March Uganda Mission Report by Paul Coffman

Note: The beginning of this recording is missing, so the transcript starts partway through the report.

In 2014, Ms. Jane was the deputy speaker. She was not a Christian at that time. She explained that she was assigned to be my bodyguard. And I spoke to her and I said, well, I don’t mean to offend you, but you don’t look very tall. And she said, I’m four foot seven. I said, well, I’m six foot one. I said, that leaves a head shot. She said, you do not understand. In Uganda, the young Uganda women pray to God for a white husband. And I said, but you know I’m married. She said, but we believe in polygamy. I said, so you’re that bodyguard? She said, yes. And when I arrived in 2014, the men that were supposed to greet me weren’t there. There was a whole sea of Ugandans I didn’t know, but Miss Jane and her sister and a taxi driver were there.

And they made sure through the whole trip in 2014 that I stayed safe, didn’t get into bad areas, and so forth. But they actually trained me in what was good in Uganda. And so I turned around, and she had asked, could they host me? Her family hosts me. So I said, I’ll ask my wife. And so I came home, and I told my wife that Miss Jane and her family would like to host me when I go back.

And my wife said, she protected you and brought you home safe. I trust them, no problem. So their home was like the old hotels. Where everything opens up onto a parking lot, each room. Only theirs opens up to where the chickens are. So each room had its own privacy, no problem there. One outhouse, but everything else just very private. She would always get me to where I needed to be and everything went well, except for the jealousy among some of the Uganda preachers. Because in Uganda, the way they look at things and have for years is men, livestock, children, women, okay? So they don’t like to see a woman that moves up in being able to speak her mind and so forth. And Miss Jane does. When they complained, as I left, she quoted from Hebrews about entertaining strangers that whereby you may entertain angels unaware.

And they hushed up. In October, she was my driver. The first trip in 2014, my fuel charge for two weeks was $1,600 for the total driving around, drivers and everything. When Miss Jane was driving, for three weeks, three and a half weeks, it went to $800. Much savings that she has produced. When we were looking at motorcycles, we got pricings of $1,500. And then she said, let me, and the way they did it, they started low and then went up to $1,500 because you want brakes and lights on motorcycles. Those are very valuable. And so then she said, well, let me talk to them. I’m right across the street. So she did. And she came back and she said, they said $1,100 per motorcycle. And I said, well, that’s much better than $1,500. And so she said, just a minute, just a minute.

She went back, paused, and then she said, they’ve now said $1,050. So she has some Jewish blood in her somewhere. And she’s always checked for the best price for us, which saves us money. So when the elders and I established a way of getting money over without paying the exorbitant money gram and Western Union fees, we used a couple of debit cards. One for a preacher had and the other Miss Jane had. And then about two months ago, the preacher informed me that he had lost his. Miss Jane had hers. So the work continued. The preacher said, you know, we are uncomfortable with a woman sending us money for these projects. So I thought I would use some reverse psychology. The two preachers that are up on the mountain that depend on our support for food, water, rent, school for their kids.

I said, well, I tell you what, we only have one person with a card. So if you decide you don’t want it, then you’ll have to provide for yourself. Or you can work with Miss Jane. And the next night I got a message we received from her before, and it’s just fine. We will work with her. SLA, we were getting ready to put a roof on their church building, the trusses and roof. That’ll be going up in the next couple of weeks. And they said, we’re uncomfortable working with a woman. I said, well, it’s rainy season now, and y’all can worship without a roof. Or you can work with her, and I’ll bring the money over in October and that’s another rainy season you’ll have to go through. So they thought for a little bit and they said we’ll work with Miss Jane. So the Lord works in mysterious ways there but one of the elements that took place in 2016 was Miss Jane was sold by dowry by her father to a man that all the Ugandans had told me had beat his first wife to death. And her dad tried to get money together to pay him back, but he died and was unable to get the total amount together. And so 16, we had a man driver driving us because they were really fearful of this man. But in 2017, Paul Franks rode with me. He rode in the front. I rode in the back to make sure there was no gossip going on. Didn’t stop it. There was still gossip. 2018, Jim, 82-year- rode in the front, I rode in the back. And then I, as happenstance, my path crossed paths with this man. He came up to me and he said, she has a picture of you on my wall. And Cedric said, a lot of people have pictures of Paul. He’s well known in this area. And he was not reasonable to say the least. I asked Miss Jane after that experience, I said, has he beat you? She said, yes, several times.

