Hello good folks!! Time for another update!! My visitor Deborah was talking with me the other day and she asked about the start of some of the ministries that we do. We don’t talk a lot about the extra medical care Called Christians gives to people, but it is one of the many ways we minister to hurting people in order to show them the love of Jesus in a physical way. We have been feeding many of the people in Main Hospital Isolation, and in the surgical ward and the TB wards for much of the Covid lockdown, and have also been providing many of the patients with medicine. In Uganda, if you don’t have an attendant to be with you to feed you, bathe you, buy your medicines, wash your clothes, and just basically take care of you, you often get no care at all. There are some nurses that will help you, but not many. Just in the last two weeks, we have been able to minister to a woman who fell asleep with a lighted candle in the room, her mattress caught on fire, and she was burned terribly. We also found a young woman lying under her hospital bed, not in it, who had been hit in the face with a crowbar and had a terrible infection and a broken jaw. We did as much as we could for both women, and then were able to speak to a Christian dental organization here who went and got the woman who was beaten, took her back to their clinic, did surgery on her jaw (for free!), and then took her back to the hospital! What a blessing it is for the Body of Christ to work together to minister to a hurting world! And people ask us often how we decide who we are to help, since there is so much need. To tell you the truth, God makes it very clear. Some people are “not the ones,” but some people God very clearly says to our hearts, “This One!” And those are the ones!! 😀
Called Christians takes a 29 seater bus to the prison several days a week and picks up prisoners that are too sick to be treated in the prison clinics, takes them to hospital, gets them treated, buys their medication, and takes them back to prison. I was just remembering how and why this ministry was started. Back in 1999, I was teaching in Kirinya Women’s Prison and our ladies team walked in one day to see this very young woman named Rebecca on her hands and knees just rocking back and forth in terrible pain. She had a red bandana tied around her head, and sweat and tears were pouring off of her like water. She had terrible malaria, but the prison had no malaria medicine. She was in such pain!!! I can still picture her today! And all I could think of was how would I feel, locked in prison, terribly sick and in pain, and absolutely no hope of getting any help at all. It broke my heart! We laid hands on her and prayed, and then of course after the service that day, we rushed back into town and bought medicine and took it back to her. And that was the start of helping with medicine in the prisons. The government can’t afford to provide much of the medicine. What if it was YOU there, horribly sick, with no way to get medical help? We just could not bear the thought and started providing medications to the prisons. Ministering physically in the love and Name of Christ – in imitation of what Christ did when we healed the sick and fed the hungry so that they would then be ready to hear the Words of Salvation!!
I was also thinking about how we got started taking care of so many children, and then raising them up through school and helping them to have a decent life on this earth, while also getting them ready for eternal life. The Called Christians compound was next door to a very large abandoned building that was mostly just an empty shell. About 80 squatters, mostly widows, single women, and children, lived there with very few walls, no electricity, no running water, and no sanitation. Sunny McLaughlin couldn’t bear the fact that the children were mostly hungry, so she and George Apostle (who also worked with us) started feeding them. Then in time, we started sending them to school as well. And then helping with their medical care. After some time, they were like extensions of our family. They were in our Sunday school, they translated for us at the gate and in many of our ministries, and they did a huge Christmas program in the prisons with what was then Calvary Chapel Jinja. Over the years we probably helped to raise up about 200 children through Primary School, and they were all given a chance at Secondary School and above. Many graduated Secondary School and then many also went on to University or trade schools. Now we have plumbers, electricians, teachers, government workers, hairdressers, politicians, a professional golfer, a doctor, and an accountant among the many that started with us all those years ago. They are now productive members of Ugandan society, active members in their churches and communities, and parents of small children themselves! God has blessed us so much to get to be a part of their lives and to watch them grow! Even though there have been times that I wanted to strangle one or two of them (mostly in their teenage years, ha ha!), it just fills my heart again and again to know these “kids” and see the people that they have become and the lives they are now leading!
Called Christians has been privileged and blessed to get to work in the prisons for about 25 years. We teach a midweek Bible study and a Sunday service in 5 of the prisons, and once a week in two others. We also get to do a Christmas program in all seven prisons each year – until this one. Everyone is locked out because of covid. But I have met with the Officers in Charge of several of the prisons and they will be VERY happy when we are allowed to go back in and teach!! The prisoners are missing the Word of God! We are able to send in worksheets each week with a Bible lesson and questions to be answered by the prisoners, but that is not the same as a Bible Study or Church Service! Even the guards are ready for us to be back! We can hardy wait!
And even though the prison and hospital ministries are slow to be reopened because of their extra vulnerability to covid, many of our other ministries have been able to start up again! Two of our village women’s Bible studies have started once more, and the ladies are so eager to hear God’s Word that they are actually coming on time! (VERY rare in Uganda!) And there is tremendous joy during the worship and the Bible studies. The Bible teaching in the low income area of Danida has started again. And the Wise Women’s Bible Study has also begun again at The Bridge Calvary Chapel. Little by little, we are being allowed to reach out to people again with the Good News of the Gospel of Christ! Joy, Joy, Joy!!! Really!!
I, Beverly, am getting ready to go on a three month furlough starting at the end of this month. And for those of you who say I am going on vacation, HA!! NOT a vacation! But it will be a wonderful time of reconnecting with family (first time I will spend Christmas with my Texas family in 30 years), friends, and supporters. I am really looking forward to being with people that I haven’t seen in years, and to fellowshipping in churches I haven’t visited in almost three years, and to getting opportunities to speak in many places and sharing what God is allowing us to join with Him in doing in Uganda. Please, please, if you want to visit with me, or have me speak to you individually or in a group of the work of Called Christians in Uganda, do contact me and let me know. I am eager to spend time with people talking about the Lord and about His Work!
There is so much to add here, but I don’t want to go on and on forever. There is still SO much work to do here, and many hands and feet that are willing to do the work! We do often lack the funds to support the different ministries, and if anything particularly touches your heart, please feel free to give toward that area of need. We and many others would be MORE than blessed by your gift!
Just one more tiny thing – we were talking at the table tonight about the Uganda Postal Service (which has been shut down since March, but is slowly reopening) and wondering how a certain package would be delivered from one side of Uganda to the other. We often put items on buses or 14 passenger taxis and pay a small fee to have them delivered to another town. But it brought to mind the “old days” when there were no cell phones, and of course villages did not have post offices. So if you wanted to send a message to someone in a village somewhere (we often sent messages from prisoners to their families), you gave the message to a matatu taxi driver, and as he would drive by a certain point in the village, he would just throw the message out the window and people would check to see who it went to, and then would deliver the message to that person. And believe it or not, it worked!
Thank you for hanging in there till the end of this long update. So much is going on, and I just had to write it to you!! May God bless you with peace in your heart in these trouble times! And may He also touch you to help those who are less fortunate than you are.
With much love,
Beverly Rich and Called Christians
