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From Richard Kinney
The
Africa
Outreach and
Mission
was amazing as well as being the most physically
demanding trip I have been on. It’s taken me this long
to recover and to process to some degree the complete
“otherness” of Africa.
I have never been in a place so foreign. At the same
time there is a powerful basic centrality to the country
that makes it easy for me to believe that the Garden of
Eden was in Africa and that man developed from there and spread out
all over the world.
I began my
trip to Africa at 7 a.m.
in Atlanta
on Monday. I arrived in
Kampala,
Uganda on
Tuesday at 8
p.m. with stops in
New York
and Amsterdam.
After a good nights sleep in a hotel, we started a bus
ride to Gulu that ended up lasting about ten hours. The
bus had no air conditioning, no toilets, and only
stopped for rest stops two times along the way. The main
roads of the country have no center line, huge pot holes
and who has the right-of-way is determined by fast
moving games of chicken with “dodge the pothole” thrown
in just to make it interesting. The roads would
arbitrarily stop being paved, giving way to red dust
that filled our bus with hot, choking clouds and then on
to black top again. On the way, a super-double-decker
bus shoved our little bus out of the way. This caused an
accident involving our bus. A man on a bicycle who was 6
inches too close to us was knocked off his bike by our
bus and his sleeve coat caught on the mirror and he was
dragged along the road at 40 mph banging into the side
of our bus. His hand was about 1 foot from my face as I
sat in the front passenger seat of the bus yelling to
the driver to stop the bus. We got the bus stopped and
the man untangled. We had 3 medical professionals as
part of our 100 member team and lots of experienced
healers. They looked after him as I counseled the bus
driver who was understandably shaken and upset. We got
the injured man to the hospital and even though the
medical professionals knew for sure that he had a
dislocated elbow, wrist and shoulder when we put him on
the ambulance, the next morning he only had bruises and
a mild concussion: Our first healing miracle.
We finished
the trip around
10 p.m. at night where I was told I had to
take another bus to another hotel where we were greeted
by a lighting storm, pouring rain and a demonized man
who threatened us. Being in the worst possible mood, I
gave his demons 3 seconds to live and he immediately
stopped threatening us and left. The next day we started
6 days of evangelistic meetings and daily outreaches
into the bush bringing food, healing, and salvation to
people who basically were living stripped of everything
except the most basic shelter and food.
Uganda
is just one year along in a cease fire of an almost 20
year war with an internal terroristic group called “The
Lord’s Resistance Army”. Many people have lost
everything. Unspeakable atrocities, rape and kidnapping
of children to force them into child soldiers, has been
up till now, common place. The people are battered and
depressed in many ways. They were glad to see us and saw
us as a sign of hope and normalization. The children had
only recently stopped coming into town every night from
the rural areas and sleeping on the concrete sidewalks
in front of the shops to avoid being kidnapped as the
city is guarded by soldiers and the rural areas are not.
Whole rural villages had moved into the city. They were
thatch huts made out of mud. There was a whole village
directly across the street from my hotel and out my
window I could see people cooking on wood fires, little
kids running around naked, and chicken and goats.
Later in the
week, we broke into small teams and went into the area
churches. There I met a middle aged man who had been 18
years in the bush as a Brigadier General in the
terrorist group “The Lord’s Resistance Army” making him
directly responsible for thousands of incidences of
rape, torture and child-kidnapping. He had repented and
come to the Lord. What a repentance! The Lord’s grace
covers every sin. He had truly converted and brought
many of the terrorists out of the bush with him naming
the name of Jesus on radio broadcasts directed to them
and later he appeared at our evangelistic outreach and
spoke to the crowd about the Lord.
The team of
100 people was one of the best I have ever ministered
with on a mission trip. We started the morning with our
first outreach to the bush. We got on our bus and were
joined by a big truck loaded with food parcels and went
out into the bush for a pre-arranged time of preaching,
salvations, healing and food give-away for hundreds of
displaced people, usually for crowds of 300-500 people.
One of our team members, Tiffany, was lost in a sea of
children just the top of her blond head sticking out as
she painted designs on their finger and toe nails.
Another huge hit was a Canadian brother, who brought
5,000 balloons to make balloon animals for the kids. The
lines of children to see the balloon man were sometimes
80-150 kids long.
