My brother, David Kibale, to you tonight, and I encourage everybody, he has some comments that he's prepared, but he also wants to leave plenty of time for questions. So if you have, be thinking, if there's anything that you would like to ask him, I'm willing to bet that he will field any question you have, and he will do so fearlessly. But you have listened to people like myself and Andy and Dave talk about the global church, particularly the church in Africa. And maybe you thought we were making it all up. And maybe we didn't really go there, all right? But now is a gentleman who, I mean, this is his home. And this is proof. When we say the Apostles' Creed and we speak of, I believe, in the Catholic Church, this is proof of the Catholic Church. The sacraments which we hold dear, the scripture which we sit under as it's preached every Sunday, Even the Psalms, which we sing, they are also incorporated into his worship, in his language. But you would not find it strange. And he is, I hope, among whatever else he brings to us, he brings to us this evening this sense that we belong to a global church, and that that church, led by Christ, has a global reach, and he will and is successful. David is a teaching elder. They use that term in the PCU. He's a pastor, but he's currently not pastoring a church. He is the coordinator for the Presbyterian Church of Uganda, which is an administrative position. Essentially, he's the full-time guy running the denomination. They also have a moderator and a stated clerk. which are elected through three-year terms, right? Three-year terms. But anyway, but he, David fights the good fight for the PCU every day. That's what he does. He is here in the United States. As much as he might love Providence Presbyterian, he did not come here to see us. He came because he's also active, he is the PCU's representative to an organization known as the International Conference of Reform Churches, ICRC, and to which our denomination, the ARP, is also a member. So, and the ICRC was in negotiations with NAPARC, And I know we're abusing you with acronyms right now. But our denomination is also a member of NAPARC. And exactly what the outcome of that was, I don't think that's even yet been sorted out. But that kind of ecumenical church business is what brought him here to the United States. And because he was here, he was gracious enough to come down. I'm very grateful that he's come down here and visit. He leaves tomorrow for the trip back home. So this is his last night. here, and with that, David, let me let you take over this podium. Hello, everyone. Greetings to you in the mighty name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I'm grateful to be in this place and I'm so happy. I've been to three now different places on this trip. From Willow Grove in Pennsylvania, I went to Pensacola, Florida, and then I'm here. So I'm grateful. And whenever I've been, I've been saying this, I'm so amazed at Christ's death on the cross. that I've been to all these places, and I didn't know many of the faces, but whenever I go, I find sisters and brothers. And that's only by the blood of Jesus Christ. His death on the cross can bring us together as brothers and sisters. So I'm happy to be here with my brothers and sisters. And when I came here and I found that there are so many Davids here, I just feel like I'm just right home. So I bring greetings from the Presbyterian Church in Uganda. As you have heard, my name is David Kabale, and I'm the coordinator of the Presbyterian Church in Uganda. I'm married to grace. I think the Lord knew that I needed more grace. Some of you may not know, but one of the reasons I needed more grace, the Lord has given us four daughters, and I'm also taking care of four other daughters. You now know why I needed more grace. So I have nine ladies in my house, and I'm the only king, so no competition. Yeah, so I'm grateful to God about that. When Elder Charlie and Pastor David, Elder David, Pastor David. Yeah, I came to Uganda this last trip. We had a meeting with Elder Charlie about the ministry in the health center we started in Kaptura, which was started in Kaptura. I shared with him that I was going to come and be part of NEPAC and ICRC consultation meeting. I said, no, you should come and visit us and talk to our church about the PCU. And I'm so grateful that that welcome was given to me and I also the home of Elder Charlie and Jane was open for me to have a bed. So I'm grateful to God for that. And I'm also grateful to meet the pastor. So thankful to God. Now, this is what I wanted to share with us about the Presbyterian Church in Uganda. 