MERRY CHRISTMAS & A HAPPY NEWYEAR From Pastor Johnson and family

"For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given..."
Isaiah 9:6
Hello friends! Merry Christmas!
God has been so good to us this year and we thank him for his provisions and open doors.
God has given us more friends and partners in ministry.
This year with help from Mark&Margaret and support from People for Missions, we started a House of Hope where 16 children who formerly did not have stable homes, now have a place they call home, with a house mother that does take good care of them.
Also with support from Whitney and Darlene-friends from the USA, we were able to start a children sponsorship program in our church. 100 children were registered for possible support and 33 already have sponsorship.
Most of these orphans normally don't enjoy their Christmas, because they cannot afford good food for Christmas like the rest. We planned to have them with us at home this Christmas season, and thank God with support from friends it was made possible, 40 children had Christmas with us at our home.
The children were so excited and happy because they ate a good meal and took a soda which they don't take in months.
We also had fun together,sang and praised God together, it was a warm fellowship together as a family.
I and my family thank all of you our dear friends that are a great blessing to us. May the good Lord bless you abundantly.
Please be part of many exciting things that the Lord is doing in Kabale, as you pray for us and support the work of God.
For more information, write to us at: jbakashaba@gmail.com
Merry Christmas and a prosperous new year!

GO...MAKE DISCIPLES

"Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations..."
Matthew 28:19

To be able to keep the church strong and growing and lay a good foundation for the multiplication of the church, we started to raise up leaders through training disciples.
We hold monthly leadership seminars and small conferences in every village monthly. And the Pastors come to our main church in town once a month; where we do evaluation, discipleship and plan together as we lay strategies to reach more villages for Christ and strengthen the existing churches.
We have also started a certificate level theology course to train our leaders in good leadership principles to help our Pastors be good and exemplary leaders.
In 2005, God brought our way Pastor Doug Paradise, a missionary in Vietnam. He has a burden for making disciples. God united our hearts together and we planned annual leaders' conferences to help strengthen and encourage the Pastors.
He comes to Kabale every year and holds a leaders' conference, where we gather leaders from the rural places all around Kabale. We offer them transportation, feed them and accommodate them and teach them the word of God.
The 2007 Conference was held in November, Pastor Doug came with his long time friend and co-worker from California, Pastor George with a Prophetic gift and Evangelism. Over 200 hundred Pastors attended this conference. We had a great time in the teaching of the word, as the presence of God came down and leaders were strengthen in the Lord and went back rejoicing and vowing to serve the Lord with all their strength.
From these conferences, Pastors have testified that God had encouraged them. Pastors in the villages depend on the crops they plant. In church the total offertories are less than $5 every month. Because of hard conditions, these pastors get discouraged and often feel like giving up, but through these annual conferences they have been strengthened.
One Pastor testified that after resisting the call of the Lord for a long time after last year's conference, he was encouraged and he immediately planted a church in his village with our support.
Many have grown in the Lord and are helping us to train more Pastors and planting churches.
Helping these Pastors will encourage them to serve God better. $50 monthly support would help a Pastor pay house rent feed their families and pay school fees for their children.
In case you would like to be a blessing to these Pastors, or support our Leadership training,please reach us at:
jbakashaba@gmail.com
Or Pastor Doug Paradise at: dougparadise@yahoo.com

REACHING OUT TO OTHER COMMUNITIES

"But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses unto me..." Acts 1:8

After seeing what God was doing in our community;setting the captives free, healing the sick and transforming lives, we begun to reach out to other communities with the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Most of the rural communities are bound by the spirit of witchcraft and idol worship. The main religion being catholic, most of these people worship Mary. The majority of rural people are drunkards who spend most of their time in bars.
We started to preach Christ,to these villages. There are places where they had never heard of the saving grace of Jesus. But as we started to preach the gospel, many begun to receive Jesus as Lord.
Kabale is mountainous, and public transportation does not reach most of the villages, and so we have to walk up these hill. At one time we walked over 50 km to reach to a village where we were to plant a church. With no equipment or public address system we would shout at the top of our voices to get a big crowd hear our Jesus story. In Africa since people are not busy all the time, it is so easy to gather a huge crowd especially when you use a music system and public address system.
It was not easy to penetrate some of the jungles and villages with the gospel, since most of them do not believe in Jesus and are bound by witch craft but with much prayer, people begun to be delivered and to come to Christ.
We would carry hand outs like used clothes, to the needy, pray for the sick and support the weak and the elderly with food and other essentials at home.
We started to see fruit as many people started to respond to the gospel and come to Christ one by one. We started to train leaders and plant churches in most of these communities. We stirred revival in every village as hundreds begun to forsake shrines and bars and come to church. At one point in one village several shrines were burnt down and a school of mediums and fore tellers was closed down as people repented and started to come to church. Several witch doctors surrendered their lives to Jesus.
Many forsook their old ways and came to Jesus. People begun to repent of stolen property and all wrong doing and many reconciled with their neighbors and relatives.
We would buy some peace of land for a few people who come to Christ, and build for them a house of worship. It takes around $1200 to buy a piece of land and buy tin for a temporary church shelter. We usually build with mud and wattle since it is a bit expensive to construct with bricks and mortar. Some of the churches still worship under trees and others in rented houses.
Today we have planted 30 churches in villages all around Kabale. We have trained 50 Pastors to take care of these churches to the glory of God.
Please pray for us, we need equipment and a public address system. We also need a truck to help us reach most of these areas without public transportation. Also pray for the hard to reach communities, sometimes our team members are beaten and mistreated. Pray that God will give us the grace to reach the unreached.
For more information write to us at:
jbakashaba@gmail.com