I ministered
quite a bit to the grown men who looked embarrassed and
sat on the sidelines. I talked to them about how I would
feel as a man if I was unable to support my family, find
meaningful work and had been unable to protect them from
rape and violence. Their self-respect was very low. They
responded well to another man who could understand how
they must feel and to the message of Christ’s love for
them even in their bleak poverty. At night we went to a
very large out door area with a large steel stage and
sound system that wouldn’t quit. Each night there were
6,000-10,000 people, African worship—which is even
better than Brazilian worship (which was saying
something). It went on for hours.
Then the
evangelist, Jim Drown, presented Christ. Healing and
deliverance were offered to the crowd and the team went
into the multitude to pray for the sick and the
demonized of which there were many. I got to join in the
popular Ugandan sport of mud wrestling with violent
demoniacs. When they started to manifest, the ushers
grabbed them and bodily carried them to the stage
screaming and struggling. They were then handed over to
four or five of us who got to kneel in the mud with them
and hold them down against their will until we could
deliver them. One of the young girls I helped to deliver
later gave her testimony on stage of a life time of
being prepared to be a high-priestess of witchcraft. She
was set free and accepted Jesus and praised His name.
The next night her sister was set free as well. Many
people were healed of deafness and all sorts of body
sickness, tumors, and blindness.
We basically
repeated our days with different groups of people. Many
of whom we greatly enjoyed. The outreaches in the bush
were really fun and the evangelistic meetings were
extremely powerful. I have to comment on the last night
of the evangelistic crusade. We had gotten back from the
day’s outreach, had a few hours rest and gathered on the
lawn of the central hotel—all 100 of us. The sky started
to darken and threaten rain and 200 scary looking large
black birds swirled over the lines of our group as we
waited for prayer and impartation from the team
leadership to prepare us for the night’s work. Since the
crusade is entirely outside, rain would have made the
local witch doctors who were praying against us really
happy. We started chanting “No Rain! No Rain!” as the
storm seemed to get worse. When we got to the outdoor
area around 6,000 people were already gathered and there
was a six mile circle that looked like it had been cut
by a cookie cutter in the sky. Inside the circle were
clear skies and a double rainbow. Outside the circle in
every direction were dense swirling grey and black
clouds, jagged lightning, and pouring rain. We praised
the Lord and proceeded to worship and dance and heal and
deliver. It was a great last night.
The next day
we departed for another 10 hour bus trip back to Kampala and three days at the Ugandan
Children’s Village: An orphanage for former child
soldiers, both male and female, ages 5 to 17 years old.
Many of the children had been made to kill helpless
prisoners with machetes and sent into battle with older
troops with AK47s, where they shot it out against
Ugandan government troops. Most of the children had had
some level of sexual abuse. As a counselor I could see
the sexual abuse, but none of the children seemed like
killers or someone to be afraid of.
When we
entered the large concrete church of which the
children’s ministry is a part, the children were
arranged in stair-step, smallest to tallest, all around
the interior of the church. The whole team got to greet
them. There were about 60 kids. The little girls
curtsied and the boys shyly shook hands. The place was
run by two Canadians, Luke and Suzanne and was filled
with love and warmth as much as any place I have ever
been. The kids sang and danced for us and presented a
program they had been working on for months and months.
Later they served us an authentic African lunch mostly
consisting of heavy starches and goo made out of peanuts
and a small piece of a very old chicken. I really liked
my passion-fruit juice box drink and the love and regard
with which the children served our lunch. I believe this
lunch was what these people normally eat on a really
good day.
A child was
assigned to each team member to show them around the
Ugandan Children’s Village. The boy assigned to me was
Morris, an eleven year old boy who showed me his school
work and some of the classrooms and talked me into
buying him a transistor radio in a very round about way.
“Do you like to listen to radio? I like to listen to
radio.” We had fun with the kids. We saw the common
areas, the outdoor kitchen and pictures of the land on
the outskirts of Kampala that we would visit the next day. I
loved the Ugandan Children’s Village. The love there was
so thick; you could cut it with a knife. I had really
good talks with both Luke and Suzanne, who are
responsible for the Village. Suzanne is very tall and
prophetic. Luke is hard working enough to impress the
Africans who work very hard indeed. Suzanne had a beauty
salon plus four boys of her own. Now she has gained 60
Ugandan children. I asked how it had been for her to do
this incredible amount of work in just two years time.