1972, many of you may remember only this president. I know many people don't know another president apart from Idi Amin. But in 1972, Idi Amin, there was a charismatic, prosperity gospel preacher from Ghana who prophesied that Idi Amin was going to be overthrown. And for that reason, he and the people, the person who translated those words, were hunted for their lives. And it so happened that the Prosperity Gospel Preacher from Ghana died in an accident, which kind of many people think that it was staged because he was handed for his life. But his translator, who was Reverend Kepha Sempanji, ran to Kenya for his life, and he survived death. And when he went to Kenya, he went all the way to England, then to Netherlands, and he ended up in the U.S. And that is Chattanooga, Tennessee. Yeah, that's where he landed, and he was introduced to the Reformed doctrine. He was a Pentecostal preacher, charismatic, prosperity gospel preacher, and he was introduced to the Reformed doctrine, and he was taken even through the training for three years. So, when, The regime for Idi Amin came to an end in 1979. Reverend Dr. Kefa Senpadji came back to Uganda and started a Presbyterian church. And this is how he did, it was not something very easy for him, but he came back with all this reformed doctrine, having been kind of enlightened and put on fire for the reformed doctrine. And because he had influence among the prosperity gospel preachers, he calls them, And everyone came, he says around 25 pastors came and he sat with them and he told them, you know what guys, we've not been preaching the gospel. We've not been teaching the scriptures. I've been introduced to preaching the word of God and this is the truth. So he gave them a month where they could meet and then he takes them through some of the things that would give them like a kickstart for them to go back to the scriptures. Sounds like Martin Luther when he goes to the Roman Catholic priests. And what happened, to cut the story short, is that only three pastors remained with him. The rest of them said, uh-uh, I think you are wandering from the right course. So they departed, and they continued embracing their prosperity gospel, and the three remained and were taught, and they even started pastoring. By the way, when Reverend K. Sempange started this church, he never pastored it. But the men he trained, the three men he trained, are the ones who became the pastor, the pastors of that church, and then it continued to grow and grow to now 81 congregations. And all these 81 congregations are in six presbyteries. So we are grateful to God for that. And all the 81 congregations, at least I would say around 72, all of them have pastors. And I want to tell you pastors, but some of them are not trained pastors. And I'm so grateful to God for the work that is being done by some members of this church. And I've just realized that even pastor has been to TBI Kachorua that has been doing a great work of training church leaders in in the Presbyterian Church and some of the churches there. I believe some of you have ever seen the map of Africa, of Uganda, but I'm talking about this part of Uganda. And all the pastors from Mbale, are all coming to get their training here. And I may say all, but not every. But many pastors, at least, that was the first institute that was in Captura, and it is doing a tremendous work. And some, I've realized that even some people come from Kenya and get their training from there. And recently, when it was registered, then it even gets more from Rwanda, from Tanzania, and from South Sudan. So many students now come from different places. But I want to say I'm so grateful to God that this has been instituted. And another institute that was instituted in 1989 was started around Kampala. This is where I come from, so it was started there and it was kind of before the TBI was started in Kapchurua, it was very hard for us to kind of support the students from Kapchurua, Mbale and everywhere to come and do the training here. And some of them would even, when they come to Kampala, they don't want to go back. Just as I know we've had some people we lost in the U.S. The same thing is happening because, by the way, there was a program some time back when the Presbyterian Church, after Reverend Kaefer coming back, One of the things he did is, you guys, you need to go and receive this training. Because for him, when he came back, well, he was involved in church, but he also wanted to be involved in politics, that he may also make an influence, even in politics. So he didn't have enough time to do all the training, but he gathered some of the men and sent them to the U.S. for training. But some of them are now here in the U.S. and they've never come back. So the existence of the Presbyterian Church in Uganda has continued, and we are continuing to plant the different churches. Friends, the gospel is continuing to go on in Uganda. And the churches are being planted. In 2018, we came up with a strategic plan to do different activities. When I came in the office where I'm serving, we came up with a strategic plan that guides us on what to do. And we kind of try to follow this for the next five years. And then after five years, we do an evaluation, and we come up with another strategic plan. So one of the things that we have is every year to plant two churches. Every year to plant two churches. And we are so grateful to God that the past two years, we've been able to plant at least three churches. We haven't succeeded on the fourth one, but at least we have planted three churches. And I'm grateful to God for the way he's providing. Some time back, the way we were planting churches, is that we would receive missionaries from the U.S., they come join with a mission body in our church, and then we go out to plant churches. And some of these missionary bodies would be even the ones to fund the buying and purchasing of land for the church. But at least I would say that these days it's now like 50% PCU and 50% missionary bodies. But I also want to let you know that not so many missionary bodies do we receive these days to plant churches, but I'm so grateful to God that the work is continuing. I was sharing with