Our Story
How it all started from the Founder.
It’s just like God to start His ministry in the middle of Covid in 2020. While the world is shutting down, His work continues. In the spring of 2020, God had me begin to teach on Facebook which was totally new for me. Through that, He divinely connected me to a Pastor living in Kampala, Uganda, whose only request of me was to help train his people. As it turned out, this Pastor was a refugee from the Congo, a country that has been exploited and brutalized for decades, all for the sake of power, control, and money. This Pastor fled to Uganda from a small village near Moba, located in southeastern part of the Congo. The Lord used this fact to affirm this was of Him. You see, in 2015, a small team of four missionaries, including me, launched from Tanzania, crossed lake Tanganika, and landed in this exact area in Moba, to share the gospel of Jesus Christ.
During this 2015 trip, God opened my eyes to His power while in the Congo.
Six months later, in Feb 2021, I was on a plane to Uganda. During this trip I helped train with a local Pastor and Uganda team in a Refugee Camp of 125,000 men, woman, and children, mostly Congolese. We trained church leaders for three days and they were passionate and engaged. Yet, as always, the proof would be, “what happened after I left”. We had taught and encouraged them, but would they be obedient to Jesus? Would they share the gospel with friends, neighbors, and the community? Would they then make disciples?
We needed to establish genuine relationships and build trust to do “kingdom work”
as partners, this took time. and great care. Many corporate companies, government officials, and friends, people they thought trustworthy in the Congo, abused the everyday Congolese communities, devastating families, and children.
In spite of all this, praise the Lord, trust was established, and house churches and leaders started multiplying inside the camp. They even began sharing their training and how God was moving with other camps and back home in the Congo.
Amidst the tragedy, there was a new hope, an excitement, a purpose for their lives, they were not forgotten but loved, and many realized it was no accident they were in Uganda to be trained to share the gospel and make disciples.
Communication is a big challenge in the refugee camps. Imagine no internet, limited cell signal, multiple languages and only a few who speak English, as well as an eight-hour time difference. Being subsistence farmers, long term vision, planning, budgets, reporting, were new skills to develop. I traveled to Uganda many times to train leaders from God’s Word and in these practical matters. We also partnered with a Ugandan trainer to travel from Kampala to the refugee camp each month to continue training leaders and checking up on progress while I was in the United States.
Eventually, we raised senior leaders who were now equipped to carry on the mission. They focused on the leaders that were faithful and trained them.
It’s the same simple, yet effective and powerful, early church practices we see in the book of Acts.
What God started in one camp spread rapidly to other camps in Uganda. We now have many hundreds of house groups in and outside camps in Uganda as well as across the country. We also sent missionaries back into the Congo! As a result, the spread in the Congo is nothing short of breathtaking. Working through existing relationships and networks, we now have more house churches in the Congo, than Uganda, and they are spread out geographically over the eastern third of the Congo. Congo is three times the size of Texas, in the United States.
We are now starting to practically help the Congolese people to transform their future through vocational training, trauma and grief support, financial skills, education, medical assistance, health awareness programs and many other areas.
People ask me all the time, “how did you decide to go to Africa?” and “what did you do to expand like that?”. I share that it was not me who chose at all, but God who sent me to do His work. As far as expansion, it’s all the Lord, and it’s happening naturally through the people. God is in control, and I am trying to keep up most of time, which is the only way I would want it. A friend of mine who recently returned from experiencing Africa and how God was moving made the statement “my friend you have a tiger by the tail here in Africa”. It seems that way at times for sure. However, its God’s ministry, His tiger, and I absolutely love it and can’t wait to see where the adventure takes us, as we strive to reach and disciple all the people of the Congo.
You are invited on this adventure too! Everyone needs an adventure. Come and See, will you?
Blessings, Bill