But he has bought me, and my family does not have a way of paying him back. I talked to my wife about it. We both prayed about it. And what two verses, groups of verses, stuck in my mind, James says, if you know to do good and you don’t do it, to you it’s sin. The next verse is found in Luke chapter 10, where the lawyer is asking Jesus, who is your neighbor? And Jesus talks a parable of the two religious people that walked on the other side of this man that had been beat and robbed and left for dead. But the good Samaritan had stopped by, took care of his wounds, put him on his donkey and took him to the inn and told the innkeeper, if there’s any other expenses when I come back through, I will repay.

That spoke loud to me in this situation. My wife and I both agreed She is a valued asset to the work, but whether she was or wasn’t, no one deserves to be in a position of being the second wife beat to death.

No one. And so I told Miss Jane, as she went to court, the judge told the man, they will repay you, they being her family, and if you bother her or you threaten the Mzunga, we will put you in jail for life. I do not like you. Those were the words of the judge. He had heard from the community how he was violent to his workers. He had heard from the chairman in the district of his attitude, and he was tired of it. But he knew that she had been bought, And the only way to satisfy that debt was to repay. So my wife and I, in our consideration and talk, we decided from our own private funds, not from the church funds, that we would take up and deal with this matter. So she has a loan, and by April 15th, we’re going to be having that settled.

It’ll go to her mother. Her mother will settle it. And she will be free from the dangers of this man. I don’t know a better way to handle something like that. Than the way God teaches us. The good Samaritan, it cost him to take care of this man he didn’t know. It cost him everything he had at that point. And he said, if there’s anything else, I’ll repay when I come back through. And so I knew what my path had to be, but I wanted to make sure my wife was on the same path. And she said, yes. She said, Miss Jane, had you protected all these different times. How can we turn our back on her as a sister in Christ, as a friend? How could we?

And I said, thank you. That was my thought. I didn’t want to say I was going to do it anyway because it needed to be a husband-wife decision. Now, I should be calling her Sister Jane because she’s obeyed the gospel, but my habit is Miss Jane, like politeness. Miss Kaufman would be my life, someone that doesn’t know her well, and I’d be Mr. Kaufman. So I don’t call her by her first name, but I am very thankful for the work she does in helping the mission work get fair prices and to be able to get the work moving on when I’m not there. So as you see the pictures here, you’ll see a picture of Jim standing with Miss Jane, and you’ll see she’s four foot seven. She has been a government servant she’s not now but in uganda once you’ve been a government servant you’re really looked at by the government as government all the way and the police were readily there to protect her the man told the police all I did was speak to her and him and the police officer came back by to talk to me and he said I told him mzunga doesn’t lie he is a good man and he is full of respect in this area. Mzunga means white man. So they know me, and they know the position I’m in, and they know that what I said could be backed up by witnesses. So if you are on the internet, Facebook, and you hear anyone trying to gossip, the best way to stop gossip is to tell you the facts. She’s still a friend to my wife. She’s still a friend to me. She still helps in the mission work. She will not preach. She will not leave singing. She understands women keeping silent in the church. But she does help in a way that she can. That’s very much needed. Now this trip, we saw what I see all the time, but Jim wanted some pictures of it. These are the way the kids get to school. They don’t have any buses. And so they walked in lines together to their school.

Big long lines as they go through. And these kids saw me. They didn’t expect me to come, but they all of a sudden wanted me to stop and talk to them, and they wanted to shake my hand. In Uganda, a white person shaking hands is good luck. But they were happy to see me. It’s amazing that they know and recognize me right out. I haven’t figured out how they… I thought I blended real well, But they picked me out of the crowd. Now, someone asked about the security. This is the hotel entrance, and that’s the guard. And normally we are not allowed to take a picture. But I asked him if I could take his picture to give an answer to people about the security that we have there.