Elder Charlie this morning that there is something that I wanted to take back home with me and the Lord provided for it. And I was telling him that after seeing that there were no missionary bodies coming and the work is still needed, there are youths who have come together from all around our churches. They've come together and they have formed a missionary body. a local missionary body, and they are going around preaching the gospel, working with churches, working with church planters, and they are planting churches at the moment. And we are so grateful that the Lord can bring this up, and it's really happening. This is the second year, and we are kind of still building this body to continue. Among the ministries that we do, besides church planting, we also do church revitalization. There are so many churches that have become so dependent on the missionaries. And some of the missionaries, when they were leaving, they never told them that they are leaving. And, like, for example, there are about three churches which were supported by the missionaries, and they were giving them free education, the pastors themselves, giving free education to, like, supporting their children to go for education in schools, and supporting the pastors and their families also to receive medical treatments whenever they needed it without any pay. And that kind of affected some of the churches that when they left, they never left them with anything. Now they have to look for school fees. They have to pay for their medical kind of attention in the hospital. And they have to either send an elder or someone else to go to school, but they don't know what to do. So that left the churches. Much like that, that some of them were kind of discouraged. Others were even losing some of, I would say, the grip on the reform doctrine, which led to some of them to be even put under discipline because we saw that they were wandering from the truth and they were kind of trying to find ways of raising money. And the easiest way is going charismatic. going to preach the Prosperity Gospel. And that was kind of entering into the church, and because of that, we are also involved in church revitalization to help the church continue. Besides that, we also do diaconal work, which involves relief, involves helping of refugees. These days we have so many refugees coming from South Sudan, DRC, and now we have another influx that came from northern part of Sudan, the other Sudan, from which South Sudan are separated. So because of the civil wars that are going on there, because of the tensions that go on between the leaders, the political leaders there, this brings a lot of tension that many people run to Uganda. And some of the people who have really suffered a lot are the people from South Sudan. And well, it has been like it is stabilizing, but then there is another tension that is coming up. whereby the other person who was in opposition, the president in charge had invited him and they had joined together to work together in the leadership or in the government. But now, again, another tension is coming up that even if he was working with him, so he was charged with treason and is under house arrest for six months. And there is another tension that is coming up that probably there is another civil war that is going to break up in South Sudan. So some people, some men had gone back to prepare where they should take their families because most of the places, they were burnt to ground. And now the husbands had gone back to prepare, but now another tension is coming up. So they are like, are we going to put up other houses that are going to be burnt down again? So now it happens that we still have a big number of refugees still back in Uganda. But then UN comes and says, now South Sudan is stable. You should go back to your home. And they pulled out all the help that they were giving to these people. And then by saying that they are now giving it to Ukraine. Ukraine and other countries. But what's happening is because these people are in Uganda, and let me tell you that some of them are around our churches, and they have come and met with us to request that after our departure on Sunday, they want to come and enter our buildings and use them for their church services. And four of our churches have opened up, to these people that they are now using our churches as to have fellowship and worship after we have departed on the Lord is day after our service. So four of our local congregations or local churches have opened up their buildings for them. And because of this, it has given us an opportunity also to reach to them. and we don't understand their language when they're speaking, but kind of fellowship. One day, you say, let me sit in this, and you sit, you hear. The first thing I heard, mentioning Allah and salam alaikum, for me, I thought, are these Muslims or what? But until when I had to inquire, and they said, no, we speak Arabic, and salam alaikum means just peace. Peace be to you. So we were like, we were kind of confused the first time we heard it. But at least I wanted to mention to you that we have opened up and it has also opened a way for us also to minister to them. That sometimes they even invite us to go to the refugee camps and we preach the gospel from there. I want to share with you one experience when we went there and A day before, there's a family that had died. And a woman, the lady, had