Touching The Community With the Love of Christ

"Blessed is he who is kind to the needy" Proverbs. 14:21

Our community is the most densely populated part of our Kabale. It is a community of very poor people, who have been leaving under the oppression of Satan with a lot of evil like drunkard-ness, adultery and witchcraft. Resulting in many of the household heads dying leaving behind lots of orphans and widows. Many young girls have given birth to children with no responsible fathers. All this have left the community in utter poverty and yet the community does not have any viable source of income or any economic activity.
When the Lord sent us to this community, we started to preach Christ to them and repentance from dead works.
However it became increasingly difficult to win these souls to Christ leave alone bringing them to church, considering the tough situation they go through. The average families take a single meal per day,others take two days without a meal. They live without good clothings, in our first services, it would be the Pastor only putting on shoes. Many people children especially sleep on mats with no beddings.
We asked the Lord for wisdom and a new approach to preach Christ. We started to mobilize friends to give us used clothes and shoes to give to these people. We also started to support some families with food. With support from friends today we feed 30 families every year, who are graduated after training them income generating skills.
Margaret Noblin has been a blessing to most of these families, she and her friends have helped train these widows how to make crafts and jewelry and she has helped get market. Most of these families can now support their children with at least a meal per day.
This has caused a turning point,many families have given their lives to Christ because of the love we have shown to them. Last month we baptized 40 new converts. Many are already serving the Lord and winning their relatives to Christ.
If you want to be a blessing to our community please contact us:
jbakashaba@gmail.com

NEHEMIAH INTERNATIONAL MINISTRIES SUPPORT

In 2004 NIM Bible study teacher in her visit to Uganda came to our church and since then, our church and NIM started a good relationship that resulted in NiM supporting 40 students in our church mainly paying their school fees in high school. This gave our children a good foundation for a bright future.
Last year, NiM sent our children shoes and clothes, which were distributed to our youth and Sunday school children. To some of the children because that was the first time to put on shoes, they struggled to fit their feet in the shoes.
The church and the community are so grateful to all NiM friends especially in USA and China for their gifts, you have made a difference in our community.
NiM has also touched the needy families in our community, the one time gift to feed the hungry was received with great joy as many families in our community,especially those who come to church were blessed with potions of food and washing soap for three days.some of the food rations were given to the very poor patients in Kabale Hospital.
The People with disabilities were also blessed by the generous support from NIM. Moses from our community got disabled with polio when he was 10 years, and since then he could only move by crawling. The wooden pieces he had broken. Thank God with support from NIM, he can now walk. He said "I thank God and those he used to give me crutches i can now walk comfortably and be able to go to church".
Recently we distributed the crutches,canes and sticks to a certain organization in our community that takes care of People with Disabilities; most of their patients are people who were involved in accidents, children born with polio and those who have been amputated in hospitals. The in charge was so happy and appreciated our church for being a blessing in the community.
Some of the Medical items sent to us, were donated to the Medical center of our partners in Gaba-Kampala. And the remaining crutches and medical items are yet to be donated to Kabale government hospital.
We are so grateful to NIM and the Montreal Bible Church in Canada for their generous support and their contribution to touch our community with the love of Christ. May the good Lord bless you abundantly.
Kathleen of NIM Bible study have sent us Mp3 cds several times with great teachings from the NIM teacher and they have been a blessing to our church members especially those with access to cd players. May the good Lord bless you all.
If you want to know about NiM and how you can make a difference in our community through NiM please contact Kathleen Farnham at:
farnhamk@mac.com
Or visit NIM website at: www.nimbiblestudy.org

CRYSTAL CHON,AND THE CHRISTMAS GIFT

Chon, a wonderful sister from Califonia, came visiting our church with a team of preachers in 2005. She was so much touched by the numbers of children in our community especially in their desperate state. She was especially moved seeing naked children all over the community, most of them going hungry and many with no opportunity to go to school.
Our community is a slum, that was so much affected by AIDs and other diseases due to prostitution and too much poverty, resulting in too many orphaned children. These depend on the mercies of God to live, many especially boys have had to run away from home and they depend on left overs thrown away in to garbage bins.
When Crystal Chon went back she told the story of her trip to Africa and the suffering https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJwYAuALJMxacpS9M1hoDT9MR4ajE9gLZ5YqwtiBV5A7fXYa-v2CPM0Th2hMJWuZR5oQC43EOzekXfFEvxbwVSxfN91S_8GkdimDBXIwpKJHvOESUFR9p4Z5A8y0DVxYB09heo1pfzxsQ/s1600-h/Sunday+school+kids+in+new+clothes1.jpgchildren in Africa to her friends. She, together with her friends sent to our children a Christmas gift that same year.
With the Christmas gift they sent, we were able to feed 100 children with a good meal and a soda on Christmas day. This was memorable to the children in our community, they have never forgotten this day, since it was their first time to have such a kind of Christmas and they have not had another one like it, since. We also bought clothes for all these children.
Crystal, helped our church buy a desktop computer, that has helped most of our youth to learn computer, to the glory of God. It also helps us to keep our documents.
We are so grateful to Chon and her friends for their generous support.
To know much more on how you can join Chon to bless our children and transform our community please contact her on: cchon@hotmail.com
Or write to us at: jbakashaba@gmail.com

May God bless you.