This is the one entrance into the property. And he’s there, or one of the guards is there all the time to provide the security there. We started, we went to the School of Preaching, and Jim taught at the School of Preaching. We have 16 students that were there. I think they went down to 15, and they were in the middle of a test, but they paused it while Jim spoke to them for a little bit, and then they went back to do the tests. There Jim is speaking, and then Busa is translating for him. His program is to, he took men that had two years or more experience from a school of preaching, and he trained them, taught them, and then tested them. And they had to make 100 on his test, and then in a month they had to turn around and have 60 memory verses done.

So these are, we have 23, we have 23 preachers that have passed that, and they are now going to take and get ten students under them and they’ll be going through the same curriculum over three years. So in three years, we’ll have roughly 230 students that will become teachers.

Then they themselves will get students and it’ll multiply. That will add to the depth of knowledge that these men have in the Word of God. This is elite school. It’s the one that the director of the school of preaching and his wife began. It has 150 students, and in each of these three schools, we have Muslim kids that are also in attendance there.

Anywhere from three to seven kids that are Muslim are in these schools, and they get homework, they have chapel, they go home and talk to the parents about the church and so forth. So we’re indoctrinating young Muslims about Christianity. These kids did a program for me and they were doing really well this is Essengara this is the first church building to the right that we helped build and they started a school the elders said we are concerned about our kids being exposed to Anglican, Catholic and Pentecostal doctrine so they wanted to start a school and from there This is three weeks into the school when we arrived. They had increased to 350 students. That’s P1, 2, 3, and 4. They didn’t have enough classrooms, so we’re building a temporary classroom building there. They’re going to end up having to buy some more land and build some more temporary classrooms because when they graduate P4 to P5, they will not have classrooms for it.

This school, the way it’s going, will end up being anywhere from 800 to 1,000 students per year will be attending this. The church in this area is well-respected. We are actually pulling students from the denominations because they know the church and the teaching of it there.

There are some kids at the Maliba Church. They stop by every day. Once they learned, I had candy. There Jim and I are. He was preparing, I think this was after the teaching. We were getting ready to head out that day. There the teachers are that he is selected. There Miss Jane is and Jim. Now, Miss Jane wanted to give Jim two shirts, but he heard him say that I looked like I was in Hawaii when he saw my shirt. So she was afraid he would turn around and reject them. So, this is how she worked it. She said, there were two apostles that went into the temple, and there was a man that was laying there. He said, yes, I know that well. She said, what did they say? And he said, they said, silver and gold have a nun, but what I do have, I will give to you.

Rise up and walk. And she said, that is correct. So, what I have to say to you is silver and gold have a nun, but what I do have, I want you to have these two shirts. So, he took the two shirts. This is Solomon. He waited. He’s one of the preacher’s kids. And he waited until everyone was through. Then he went up and grabbed him a slice of bread and some hot tea to drink. We put a water cistern up on this mountain at this school for them to not have to carry water up the mountain anymore. As long as it’s rainy season, they get the water. And that’s proved very helpful to them. There’s more of the kids. We have three radio stations going. This one’s in Kassisi, and there are two in Fort Portal, and they broadcast for an hour every day, and they broadcast the Word of God.

So there is a missionary in Fort Portal that doesn’t teach the truth, unfortunately, and the congregations are hearing what the Word actually says, passages he hadn’t bothered to teach them, And we’re getting whole congregations that are changing to worship properly. This is one of my few meals that I got to enjoy. I went to the lake, couldn’t go out on the lake, but I was doing a planning session. And I don’t know if you recognize that’s a donut, their type of donut, not ours. Bacon and eggs, only time I got that. When I got to look out over the lake as I was looking, see the elephants and the hippos and so forth as they were coming out to drink of the water and rest and enjoy, and it was just beautiful.

I couldn’t go out on the boat because the DR Congo’s on the other side. We had started putting motorcycles in place. I got a message yesterday that Thimbo, who has one of the motorcycles, He and his wife were coming back from Maliba of a funeral, and they had a wreck. And she and his and he are both being transferred to a better hospital. And so she hit her head on the pavement. The picture I saw, the face was swollen quite a bit. They’re checking. They think they’ll both survive, but he has some broken bones. And they’re checking to see if there’s any brain injuries there. Third world country. They don’t have near the medical we do. And in Uganda, even the little kids will carry the kids. Here we were going up the mountain to the widow’s area, and we had too much weight in there. So we got out of the vehicle and unloaded. These Ugandans helped us unload the rice and beans. And then Jim yelled out, I am in charge. Bring your vehicle back here.