lost two children from hunger. And because she had lost her husband in the war, and two children had died of hunger, she committed suicide. So, the entire family was wiped out. And it was very hard for us. It was not so easy for us to understand what was going on. But we had provided lunch for the two days we were going to be there doing some training. And at lunchtime the first day, we had a full church. But at lunchtime, I saw almost 20% of the congregation that had attended the training was remaining, and 80% had gone. And I went to the organizer and was like, excuse me, was this the end? He said, no, no, no, no, don't worry. They are coming back. I said, where are they? You know, they don't have food at home. They have taken food to their families. But everyone had one plate. You mean they are taking this one plate to be shared back and say, yeah, that's what they could get today. So that's what they are taking. And everyone who is here, you must know he's not going to eat, but he's taking his food to the family back there. And that's how we came to know even about the story of the death. So that's how we sometimes, whenever the Lord allows and provides, that's how we reach out to these people also in the camps. And you probably, I don't know whether, this doesn't go so much on the news, but there Sometimes there are landslides in Uganda. Sometimes there are floods. I don't know whether we've ever had in the western part of Uganda, Mount Renzori. I think it was kind of like a glacier up on the mountain, but because of the heat, it melted. And when the rain came, there was too much water on top of the mountain that it swept people's houses and many people died when the water was coming downhill. So, those are some of the things we respond to. But we also, besides that, we also plant schools. We plant schools, we start schools. We kind of try to start Christian schools and we start them at the churches. It is kind of a program and a target that at least every local church, we have a primary school at every local church. And this, well, we start school mainly for education, but it also provides us a ground for us to evangelize. And how do we evangelize through schools? The children who come are not only, excuse me, are not only children for church members. But so many people out there are looking for good schools. And one of the things they do is they trust schools that are started by churches. And they know that quality is going to come from those kind of schools. So what they do is, including the Muslims, today if you came at first to PCU, Mengo, you find, and you may think that the school was taken by the Muslims. But it is because they trust the quality of the education and they give us their children. Yeah, and we teach them. So what we do in these schools is the government well gives us the curriculum to teach, but we have come up with a way of integrating Christianity in this curriculum that at least we inquire or require the teachers to start with the word of prayer. When you are teaching something, you find a way you refer to God's creation, to God himself, to his sovereignty. You may not teach sovereignty in the school because they will not understand it, but at least you find a way of bringing it in. So they tie in Christianity with the lessons they teach, and then even the Muslims who are seated there also get to hear about that. And we also have a chapel, and we are not kind of pushing, because one thing that you have to know about, that we have come to know about Muslims, some of the Muslims are not kind of They are not kind of so much taken out by their religion that they don't want to interact with others or what. But we have come to understand that our approach to them is the one that gives us the resistance or the floor to talk to them. And we kind of open, do these chapels every Wednesday in our schools, and we open. We tell them, please feel free to come. We are not going to force you to become a Christian, but as part of the school, feel free to come and attend. But we don't push them that you should be, this is like this. Like, I've ever sent one of my daughters to a Roman Catholic church, and one of the things, when I took her to the school, they gave her the uniform and a rosary. And when they gave her a rosary, I said, oh, excuse me, she doesn't need this. And the one in charge told me, but we need it at the school. It's part of the uniform. She'll be putting it on whenever she's putting on the uniform. My heart was paining so much but I didn't have another school to take her to at that moment because the term had begun and we had already applied for that school until when that year had to go and I had to change out to another school. But in our schools we had not kind of pushed to kind of everything that we lose out on such learners who would come. So you'd find that even We, like at First PCU, the pastors and the elders have a day with those people who don't come for the chapel. So we told them, if there is anything you feel you need to ask, we want to open this day and this time for you to come and ask any question that you want. And I want to tell you that Muslims come and they say they want to talk to us. and we sit, either myself or the senior pastor, we sit and we talk to these Muslims and you hear some of the things that are kind of You would even call another one of the children who goes to Sunday school to answer such