Iganga, Uganda, a farming community, is in desperate poverty not only due to generational poverty but also because of severe famine from lack of rain and from a locust plague last season. Believers’ World Church, the church that God has raised up there, through great tribulation, continues to give much glory to God in their hope and joy as they still proceed to carry the gospel throughout their region under starvation conditions. Will you be God’s hand today, and help us raise the money needed to complete setting up a farm to feed its orphans and needy? May God raise up warriors to save Iganga! We will supply donation reports on the website blog (wellofhope.webnode.page/blog) on the use of the money and the progress of the farm. Pastor Emmanuel Amos Kisa of Believers’ World Church has proven his faithfulness when a donor sent money to build a house of worship. In spite of his own financial distress, all the money was used to that end–truly a reflection of the story of Mary, who poured out the expensive perfume on Jesus’ feet.
Here is Pastor “Emma” Emmanuel Amos Kisa’s story, in his own words:
I got saved in 2004, March during a crusade. I then joined Miracle Center Church Gateway in Jinja. I stayed there three years, which were my foundational years. Then I joined Prayer Palace Church for ministry because at Miracle Center, there was no room for me to serve. So I started training [a] praise and worship team at Prayer Palace Church and interpreted the pastor; then one year later, I started teaching Sunday school. On 31 October 2010, the Lord spoke to me in a voice, “Go [to] the East and start there a church.” I said, “Lord, I am a medical doctor and that’s how I make my living. How will I earn [a living]? I make some good money here treating people.” And the Lord told me, “I am your source of life. I will be with you.”
From that time, my heart and mind changed to one thing: starting a church. I sold the clinic and moved to Iganga, and I started looking for a church. But the Holy Spirit did not show me where to start. So I moved further in the East, to Kaliro District. There I found a place I could finally start the church. But the Holy Spirit did not confirm it. While in Iganga, the Lord impressed upon me the need to start an orphanage. I already [had] the children since 2007. So I moved them in and added on other children–a total of 87 children. In September 2012, the Holy Spirit told me, “Look for land in Iganga and start the fellowship.” I looked at many places in Iganga until I gave up. Then one evening, I had gone to a hotel to have dinner; then the voice said, “You shall start a fellowship in this place right there.” I thought it was at the hotel, so I asked if they had a hall, and they did have it. On our way to check it, the Holy Spirit again said, “Not at the hotel, but in this community,” so we stopped. As I was driving back home, I saw a bush, and the Holy Spirit again told me, “It’s on this land that you shall establish a church.” In the morning first thing, I came to the place and found there a mad man, not knowing that he was mad. I told him all that the Lord had told me. He then told me, “Come, and I [will] take you to the owners of the land you want.” [1 Cor 1:27-29: “But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, 28and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may abolish the things that are, 29so that no flesh may boast before God.” Zech 4:6: “‘Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ says Yahweh of hosts.” Eph 2:8-9: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 9not of works, so that no one may boast.”] We went down to the garden where an old woman was cultivating the land. And then this mad man stood in the very place where we now have the church built, and he said, “If you are to build a church, this is the place where you will build the church, and it will be so tall that you will be able to see the town. Many people will come here. Our people were killed innocently on this land, and now they win even in their death. Indeed they were of God.” But since it was a bit away from the main road, and it had no neighborhood, I didn’t like it, and I did not take those words seriously. So, the old lady directed us to one of [her] sons to help. When I reached her son, I explained everything to him, but he refused and sent me away. As I was driving back home, the Holy Spirit told me, “In the morning, go see an elder in the community and assign him the responsibility of looking for the land.” So I did that. I found an elder and promised to give him a token if he found the land. Two days later, he called me with information of the land. I picked him [up], and he took me to the very land that the Lord had shown me. When the old woman’s son saw me, he again rejected me and told the elder, “This boy was here yesterday and I told him I won’t give him the land, so let him go back.” After for the second time he denied me the premises, I decided to return home, although in my heart, I knew that it was the land that the Lord had told me about. I rose up from the chair to leave, and when I was opening the car door, he called me back and told me that the Lord had a prophecy on that land, that there would be a church, and that many people have come to him asking for that same land to start a church, but that the Lord did not accept any of them. [The owner of the land continued, saying], “Seeing he [Emma] [was] a very young man, I couldn’t believe that he would be one that God [had] called. Yet as he was leaving, the Holy Spirit [had] told me, ‘Don’t let him leave. He is the one I have called to start a church here.’” Then later, I asked about the price of that land, and he told me they [would] only rent it for some time. I paid rent for the first two years, and the following day, we started raising a temporary structure. Actually, when I had just paid the first rent money for the land, two days later, another man came and said, in my presence, that he wanted that land to start a church, but that he was denied. So he was wondering what I did that made the land owner change his mind. [For clarification, the land that Believers’ World Church rented out was only a piece of a larger property, which had been divvied up between a rental property and another section that could be purchased. It was that other section that Pastor Emma ended up purchasing, after renting on another piece of that larger property for nine years. Thus, in all contexts, Believers’ World Church has occupied, for its whole existence, the designated land that the Lord had set aside for it–as a monument of an earlier generation of Christians that had been burned to death there.]
