Kwagala - Love

Every year, the Lord breathes life into our trip through His word. And without really planning or meaning to, we seem to find ourselves with a "theme verse" for that year.


The very first time we traveled to Uganda in 2007, the Lord was speaking to each of us through Romans 10:14-15, "How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace, who bring glad tidings of good things."


That year we had seen Audio Adrenaline in concert, and we knew that God was calling us to be His hands and feet to the lost. Through preparing for the trip and going, at times it's easy to wonder if the work you're doing will really bear fruit, but God confirmed to us His desire for us to be His hands and feet through a young, Ugandan boy who happened to stop by during a home visit.

Here was this young boy, in the middle of Africa wearing an Audio Adrenaline Hands and Feet t-shirt.

Each year since, God has built on this foundation of being His hands and feet. In the past few years, God has used verses that deal with love. We know that in order to be the hands and feet of Christ we have to show His love. The verse that the Lord has been using in our lives since we returned home from our trip last summer is 1 John 3:18:

My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.

See, we can tell someone "God loves you" until we're blue in the face. The problem with that is so many people in this world have never even known the love of another person who they can see. So how can they know the love of a God they can't see? But if we can show people love, then suddenly God's love comes alive. His love has a face to see, a hand to hold, and feet to go. It's through our actions that God's love becomes real, something people can grasp.

In Uganda, the word for love is kwagala (which also happens to be the Ugandan name I was given). So that is what we strive for this summer, in our ministry as a whole, and in our lives - living a life that reflects God's love so that through us people can come to know the love of the Heavenly Father.

- Aly