questions, but because we want to kind of create a relationship with them, we sit and listen to them and preach to them. So, I was talking about the school that it doesn't offer only academic education, but it also opens to us a ground for evangelism. Besides that, we also have youth ministries, and the youth ministry is mainly to target those who are aged 25 years and below. And sometimes we also extend up to 30 years. I don't know whether 30 here would be an adult, but sometimes some churches expand to 30 years and up to around 17. So 17 or 15 to around 19. There is a way we kind of also have a program for them and then we have another program for the 20s and 30 years. So we have a ministry to their youth and it comes in different ways. One of the ways is we gather them, like every January we have a youth conference that gathers youths from different places, and we were talking about it with Elder Charlie that one of them was even hosted at TBI, TBI that is in Kapchurwa, and it is kind of bringing all the youths all around the PCU churches around Uganda. Briefly, I'll let you know some of the districts that we cover in Uganda with the PCU. And we teach them through these youth conferences, and we teach them doctrine. we teach them at their own levels, we teach them the scripture, we kind of encourage them to learn different things like shorter catechism, larger catechism, and we kind of come up with things like competition, who has answered many questions than the other, who knows the books of the Bible in order, who has many memory verses, something like that. But a kind of competition, but as well as teaching them scripture and teaching them doctrine and also encouraging them to memorize the word of God. We not only have that, but we also have the children's ministry. And the children's ministry, my wife happens to be one of the leaders in the children's ministry. And through this children's ministry, we have children workers who are trained. And we have had at least two of them go through theological training, and one of them has a bachelor's, and another one had a bachelor's in social work, so we had to take her through through the training at the level of a postgraduate diploma. So at least 12 of them have the training and they've been doing a wonderful job and kind of working together with the elders and the pastors. So we gather the Sunday school teachers sometimes from all the presbyteries the six presbyteries represented, or sometimes from each of the presbyteries, and we kind of train them, teach with them. And also, we've been missing out that as we've been doing youth conferences, sorry, youth camps, We also had started children's camps, but it has been so hard for the teachers and the parents to gather children from all around. Let me use this opportunity to tell you where our churches are. Let me start from the farthest. You see Gulu up there. Gulu, I see that they missed, the map missed a district called Nwoya, this side, and another district near Badia. So those, but they're just close, as you would see around Gulu. Those are the farthest church. We have one church in Masindi. We have several churches in Bundibuju. We have another church between Njoja and Mobende around here. We have an, the new church plant around here. We have a church in Luwero. We have two churches in Luwero and we have churches in Mukono around coming towards Lake Victoria. We have a church, we have several churches in Kampala. We have a church around We have a church here, and then we have churches in Kamuli, we have churches in Mayuke, we have churches in Mbale, Palisa, and then Kapchoroa. So those are the regions that have been covered. So we haven't done so well in this region, and we are that our next church plans, we do some work around here. We haven't done so much, farthest in the side of Kittimgumkabong and then the other side of Aruamoyo, that side. So that's where we are targeting. But I wanted to mention that churches from Bundibugyo, all the way, We used to do the children's camp here. People gathering their children all the way from Bundibugyo to come. You would see that this is, if it was on the U.S. roads, it would be like maybe two hours, probably two hours. But I want to tell you that this is an eight hours drive on our roads with the speed bumps. And then having children all the way from Noia or Morogulu all the way Mbale and where to bring them to Kampala. For the youth it has been easy even though not so many come, but at least for the children it has been kind of hard. But what we have done is I sat with the children's ministry leaders and I requested them to come up with a program that will enable the children to do what? to be gathered in one place like for a presbytery, and we meet them, we work with them, we do funny things with them, we do study the Word of God together. And before I left, I'm so grateful to tell you that we started in Mbali, and we had a wonderful time with the children. We had over 300 children. gathered in one place, having fun with them in a field, running, doing soccer race, reading the word of God. And we informed the teachers in that region, because we had met with them, and we told them the theme for this year is coming from Isaiah chapter 60, verses one to three, which is arise and shine. And I want to tell you that what we saw from what the children were doing, it was really amazing how these teachers were so creative to