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Fifth Pastors’ Conference

We have written before on the amazing thing the Lord has done in Uganda with these training seminars for Pentecostal pastors. Brother Bill Issa reports on the latest seminar:
“Our fifth pastors’ conference took place on 30-31 October and, once again, we thank the Lord because Christ occupied the central place in all the teachings. 34 pastors and church leaders from 6 different districts of Uganda and 3 countries attended the conference. The theme was “What Christ Says About your Church” from the letters to the seven churches of Revelation 2-3. Our teacher was Pastor Ronald Kalifungwa of Lusaka Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia.”

A New Meeting Place

Reconciliation Baptist Church in Kampala, Uganda has been in urgent need of a better meeting place. When I visited them almost 2 years ago, the church was overflowing Pastor Bill’s garage where they met. On this year’s trip, they were not far from outgrowing the tent they had set up on the front lawn of the house Bill rents. In the meantime, Bill’s landlord had put the house up for sale. Bill never knew when he might lose his home and the church lose their meeting place!

It was such a relief when the Lord at last provided a more suitable meeting place for the church. This second-story room has several advantages to their former meeting places. The room is much larger, accommodating their growing number. It is surrounded by windows, allowing more light and air circulation than Bill’s garage. Having been in the church tent during a rainstorm, I appreciate the room’s protection from inclement weather. A major improvement is that the new location is right on a main road in Kampala, rather than being hidden behind a wall, on a dirt road, in a residential area. The new location is much more visible and more easily found. Perhaps the most significant advantage is that guests who visit the new facility will take the church more seriously than when they were meeting in a garage or a tent.

Bill joyfully recalls the long and challenging journey to their current meeting place in the “Upper Room”:
“RBC has come a long way to reach where we are today, although it still has a long way to go. It began

  1. From someone’s very small living room, then
  2. It moved to a “Toilet” (that’s how people in the community referred to the building because of its poor appearance!); from there, it moved to
  3. A windowless Garage; from the garage it moved
  4. under a Canvas Cover; from there it moved to
  5. A Hot Tent; from the hot tent to the present
  6. Upper Room.

Small Living Room

The “Toilet”

Garage

Canvas

Tent

“Upper Room”

This exodus wandering will end the day we buy our own land, build a sanctuary, and enter it! We have faith that He who has brought us from a so-called “Toilet” to this “Upper Room” will one day provide us land and a church building for His own glory. The Lord has been faithful indeed!”