Last week I wrote about my experiences with a man named Jaspher and how he came to faith in Christ. Since then Carrie-Anne, Makyla, Darby, Logan and I went back to his home to visit him, but found out that he had been arrested for something – his wife was somewhat flustered and when she explained why he was arrested she said something about him preaching to people which we didn’t really understand, but then ultimately said he was arrested for idling. She was going to visit him in prison, so we sent her with my Bible and an encouraging note to read while in prison. Today we finally got a chance to visit him at the prison and it was a mind blowing experience. When we arrived at the prison they called Jaspher out to meet with us in the visiting room and he was so happy to see us. We asked him why exactly he had been sent to prison and the reason was…..drumroll please……he had been out late at night preaching to people! In Uganda if you are out late at night just standing around they will arrest you for “idleness and disorder” and the sentence is 2 months in prison. (Jaspher was also saying he would have an appeal date in about two weeks and he could also get out if he could pay 100,000 shillings (around 40 U.S. dollars) which is a lot for people around here. I’m not sure if they money was just a fine you could pay to leave prison or if it was some sort of bribe – either way he wasn’t asking us for the money, which was again reassuring that his motives are genuine. They make the prisoners do manual labor during the day and the fact that he is in prison so long just for standing around makes me think the system is pretty corrupt.) The area where Jaspher lives is full of poor people and serious drunks – people who literally spend all day drinking either to forget the past, or because they feel hopeless about their life now – (Jaspher himself used to be addicted to alcohol) and since Jaspher came to Christ he was preaching to the drunk guys out at the bars late at night from Isaiah 5:11 (the verse basically says it’s bad to waste your time getting drunk)- telling them they should change the way they live and put their faith in Christ. His situation is just outrageous and it is so awesome and evident that God is working in his life; here is a man who had some small background with Christianity, commits his life to Christ when we meet him, and then two weeks later is literally in chains for preaching the gospel!!! We asked him how he even came to that verse in Isaiah and he answered very matter-of-factly that he prays for the Holy Spirit to guide him every time before he reads the Bible and this time he just opened up to Isaiah 5 and read the verses, so he thought it would be a good idea to share it with the drunk guys down the street. While he was preaching to the men they started making some noise and the police showed up and just arrested him for being there. We were trying to encourage Jaspher in his situation and shared with him the story from Acts 16 and Acts 26 about the way Paul (and Silas) used his time in prison and on trial to share the gospel with people and told Jaspher he should do the same because we may not know why God places us in difficult situations, but it is our job to make the most out of them. Jaspher just told us (again in such a genuine, matter-of-fact way) “Yeah I’m already sharing the gospel with people in the prison – some of the guys call me the preacher.” ?!?!?! He also said he’s encouraging many of the prisoners to come to the church service on Sunday at the prison “so they can hear you guys preach and get saved.” I think all three of us from our team were just dumbfounded as we were talking to him – we just kept shaking our heads and laughing at how much God was doing through this guy. After sharing a few more verses from 1 Peter 4 about sharing in Christ’s suffering as a Christian and praying with him once more our time was up. We told him how much he had encouraged us and he said we too had been a huge encouragement to him.
I feel like these are the stories I hear other missionaries share or read about, but I’m always skeptical about how true those stories really are – but here I can see God working in a powerful way right before my own eyes and it’s stinkin amazing!
here's a picture of me, jaspher, obama (from last week's blog), makyla, and carrie-anne
We also had a chance to be part of the Easter and Good Friday services here. We put on a skit and performed a few songs. The skit went really well (it’s called the everything skit – you can probably find it on youtube….I played Jesus haha). and we were very thankful to God that the message translated well to the audience. Seriously, the people loved it and some came up to us afterwords and said it brought them closer to God/encouraged them…I got chills….it was great.
Prayer requests:
-For Jaspher to be released from prison soon
-For Jaspher to continue to make the most of every opportunity he has while in prison, for wisdom and boldness to preach and for continued guidance from the Holy Spirit and open hearts for the people he talks with
-For more chances to disciple people here and more people to have hearts ready to receive Christ – things have been really encouraging – keep praising God!
-That I would learn more about how to live a life of big faith
love to you all back home, happy late Easter!
john
