Mobilising refugee outreach in northern Uganda
Adjumani is a town and district of northern Uganda where many Sudanese and South Sudanese refugees are living, a great number of them are from unreached people groups.
80% of Uganda is engaged in agriculture. The healthy economy of the 1960s was crippled in 1972 by the expulsion of the Asian business community, and then virtually destroyed by tyranny and wars. It has steadily improved since 1992. Under previous government regimes there were restrictions on persecuted Christians, but there is now freedom of religion.
In 1918, as a group of AIM missionaries made their way to Congo from Kenya, they were held up in Uganda waiting for one of their members to recover from severe sickness. Whilst there the Church Mission Society (CMS) asked them to help feed those facing starvation during a famine that year as CMS had a shortage of personnel. Following this, the group was then asked to stay and help reach out to the people west of the Nile, where CMS were yet to share the love of Jesus.
So, AIM settled in Arua and baptised the first 26 new believers. Although the church in that area got off to a slow start, 40 years later, thousands had been baptised, hundreds of churches were in existence, and Ugandan Christians were being ordained as pastors in the West Nile area.
Now, in the 21st century, a 2002 census showed that approximately 80% of the country’s population said they were Christian. As a result, the work of AIM is directed towards encouraging believers to live their whole lives in a biblical way. We work together to share the love of God with those we come across and look to engage the unreached within Uganda, in neighbouring countries and throughout the world. Those who come to work with AIM in Uganda do so alongside Ugandans in many different situations, from youth work to hospital work, schools, hospitals, orphanages, businesses and farms.
Adjumani is a town and district of northern Uganda where many Sudanese and South Sudanese refugees are living, a great number of them are from unreached people groups.
Could you use your teaching skills to serve the children of mission workers in Uganda by helping to develop and deliver curriculum, as well as discipling students in their individual walks with Christ?
Do you want an opportunity to see what it’s really like to live out mission?
There are still almost 1,000 African unreached people groups, mostly in the Sahel, north and west Africa. May Jesus find us faithful, even for the next 125 years. Or until he returns.
Adam Willard, AIM’s Unit Leader for Uganda, has lived with his family in remote places in three different countries over several years. He shares that one similarity they have seen in each of these places is the struggle to educate church leaders in contextual and reproducible ways.
I would never have dreamt how God would bless these relationships or how he would lead us all in his service. I wonder how he might be calling you?