Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. We always thank our God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of ours of you all, making requests with joy, for your fellowship and partnership in the spread of the gospel here in Uganda from the first day until now; and we are confident in this very thing, that he who has begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.
From our previous post, we told you about a young waitress we had started walking alongside and ministering to. We have got two exciting updates about her! Last week, she went and met her mom and she said it was a very exciting moment for both of them! We are grateful that we played a small part in encouraging her to forgive her mom for abandoning them when they were still young ad we can see that the journey for forgiveness has started already. She had also not been to church for a very very long time, but yesterday, she was able to join us in church and she even came with her friend and roommate! We went to our house together after church and had a meal and a good fellowship, we hope to make it a Sunday routine to have a meal together and have fellowship with the Father, Son and Spirit and we would appreciate your continued prayers for us in this endeavor.
We are also excited to let you know that we started a new class last month; meaning we now have two classes running every month! After much prayer and waiting, we had expected to have about 16 village pastors and church leaders attend this class. However, on the D-Day, we started off with only 14, but by the end of the day, we had over 22 Students! How the rest appeared, only the Lord knows! From time and again, we have come to realize that the Lord always sends us students on the very class day; and they usually just appear at the gate with their small belongings ready to study. We thank God for entrusting these mighty men and women of His to our care and we continually ask for your prayers for wisdom for us to train these guys in the best way we possibly can and also for them to have soft hearts that can be shaped, moulded and transformed by the Lord for His glory and purpose. We have also noticed that this particular class has more pastors in it than our other class and they just seem to want to learn more; they are asking a lot of questions and you can see the enthusiasm in their eyes and faces! Our other class meets this week from the 13th to the 15th of this month and we would appreciate your prayers once more!
Also, last week, we travelled back to Soroti for the burial of my uncle who took his own life out of annoyance! He was a good man, very generous and a pillar in the house of God, but succumbed to his anger. There were over 6,000 people at the burial and speaker after speaker spoke of how generous, hardworking, honest and faithful my uncle was and this huge crowd was testament of people had loved him. It was a very hard time to come to terms with his demise. However, we were able to have a family time and a family together with my three siblings. We had never had family time before and i am grateful to my wife Beckie for suggesting it to us. We took our first photo with all the four of us and we were able to express our disappointments with each other, wept together, forgave, reconciled and started a new life with a promise of coming together again for Christmas. Death is not a good thing; when both of our parents died when we were young, we got split up with each of us growing up with different relatives and never really had time to meet together as brothers and sisters, but we are hopeful that we have turned a new page and will try to redeem the years that the locusts had eaten.
We still haven't heard back from the USCIS regarding my citizenship interview date even though we are past the expected three months period. Please keep praying for us as wait to hear from them. We would love for this process to be completed so that we can concentrate on ministry. Besides, i am mandated to return to the States before 6 months in Uganda in order to maintain my immigrant status, so either way, we have to start making plans to return back to the States even though we wouldn't want to. Besides being unnecessary expense for us, we love what we are doing in Jinja and wouldn't want to be interrupted; but hopefully, things will be sorted out soon and quickly and we will be able to settle down and serve the Master fully.
Finally, keep praying for our sexual purity ministry that is on-going in Soroti and soon to start in Jinja as the school term starts next Monday on the 18th. Pray for our volunteers in Soroti who are tirelessly teaching, leading and guiding these students without pay, but for the love of the Lord and His creation. Keep praying for us as we seek ways of how to be able to provide them with a small stipend to help them meet some of their basic needs. Pray also for us as we start a new purity clubs partnership with a church founded primary school in Jinja, that we will find reliable and faithful volunteers who will be able to teach in these clubs.
We want to say thank you so much for your continued financial partnership that enables us to serve the Lord in Jinja, surely without your gifts, we wouldn't be writing about all these wonderful things that the Lord is doing here! We always pray for you and would love to hear from you about what the Lord is doing in your own lives and how we can pray for you. Blessings.
His hands and Feet in Jinja, Uganda,
Ruudy & Beckie Olupot.