On 9th December 2012, we held our first fellowship. We had the greatest opposition from the Muslims, Catholics, Anglicans and Mormons. They trumped up charges against me and had me arrested many times from church, but the Lord was with me and He prevailed. I lost my car, my house and my wife. I can say, I have faced things that are hard to explain. But Christ’s name has always been exalted. I didn’t see my spiritual father [sending pastor] after the opening of the church, through the persecutions. I only had God to lean on. The news of my persecutions reached some American newspapers and Senator Allen West, who got in touch with the Ugandan government concerning what was happening. The son who rented the land died, and another heir, a Muslim, took over. He resented the Church. 1 January 2021, they came to my house and gave us an eviction notice, to find where we were to take the church. I told them, “On this very land where the church is located; the Lord showed us through the madman where we shall be. So if the Lord has permitted you to tell me those words, then His time to fulfill His promise has come.” And two weeks later, we bought the Land. On Friday, the 15th of January 2021, we had all the money needed to buy the land for the church. I tell you, we cried. I cried, and my wife was worried for my health, but the joy of the Lord was beyond what words would express. This shock took me many months to get over. For this was the greatest miracle of my life. The church had now finally found a home, an address and a habitation in the very place where they laughed at us, and the very place where many of our brethren were martyred. [Now] the church is built. Again, when we opened up the church, I called my spiritual father [that is, my sending pastor] to come and open it up. He came…and blessed me.
Dear readers, I am Rachel Adamus, friend to Pastor Emma and his orphanage Zion Children’s Haven. Does a man in a country of dire poverty, without a call from the Holy Spirit, give up a hard-earned medical career that promises decent financial stability and peace, as well as the joy of helping people quite proficiently in a country that desperately lacks medical support? The very fact of Pastor Kisa’s sudden change of course to enter evangelical and pastoral ministry is evidence of self-denial for the obedience of Christ. And this change of course was not for fame or glory, certainly not for wealth, and in a backside-of-nowhere location. Like John the Baptist, he became a voice in the wilderness preparing the way of the Lord. God had decided that He wanted Pastor Kisa to step up to a higher station of healing than just that of physical ailments. He wanted to use Pastor Kisa to heal hearts and to show the healing power of Jesus Christ miraculously. This healing has extended to the poorest, the neediest, the unspoken for, and those who cannot repay him in this world. Does this reflect anything but the Spirit of Christ? We haven’t even touched yet on the tremendous self-sacrifice that he and his family have endured because of the large number of orphans they have taken into their home and have supported both physically and educationally. Nor has this addressed the myriad of attacks that he and his family have endured from enemies of the gospel who have tortured him, imprisoned him, killed his first wife and some of his children, severely beat his second wife which killed her expectant child and wounded some of his children; stole food supplies resulting in months of severe famine and near starvation; and on and on we could go. There is no greater investment than love to those Jesus loves. “And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me'” (Matt 25:40).
Thank you for standing with us!
