BENON KAYANJA MARCH 2024 UPDATE

There are lots of Thank-Yous to God in this season. Thank you so much for your prayers, this February we started the Church Community Mobilization (CCM) process trainings well with Envisioning Church Denominational Leaders. Our approach was that we would engage principal denominational leaders in the communities of our strategic locations, share the CCM processes so that they would appreciate and recommend 3-4 representative participants from their denominations who would walk a 3-year training process in CCM. The four denominations that have signed up are: Baptist, Church of Uganda, Pentecostal Assemblies of God and Born-Again Faith. This attendance during the Church Denominational leaders training was highly achieved with 100% attendance with a resounding support for the process, we heard responses like; ” ……this is the first time the church will be working in the community without walls…….”, this is very important especially if we are using Jesus's approach to bring holistic transformation of communities.

So, as we start with the CCM process in Uganda, our initial positive outcome to this is the unity of the churches in the communities for holistic ministry especially in the strategic areas of location mainly Gulu and Kasese. Please pray with us as we begin the full blown trainings of the facilitators this month of March, the JLH CCM Facilitator has designed the period March to November 2024 to run a series of foundational bible study workshops that will get the church leaders to understand its biblical mandate for holistic ministry to its immediate community and committing to engage in integral mission in a practical way so that the churches can truly become the salt and light to the community.

Thank you so much again for your concerted prayers for CEK CAM (in Acholi dialect-to mean; Abundant food/harvest). CEK CAM is the buying and selling of the farmers agricultural produce cooperative that was set up to reduce existence of middlemen buyers and sellers in our farmers agricultural produce cycle. CEK CAM had a rocky start with its working capital which affected its operations in its early stages, but recently we received technical support from BMS to evaluate it operations, we have also received moral and financial support from CEK CAM friends and all of this intertwined with improved managerial abilities we are beginning to see a growth curve in its operations. We are so thankful to God that for the first time CEK CAM will be supplying the JLH farmers in this planting season seeds worth over 3.3 tons, these seeds were bought using CEK CAM funds in November and December last year with plans to avail then them to highest bidder, there will certainly be a margin for CEK CAM which should build into sustainability, the good news being thathitherto to this, such margins would tend to go to middlemen. We are very thankful to God that the idea is starting to pay off, please pray for our CEK CAM staff that they will be diligent and alert to the market prices of the produce and also be able to make good decisions for our produce.

For some of you who have visited our church-Sanctuary of Worship in Kampala, you will know about a young boy; William Tusiime (see photo) who joined church after Dorothy and I had led him to Christ 6 years ago. He has grown to become so active in church and we have seen a lot of potential in him as someone God would use one day. 4 years ago, we supported him to attend a piano/keyboard lesson where he progressed quickly to becoming the principal keyboardist in our small church. He continues to grow strongly in the Lord and recently he shared to us his aspirations to be used by God beyond just playing keyboard, he feels God's leading to train as a pastor and so we have been able to find him a college here in Kampala where he will start on a tuition free certificate of Theology, the only cost for this training will be his travel expenses which we will gladly provide from our small budget of the BMS ministry fund. Dorothy and I would like to journey with William and see him graduate as a trained minister as we continue to wait upon God's leading on how He would want William to be used in His Kingdom, please pray with us as we support William in this journey.

We also have Praise and Thanksgiving to God for the good performance of our Son Favour after his Primary Leaving Examinations, he scored very well and has been admitted to a Christian boarding school we have earnestly prayed for, God is indeed faithful, and we are so thankful to God for His faithfulness. He has since his admission in January started to settle in and quite often, he makes phone calls to give us updates, Bright, Dorothy and myself do definitely miss him at home and it's an adjustment for us as parents as this is his first time in a boarding school. Please pray for Favour that he will quickly settle at school and aspire to academically progress well.

Dorothy and myself are planning a door to door Evangelism outreach at the end of this month of March to a place in one of the remote villages of Kayunga(central part of Uganda), please pray that God will help us find the right people to participate in this evangelism outreach as we will be doing it in conjunction with some staff at Uganda Christian Lawyers Fraternity and also that we will have the necessary resources for holistic ministry.

JLH will be recruiting two additional staff, the JLH CCMP Coordinator who will oversee the implementation of CCMP training in Uganda and a church engagement worker for Kasese churches. Please pray for the right people to be chosen for these roles.

Blessings

Benon Kayanja