Hatua in Kampala

Tukwaniliza Mu Kibuga Kampala –  “welcome to the city of Kampala”. Today was the kind of day that dreams are made of. After many years of dreaming, waiting and praying, I had the privilege to see Hatua launched in a second African city, Kampala.  Hatua is a ten week experience whose goal is to help people understand God’s heart for justice and articulate their role in the big scheme of things.

9 excited Kampala mavunites gathered at Faze 2, raring to go. I realized that God had gone ahead of us. One of the participants has a dream to bring socio economic change to Africa. And she is not just talking the talk, she started last September and has mobilized 500 farmers in Lira, Northern Uganda into associations. The goal of the associations is to use their land collectively. Many of these farmers had been internally displaced by the conflict in the North. And when they returned left their land lying unutilized. Enterpreneurs for Africa, the organization she has founded, seeks to broker training for the farmers, expose them to modern methods of farming and to find markets for their produce. She has done the same for 100 widows in another part of the country.

They’ve experienced some problems, despite the fact that they started on a high note. Some of the people who had pledged to partner with her have pulled out, and the country has experienced a delay in the rains. The farmers she mobilized are raring to go and she doesn’t know where help will come. Start ups are always difficult. and it always takes time before the momentum kicks in and the fly wheel begins to gather speed.

But that is precisely what hatua is about: challenging God’s people to risk their current understanding about God, to get out of their comfort zone. It is only by risking prior, less mature understandings that we can gain a more mature understanding. I  am praying that as these 9 go through the course they will encounter God’s promises; that they will learn to live out what it means to bless the ends of the earth.

In every other discipline people are taught to be open to new truths. In these next ten weeks, I pray that each of these individuals would experience major advances in their faith as they shift from their current ways of viewing God’s word  to other more bold, daring and radical ways of taking God at His word.