And she backed it up and then he said now go fast up the mountain. He didn’t tell her to stop when she got up the mountain so she went up and we had to carry the rice and beans back up the mountain and when we got there I was panting because I’m not used to that type and Miss Jane laughed and she said I have taken you to the gym. Here the widows were they were gathering together for the service and we ended up having 38 widows there and the service like I said went well but then Jim asked to speak and he spoke very forceful and it scared the widows and the next Sunday we had two so what the preachers are doing now is they are going on Tuesday night and having study with the widows. And as they baptize them, then we’re going to begin a congregation up there. There’s a good part of the number there. You can barely pick me out in the crowd, can you? I’m that tall head at the back. They were thankful for the food. They’ve been in a drought. And there we are being able to get a picture with the widows there. This is Enos. He’s the director of the school.

And we were sitting there and this is where it’s a video clip but it’s telling that he, you know, that the struggles I had in climbing the mountain to get there and how Miss Jane and the little kids take it without a problem but I need to exercise and she just thought it was wonderful to take the Mzunga to the gym to get me better fit. That’s how they ride in the motorcycle. They’ll ride four per motorcycle if they can get away with it. This is the school, Christ Power School and Orphanage. This is the new classrooms we’re building. Up on top of the hill is the old buildings that are being replaced. And that’s the path. You might remember last time I was here, I showed you pictures of the kids carrying bricks up the mountain.

But it turns out instead of a half mile like I thought, that’s a half mile up in the air to that top of the mountain. And they’re carrying them a little over a mile, mile and a half through an area that took a four-wheel drive pickup to get me up there. Beautiful area. They asked me if I would like to help throw bricks up to the guy doing the gables. I told him, no, I might hit him. And they said, we don’t think you’ll get them up to him. So they had a lot of confidence in me there. They now have moved in, and like the other school, the classrooms are good, but they’ve ended up with too many students and they’re having to build temporary classrooms to give them the extra space they need. There’s a picture of the old buildings that are getting ready to be replaced.

And there’s the church building that’s on that same mountain. They have chapel there and they’re going to use the church building still for extra classrooms as they expand. And the kids always seem to see who can find me and sit on my lap there. And here we were getting ready to hand out candy. This year I brought Christmas candy canes with me. And I told them, don’t chew on them because you could break your teeth. That didn’t stop them. They started eating them. None of them broke teeth, but a candy cane would last longer if they sucked on it instead of chewing it up.

We sang a few songs, talked about Jesus, and then went over and met with the faculty there. This is the hotel that I stay at in Kisisi when I’m there. And here is a campaign in Hema. Hema is where we bought land for the church. The church is in an 8 by 10 room and a tarp in front of it. And we had 17 souls at this evangelism point that obeyed the gospel. We had 33 this trip that people obeyed the gospel on. This is still up on the mountain and the building that’s being built there. There they are moving from their old building down to the new building. They’re getting ready to enjoy the new classrooms. The government came by and gave him his certificate of completion and said, we are proud of the work the Church of Christ has done, that they have produced a very mighty school at this location.

And that’s, for a government that’s not religious, to say that was quite impressive. And there they are getting ready to go into their classrooms Here are the preachers that they wanted one more picture with me in it, just me.

This is where, when I was in Kampala, we looked at the Church of Christ there that is kind of a roaming church. They have some land they’re working on buying. The land is so expensive in the nation’s capital that they haven’t got it bought yet. They’ve raised and paid 10 million Uganda shillings of the 25 million that’s owed.

And they’re trying to find places they can stay that are cheap. But every place we checked to find was 3 to 4 million Uganda shillings per month. And so Miss Jane had the thought that this is right next to an apartment that she and her sister share rent on 500,000 Uganda shillings a month. They pay that. And the landlord said he would turn around and rent this facility, this apartment that was about twice the size in the living area for 700,000. And so they pay their 500,000. And for about 70 bucks, the church has the right to worship there in the living room area and put a tent up in this car area there. No one has cars in that area, so there’s not a problem. That’s looking at it from the inside. It’s got a lot of space.

The way Ugandans will sit, you can pack in 40, 50 people in that area without a problem. The work has progressed greatly. When they first told me about the war that broke out, they said, Are you worried? And I said, No, I’m not. God has a way of protecting. And the area that we were in, the DR Congo was on one side of the river and we were on the other side.

I posted a clip where some of the battle was going on. I was able to get a little bit of film there. And someone said, were you worried about them coming across the river? I said, no, there are hippopotamuses in that river. And hippopotamuses will rip people apart. So the DR Congo was staying on their side and we were staying on ours. I just wanted to be far enough away that bullets couldn’t reach me. When you stand out in the crowd, you become an easy target. But the Lord had me protected all the way through and still today has me protected on that.

The church is growing in western Uganda. That’s where we began our work. Central Uganda is where Kampala is. And we’re starting, we have three congregations in Kampala. So by having this group have a place to worship, and when they get their land paid for, they can then move their tent to that land, and they’ll have a stationary place permanently there that they’ll be working on building their building. They are trying to build their building on their own because they do have people that have good jobs, whereas Western Uganda, they don’t have. It’s the poorest part. You also have the Arkongo and Sudan refugees that come into western Uganda. The harvest is very plentiful. I mentioned last time we had 200 baptisms last year from October to October, and I’ve asked them to keep track of it again for me this year.

More so, not just the number of baptized, but how many are faithful. When they had 180 out of 200 that were faithful, And then I said, look at the 20 and ask yourself, what can we do better? And they said, well, eight of them died. I said, well, you can’t count them as not faithful. The Word of God says, blessed are they that die in the Lord. So they have a very high retention. As it was, only two of the 200 went back to their old faith. So the work is progressing extremely well. This October, I have the blessing of being invited into the pygmy kingdom. And I thought Miss Jane was short, but she’s tall compared to the pygmies in Uganda. And I asked the king, how many pygmies are there in your kingdom? And he said, we have 180,000 that have never heard about Jesus.

It is the door the Lord opens. So this coming October, I plan on spending a few days in that kingdom with them. We’ve got a lot of work going on. Need your prayers. Need prayers for Thimbo and his wife because we’re hoping that they will not be permanently injured from that. The motorcycle can be fixed. They were hurt seriously in that wreck. From all reports I got, it was not Thimbo’s fault. They drive crazy. The boat drivers just zoom in and out, in and out. And he evidently pulled out just as another one rebbed his and went forward. And it scattered he and his wife onto the pavement there. So they’re in need of our prayers. The work of the church, that they understand how they can work together, is a big thing.

We had 600 plus came to the singing last year. And if it goes like we were expecting, we’ll have between 800 or so that will be at this coming singing. We have preachers that are starting to go in there to teach. The school of preaching is going well. Kalalea, which is where Sulat began the congregation, the first Muslim that went back to teach, began the congregation there on that mountain with two young men. It is now 60 in size. Sulat is in the eastern Uganda school of preaching, and he has one year left, then he will be back to start preaching there. We have two preachers currently from Cassisi that are living up there to keep that congregation moving forward while he’s in training. We have either six or seven of the men from that congregation that are in that school of preaching that we began in 2015.

And in two years, in 2020, these men will graduate and they will be going back to that Muslim area too. And we expect to be establishing more congregations on that mountain. The church is indeed seeing an enormous growth. The other thing that I’ve seen in the congregations that we work with, we work with about 24 congregations now, is that congregations are beginning to plant other congregations. Now that’s good. That shows spiritual growth in the church. When they’ve grown so big and they say, okay, we have these that are coming from this community, let’s start a congregation over here. And they have enough preachers in that congregation, they can divide it out so that congregations have the preachers to fill in and be able to start new congregations to grow. We have congregations that are from about 12 is the smallest, up to 350 in size.

We have two elders in Essengara. We have more men that are almost to the level of being put in as elders in congregations there. The church is alive and well in Uganda. The five orphans that came from the Uganda work that live in Ghana, Precious Yaw and the four boys, they are doing well. Precious has completed her schooling. She is a member of the Lord’s body. Our plan was we got the visas for them. We had everything, all the ducks in a row to send them back to Liberia where their nationality is from.

But we had two issues, major issues that came up. Number one, the orphanage with the Church of Christ there. I talked to a set of elders in Oregon that oversaw that orphanage, and they said we no longer oversee it.

The director will not speak to us. He will not give us accounting and that there is a lot of children being sold into slavery from that country. So we’re not sure if he’s liquidating the kids he has by making more money that way. We just don’t know. So we couldn’t put them into that orphanage there. We thought that we might get them associated with the family, with Precious Yaw’s family. But what we found was in the Liberian War, when Precious and her parents and aunt and uncle and sister and them fled from Liberia, her parents were killed fleeing. The aunt and uncle later died, sister died, leaving these boys. And it was that her tribe was the part that received the genocide. To our knowledge, with all the research we’ve been doing, we have not found any family members of hers that are still living in Liberia. So I shared with her the fact that as a Christian, she just needs to realize God created her a family and that through that family, she has eternal life. And that this world is not our home. We’re just passing through. So instead of focusing on sinking roots into the land that you’re living on, keep focusing on keeping your roots in the land that you’re going to. I don’t know how you all would relate to it if you had hoped and hoped to be around your kinfolk one day and then all of a sudden you found you had none. But she finds great joy in that she has a family that’s universal. She has become a Christian and she teaches the boys and they are regular in church. They have to deal with some persecution being Liberians in Ghana. Ghana refers to librarians as inmates, people that are just taking space. But she’s weathering that. She’s doing well. So keep her and the boys in prayers as well. That work began when they saw me working with orphans in Uganda over Facebook. She found it somehow, some way, and she messaged me and she said, can you help us? When a preacher from Ghana went to meet them, he came back, he said, Paul, they live in Sodom and Gomorrah. They are part of 13 people that sleep in one room. No beds.

The congregation here helped buy beds for them. First beds they’d ever slept in. We’ve got a house that they rent to where they stay. They were three years outside of education. We got them in education once again. We had a tutor working with them. Now they’re caught up and Now they’re top of their class. They are excelling. But it’s because of Christians that have taken them under the wings. I want you to know it. The work that we do, your all’s presence is there. I’m humbled that God allows me to serve him in that area. It’s not easy to travel halfway across the world. But I think sometimes I get more out of it than they do. But God is good. The church is alive and well. And who knows, someday they may come to America to have to evangelize America.

The church needs to focus on what the Lord teaches us. Remember this one point. Who is your neighbor? That neighbor, Precious Shaw, Yaw, was neighbor. The four boys were neighbors. The Simway Jane, Miss Jane. People that we have never seen, but the mission work crosses paths with. A Muslim that needed a scan and then needed another scan and then came back needing a milk for his bleeding ulcer.

Didn’t know he was a Muslim. I woke up one night and I thought, I need to buy him a goat. I told him, I’m going to send you money for a goat. My wife said, you’re lucky he knew to buy a female goat because you didn’t tell him that. But I told him it would produce much milk. And he turned around about three or four weeks later, and he said, Paul, I hope you’re not offended, but that goat is producing too much milk for me, so I’ve been sharing the milk with the other Muslim kids. And he said, now the community learned their kids have been drinking Christian milk, having Christian butter, Christian soap, and when the goat stops obeying, they’ll have Christian goat on a stick. And they said, but they want to know why Christians are being so nice when Muslims have not been so nice to Christians.

Jesus had turned the other cheek. Jesus tells us to pray without ceasing. I ask you all to fervently be praying for this mission work. The harvest, as Jesus would say, is indeed plentiful. Labors are few. Unfortunately, this trip, when Jim left, some of the Ugandans said, Paul, you need to bring nicer missionaries. They weren’t used to an 82-year-old that had kind of gotten set in his way. But he has the knowledge of the word of God and he’s imparting that to them and I couldn’t ask for something better to be imparted to them than the word of God for in this word they will have life everlasting the invitation is yours it’s the same invitation that’s been spoken of since the day of Pentecost that we hear the word of God we believe that we repent of our sins that we confess Christ that we’re buried with Christ in the water grave of baptism in Acts 2.47 says the Lord will add to His church such as should be saved.

That we are faithful unto death. That one day we will receive the crown of life. If you have need to respond to the Lord’s invitation, come now as we stand as we sing.

End of transcript. Thank you for reading along!