She started to give me the “humble-the Lord-does-the
work-and I have a great-staff” routine. I said, “Don’t
lie to me!” (Prophetic people are not altogether tactful
with each other). She said, “All right! It is the
hardest thing I have ever done in my life,” in a loud
exasperated voice. If you want to send money or go on a
short-term mission for as little as one or two weeks up
to several months which only costs $20 a day for room
and board if you want to stay with them, here is the
contact information.
Uganda
Jesus
Village
P. O. Box 16534
Kampala, Uganda
ugandajv@live.com
It is truly a wonderful place and
the land where they are building the children’s home has
to be seen to be believed. Any millionaire living in Kampala would want to live in this land. See
pictures on the web of mountain top views overlooking
all of Kampala .
The last thing we did
was to go on a safari of one day and one night. We went
to Queen Victoria Animal Preserve after yet another long
bus drive. Strangely enough all the lion king animals
and their good natured funniness and friendliness are
not in evidence at all. The animals are very aggressive
and seem to have an attitude of “Hey, boy. What are you
doing in my neighborhood?” The native people are very
afraid of the animals because, quite often, they kill
people. One of our guides told us that if you were
bitten by even a mouse on the Savannah, that all the animals are so septic,
that your arm will blow up to three and a half times its
original size. The baboons that came at us out of the
jungle seemed to want to bite our faces off. One of the
buses was held up for two hours by an angry elephant who
would charge the bus every time we tried to pass. The
native driver was terrified as a game warden had been
killed previous, his large land rover over turned and
him crushed in the wreckage. The
Savannah
was beautiful. I can’t say enough about the beauty of
the African sky at any time of day or night. We took a
boat ride on Queen Victoria
Lake to see hippos, cape
buffalos and crocodiles—all who kill people from time to
time. I had a splendid time on the boat. We also saw
African eagles.
Some of the team went
on a separate land safari that night. They weren’t
seeing many animals so the guide offered to take them
down to a muddied salt flat to see flocks of pink
flamingos. But they had to walk out of the bus. Four of
the younger members went and as they got to the salt
flat the guide said in a terror filed voice, “We are
being stalked by a female lion. Stay in a group and run
back to the bus altogether. If you fall behind, you will
be eaten.” Without further ado he turned and ran at top
speed back to the bus followed by 14 members. Lions, it
seems, will chase any herd and eat the animal that lags
behind as an easy kill. So they frighten the group and
then follow slowly to pounce. On the run, one big 21
year old lost his boots in the mud and didn’t slow down
even though there were thorns and rocks everywhere. A 22
year old woman named Naomi who was running in the middle
tripped and fell on her face. The two men behind her
leaned down and caught her under the arms and she was up
and running again without them even slowing down. If she
had been in the back, she would have been eaten. They
all made it back to the bus very scared but ok. I later
gave her a prophecy that the Lion of
Judah
was seeking to consume her. We all got back to the
places where we were staying very late. Our bus almost
got stuck in the muddy track that passes for a road. And
we kept adjusting our hopes from getting back in time
for a late dinner to getting back at all. We would have
had to spend the night in the bus if we had gotten stuck
since walking back would have been way too dangerous.
The aggression and
violence of God’s animals in the world make you wonder
if a God who made these animals would really enjoy the
mamby-pamby way many Christians present themselves.
Maybe there is a holy violence and aggressiveness that
God would release in us in these last days.
We got up early the
next morning at
5:30 a.m.
We had an eight hour bus ride back to
Kampala, a four hour wait then an
all night flight to Amsterdam, three hours in Amsterdam, a ten hour flight to New York. I believe that
the Amsterdam
stewards and stewardesses thought about throwing the
team off the plane who after forty hours of travel had
sort of lost it. No matter what the newspapers say, I
maintain that no one was hurt. We split up in New York and in eight short hours I was able
to land in
Atlanta .
Thank you for
supporting me and making this trip possible. I believe
much work was accomplished for God: healing, salvations
comfort for those who desperately needed comfort, and
food were partly given in your name to many thousands of
people. God bless you and thank you.
Richard
Kinney
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