come up with skits, to come up with songs, to come up with different things that the children were so participative and they were really enjoying something that was on the same theme. Everyone talking about Arise and Shine, and they were even having memory verses about that. So we are grateful to God that that is going on. And we want to continue with this up to covering all the presbyteries. So we have so far, we covered, I left when the rest of the team was going to Gulu and they reported to me when I was this way that it was also another amazing time. So we have so far this year covered those two, looking forward when the Lord provides that we continue with the other four. I'm sorry, I didn't ask about the time, so I'm kind of... So, besides that, we also have the Women's Ministry. And the Women's Ministry has also, we have also taken two of the leaders for training in the Bible College. And one of the things that I am grateful to the Lord for is that because of the charismatic and charismatic kind of gospel that is going on in Uganda, it kind of affects even our churches. And one of the things is that even the ladies in our churches would come and ask, but why don't you allow women pastors? So for us, the men to stand and speak about it is like, ah, they are men, they are biased. They are saying that because they are the elders. They are the ones on the pulpit, so they can't open the pulpit. But I'm so grateful to God that the Lord has now used these ladies to answer some of these questions to their fellow ladies, and they are not looking at any biasness, but they are now looking at the scriptures with their fellow ladies. So when we come in, it is just kind of like an addition to what others are saying, like an emphasis, other than looking at us as just being biased. So they are doing a tremendous work organizing the ladies, teaching the ladies, and involving the ladies, opening their eyes to see. that the pulpit is not only the ministry. There are so many ministries the Lord has opened up, and the ladies are welcome. So they shouldn't only look at the pulpit. And this is going on very well, and I'm grateful to God for that. Lastly, I want to talk about the men, and the men have been kind of left behind a little bit. They were the ones on top, but now they are going down. and we are looking forward to seeing them going back again and also coming up, because every other ministry is vibrant. You look at the children's ministries going on, the youth ministries going on, very vibrant, the women's ministry going on, but the men's ministry, most of the time, I would say in Uganda, not here, are busy. They don't have time for meetings like this. And most of the time, when we want to have fellowship, we either have one fellowship in three months, like at First PCU. In three months, one fellowship, and that's all. If you say we have a fellowship like every month or every week, at least we tried to maintain one at our church, our local church in Kampala, that every month, at least we have one day. for men's fellowship, but still you find someone signing up and another one excusing himself and then you find that about 30% of the men who come for the fellowship. So we are still praying for the men and we are so grateful that the Lord is doing something. The prayer request that I have that I would love to share with us is that Please pray for us and pray with us that the Lord may help us to continue planting these churches. As you have seen, we still have a long way to go. And also, I can't fail to mention that some of the church planters need to be trained that we may be able to put them in the Bible colleges that we have. I mentioned the TBI, but in Kampala, PCU also has Westminster Christian Institute, and this institute is struggling with teachers. So, we are looking for people who would, kind of spare their time to come and teach maybe a module or a semester of 14 weeks. So if the Lord opens up a way that we may be able to do that. I also, a prayer request, we need to, we are so grateful to God, but we can't say that these other ministries that I said are vibrant are struggling in some way or the other. We want to continue with the ministries they are doing, like the children's ministry don't have, enough resources like literature, literature for the children's ministry. We are still struggling in that. If there is any way the Lord will provide literature for the children and other resources, please, it's more than welcome. If one of you Or maybe this church decides that probably in January it is possible to send some youths to come and join with us. We'd love to fellowship with you, with the youths from this church, or someone coming to facilitate from this church in January. I don't know the program, whether the school will be on in January. If it's so, there's an opening. We'll be grateful to hear from you that you can come and join us. And also, please pray for the pastors to continue being trained, because, well, there are those who qualify to go to the Bible colleges, but we also started a mobile school for training those who don't qualify. And this mobile kind of training goes around and I started it in 2004 and it is still continuing. This last year we celebrated 20 years of existence and we still want to see that this mobile training continues and we train more church leaders. I'm so grateful for this moment. I know I didn't have slides to share with us, but at least there is a picture I've painted in your mind to see what's happening in the church back in Uganda. So this will be open now for questions. Yes. Could you tell us what a worship service is like? in your area? Yeah. In Uganda, let me give an example from the First Presbyterian Church in Kampala. We start with an opening song. The person leading the service will come and open up with a word, and then prayer, and then Singing, for us, we have the choir, so the choir will be leading us in singing. We kind of have a mixed kind of congregation whereby we sing both hymns and contemporary but scripture songs. Yeah, so we kind of mix the two, and then after singing, we do the praying, the pastoral prayer, and confession, the creed, and then we give our tithes and offering, and then the pastor preaches and closes. So that's how the service would look like. Are they, is your services a few hours or all day or? Mainly our service is a two hour service. Yeah. Standard. Yeah. Yeah. But I would tell you that you would find some churches that would go for an hour and a half and two hours and a half. Yeah. But the standard I would say like two hours. Yeah. And don't be surprised to sing for 45 minutes. Yeah. Yes, sir. Yes. for coming here and sharing the story of your church and congregations across Uganda. You mentioned that the men are not participating as much. Is that correct? Yeah. I mean, in fellowship, they don't so much come for fellowships, but they come in church on a service like. So they're attending regular worship, but not special events? Yes. Well, there's a, I don't know the statistics, but in America, it seems like there's less, church is more focused on women abroad, not in reform, but in broader context in America, churches are more popular for women. But the question that I have is that, is Uganda going the way of America when it comes to marriage and divorce? Is divorce on the rise? And I didn't know if there was a greater spiritual issue that was causing the men's fellowship to not be participated. I wonder if there's greater issues like you see in America, like divorce rates rising in church in general, like prosperity or other non-reformed churches are more focused on being appealing to women more than men. Yeah, I would say that because as elders and pastors, we always kind of call these men for accountability to find out why. And you'll find that most of the men are talking about being breadwinners, that they are doing this and that. And another challenge that has been in Uganda for most men is, I would say like 90% of the people in, I think it would even be 95% that most of the people in Uganda are using public transport. And so when they leave work and using the public transport, that is like a busy time when children are going back home, people are leaving work, so there's a lot of traffic in town. So instead of a person coming to church, He's in traffic trying to come to church, but he has also to go back in traffic to go back home because of the nature of the city and the roads. So that has been the excuses, and sometimes you kind of pity them. Still, you want to find that they come. So it's not necessarily that there are high rates of divorces because it is something that you rarely hear in Uganda that there is a divorce. But I would say that since 1989 when I came to the Lord, in our church I have seen two divorces. Since 1989, two divorces, or three. Three. Yeah, and I've never seen any other. So it's not something that is too much. Yeah. Yes. My question was, what is the greatest, in your opinion, what is the hardest or the most, for keeping you from expanding, or what is the greatest challenge to expanding the church, expanding the teaching school such that you all are involved in? So what are your greatest challenges of expanding that? Yeah, now I'll say when I was growing up as a youth, almost everyone wanted to be a pastor. And it was very easy to take people to Bible colleges and train them and send them for church planting. But back in Uganda, pastors are not paid. You either have to be a bivocational or you need to come up with a project that will support you when you're pastoring a church. So many of the people, when they are seeing how the pastors are suffering in this area, so many of them are like now, I'm not going for that, for pastoral ministry. So some of people are backing off from the pastoral ministry that these days it is not very easy to call people to come for pastoral ministry, but many of them are like, so that has kind of, hindered the expansion the way it was during, around the 1990s and early 2000. So the churches were like, everyone was coming to become a pastor. And I want to tell you that during that time, that's when you would find missionaries being involved. They started church, and they support the pastor for maybe four years. And then they expected him to have kicked off with something, and then we continue to another place. But that's no longer happening. really you need someone who's really called for ministry to come for church ministry. And yes, I talked about mainly positive things, but I want to tell you that some of the places had been covered, and Elder Charlie knows this story, that we had another presbytery, and There was a moderator who didn't want to be a moderator for only six years. You know, a moderator of a presbytery or general assembly is a moderator for three years, two terms, which is six years in total. And this pastor, when he was a moderator of a presbytery, He didn't want to leave because he had gained some strength and opportunities to come to the U.S. and probably gather some resources to go and do some work in his presbytery. So what he did, when he saw that six years are coming, so he started, he put all his pastors in his presbytery on a salary. It was something very little, I would say, around $70 per month. But the pastors would value that so much. And he decided to kind of use that, that when six years came, he didn't go. And we're like, no, this is how it has to be. You're still the moderator of this presbytery? No. The BC also is this. And the guy was like, but it is my presbytery. Who wants me to be the moderator? And he said, no. the BCO says this and that. So he's like, you come and meet my presbytery. So one day he organizes a presbytery and we go there to meet him and he's like, anyone who wants to leave me, to leave the office of a moderator, who wants me to leave? And everyone says, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You are our moderator. And for that reason, we tried to put this man under discipline, but decided to kind of, I would say, gang up all the pastors in the presbytery. And they were like, uh-uh. PCU, away from these churches. If you don't want this man to be our moderator, you go do your other work. We'll remain with this man. And so he left with, I would say, like 80% of the churches. 80% of the pastors supported his being the moderator for life, and they decided to leave PCU. And I would tell you that many of those churches were lost. And I would be talking about the places we would have covered if that man didn't develop that kind of sinful kind of attitude and leaving, going out with such many churches. So that has also, was part of what caused that we probably we are not expanding so much, but we are grateful that even though that happened, but the Lord is still building his church. Yes, sir. Do you get any pushback or a lot of pushback from the parents at all? Yeah, we, first of all, when the parents hear about this opening, because we don't push anyone, and there are parents who come, like, among the people who bring their children as Somali refugees. And when they come, one of the things they say, no church. At first, they even, on our badge, for us in Uganda, students have uniforms, and we put a badge on their shirts. So in our badge, we have a cross. So they could get a razor and cut the cross out of the badge. At first, we saw it very kind of simple, but we saw that it is, even the Ugandan Muslims who were putting on the badges with the cross had started cutting it out. So we said, we are losing our badge and we are losing our identity. So in every end of the term, we have a parents' meeting, and we said, please, if you don't feel free for your child to put on a uniform with a cross, please find another school. Otherwise, this is our badge. Any child without this badge will not be allowed on this campus. And some of the parents did take their children, but others decided to come with a badge with a cross. and they are back in school. So sometimes we would push, and some of them have come to the church and they were like, please, we want to send an imam every Friday to come and lead these children in prayer from this place. I said, we don't have any place like that. Some of them will take their children, but some will stay. And you'll see the numbers going down, and then tomorrow you'll see the many Muslims coming. So where we have that kind of pushback and back and forth, but we still stand our ground. And those who are willing to go with what we require to be done at school, then they will come. Yeah, I was, a little bit, I was talking to Elder Charlie this morning that I was born when both my parents were still in school, and they never got married. So when my father finished school, he went for a job somewhere else, and it's from there that he married Elder Charlie. my step-mom. And then my mom also went back and finished her school and then got married to a Muslim. And so my mom had my siblings. She has about seven children from the Muslim. One day, I didn't know all of them because I didn't go so much to visit my mom where she had gotten married from because I didn't like want to associate so much with the Muslim families. But when we are having gatherings at my grandparents' place, that's when I would see my mom. So when I grew up, so I invited, I wanted to know all my siblings. So I invited them to my house. And one day, people in the village know me as a pastor. And one day, a crowd of Muslims was coming to my gate. And my neighbor calls me, pastor. What's happening? We see so many Muslims coming to your house. And I said, no, those are my siblings. I invited them to come. And so my compound was full of Muslims. children, women, what, covered their heads, white gowns, and so, and I invited them to come. But everyone was free to come, and I had to share the word of God. I said, let us open this moment with the word of God, with the word of God and prayer. So I opened and read the word of God, and I prayed, and then we started our fellowship. And everything went on well. So, in Uganda, you'll see that it depends on how you approach the Muslims that they will push you back or they will give you a floor to work with them or to interact with them. Yeah, thank you.