-roomed house in which they live. They depend on selling hard labor to work in other people’s fields, and sometimes Pellon does tailoring in the Kigaaga trading center. We met them during home visits and found that Hammed was a quarrelsome and violent man. At the time of our visit, we found out that Pellon had left him and returned to her parents. We shared with Hammed the need for a strong family to raise godly children, which is impossible without Christ; he listened to us and asked what he could do; we shared the Gospel with him, and he gave his life to Christ. We then connected with Pellon and shared the Gospel with her. She also accepted Jesus Christ as her Lord and personal Savior. She was still afraid to come to Hammed, though she wanted to because it had been said she had been involved with other men. We encouraged her to take an HIV test at any health center in her village, and the test came negative. With this, we called both and counseled them; they reconciled, and we thanked God for healing their marriage; they are now together. They are both part of the church and minister in the ushering department. Their children are in Sunday school. We pray God grows them in faith as God continues to use them as testimonies of how God is a rebuilder of brokenness, even in marriages in our community.
We have seen God working in Kigaaga as people continue to come to fellowship with us. Our numbers are increasing. When we began, we were few, but people have continued to come, and now the church is getting too small to accommodate everyone. We now have over one hundred sixty-three members.
This past month, ten people from Kigaaga gave their lives to Christ during the center day at God’s Embassy Township Church.
We praise God for the increasing grace as we have continued to preach the gospel. This month we witness a couple legalize their marriage at the church. We thank God as people are coming to realize the importance of a stable family and raising their children in the fear of God. Events such as these remind us that the congregation are learning from the Word of God.
One of the families in our fellowship is the family of Gerald, age twenty-six, and Ruth, age twenty-three. They do not have any children and are residents of Kigaaga cell, living in a three-room temporary house. They survive through selling hard labor to others and depend on subsistence farming on hired land. We met this couple through home visits and found out that before they were married, Gerald was staying with his parents who were drunkards. He would go to the bars to look for his parents and pay their bills, and then end up drinking alcohol and becoming drunk like his parents. His habit continued even after marriage, and it destabilized their marriage. We visited their home and shared the Word of God with both of them and they surrendered their lives to Jesus. Gerald changed and they are both committed to serving in the choir. We are so blessed to serve with them. Gerald makes bricks to earn a living and his wife has a grocery store in Kigaaga trading center.
We are training members to participate in ministry by giving them opportunities to lead fellowships, choir practice, worship sessions, and teaching in the Children’s Sunday school class. Some of the leaders that are being trained and mentored in these roles include Jenifer, Kosila, Edgar, Edson, and Lameche.
Our Sunday school has forty-six children, and their teacher is Kate. They are learning Bible stories and memory verses to present in the Sunday services.
Cleophas is forty-six and married to Kimunyu; they have three children who are already grown up and do not live at home anymore. She was Catholic and she is married to an Anglican man by religion. She accepted Christ during a home visit and decided to join God’s Embassy even through her husband is still in the Anglican religion. She is still standing firm in her faith amid much pressure and conflict between these two religions. We are praying that her husband will come to a point when he gives his life to the Lord Jesus Christ.
We reach out to the community through home visits and fellowships. As a church, we have seven fellowships, and each has over fifteen members. We are doing home visits and we visited fourteen homes this past month. We also shared the gospel with thirty-seven males and fifty-four females. God has done great things and we bless His Holy Name.
Church Building: