Jungle Magic

“So, brother Ricky, how long have you been in the healing ministry?” Pastor Jeffery, still dressed in his impeccably clean, white church clothes, squinted in the low light as he peered intently over his cup of chai, chewing slowly on a far too large mouthful of chapati. We were sitting in his hut at the edge of the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest in Southwest Uganda. His wife, Rose, had served the bread fresh off the griddle and the tea from a very well-used thermos. It was an easy answer for me; I looked at my watch and replied, “Well, pastor Jeffery, it’s now been about 3 hours.”

I’d been asked to speak at Jeffery’s rural Anglican Church by my friend, Dr Scott Kellermann. If you haven’t heard of Scott, he’s a true modern hero. After an exploratory visit some years prior, Scott and his wife Carol moved to this remote part of the Ugandan jungle to provide medical care for the Batwa pygmies driven from the Forest as a result of gorilla conservation efforts. Their plight was grim. At one time, the population of Batwa, indigenous to the Forest, was somewhere near 35,000. After the gorilla conservation really took hold and the Forest was officially made a National Park, their population declined to around 10% of what they once were. You see, it was now illegal for people, even those who’d lived there for more than 50,000 years as the original inhabitants of the Forest, to live in this new National Park. When we got there in 2005, there might have been only about 3,500 surviving Batwa, eking out a miserable existence around the periphery of the Forest. The tragic story of the Batwa will no doubt be widely chronicled, and Dr Scott’s Bwindi Health Centre is the largest and finest in all of sub-Saharan East Africa. But today’s story is about Jeffery and his church and “brother Ricky’s” initiation into a new world of faith he never dreamed he’d enter.

I’d grown up in a family where faith and religion were far more cultural and communal than personal. Religion was something you did, activities and rules you followed along traditions embedded into family rhythms. It consisted more of external activities rather than embodying a more personal and intimate relationship with God that was linked to your identity. Even when my own faith journey took me into a very personal and intimate relationship with God, I was still very much shaped by a church culture and theological environment that didn’t really allow for the existence of “miracles” in today’s modern life. That was the “brother Ricky” standing and speaking to this group of around 200 parishioners in the Ugandan jungle.

I don’t remember the text of my message that morning. All I remember - and I’ll never forget - is that I was about two-thirds of the way into the sermon when Dr Scott walked up behind me, tapped me on the shoulder, and whispered, “Rick, I think the Lord wants you to give an invitation for healing.” Now, remember, I’m in the middle of delivering a prepared message. Not only was it a huge distraction to be interrupted like this, I had no idea how to give an invitation for healing. Even more upsetting and further unsettling was that I wasn’t sure I even believed in “healing ministry.” I was now stalled in my sermon, took a breath, and told Scott, “I have no idea how to do that . . . And I’m not sure I even believe in it!” Scott just shrugged and said, “That’s what I think the Lord wants for today,” and he walked away and sat back down. I put it to the back of my mind and tried to get back to finishing my now very fragmented sermon.

Until Jeffery approached me just like Scott had done. Now Jeffery interrupted my sermon and said the same thing. “Brother Ricky, I think the Lord wants you to give an invitation for healing.” At this point, my mind is racing; I’ve got this giant conflict going on in my head, “I don’t believe in healing, but two men I know and trust are telling me that it is what God wants to do right now!” Cognitive dissonance on steroids. So, in my mind, I basically throw up my hands and declare, “Lord, I have no idea what this means or how to do it, but if it’s what You want, I’m in. All the way!” 

When I finished the prepared part of my message, I stopped and looked out over the congregation and timidly said something like, “It seems that the Lord wants to do some healing here this morning. I’d like to invite anyone who needs healing to step out to the aisle and come forward for prayer.” I stood waiting. Nothing. No one moved, and I felt like I was looking out into a sea of stone faces. Graciously, Jeffery came to my rescue, asking me if I would like him to “say the same thing” but in their own language. Desperate to be done with this humiliation, I agreed immediately. After Jeffery spoke for a minute or so, an old woman in the back stood up and began to sing. And it happened. 

Every single person in that 200-strong congregation stood, walked to the outside aisles, and up to the front. They turned and faced the single step-up platform and began kneeling. Terrified, I looked at Jeffery and practically yelled, “Jeffery, what do we do?!?” He smiled and, in that beautiful British-accented English, said, “We pray for them.” For the next 3 hours, I, who didn’t believe in current-day healing and miracles, along with Jeffery translating for me, prayed for God’s hand on and in the lives of these dear people. 

To my utter astonishment, we saw people healed of physical maladies like pain and ongoing sicknesses. Relationships were restored, and deep and abhorrent sin was confessed and forgiven. There was even some demonic activity that was confronted with complete deliverance. I’d never experienced anything like this in my life! I’d known and walked with God for 30 years and never saw anything of the sort. When Jeffery heard my answer, “It’s been about 3 hours,” he said, “That’s good because we’re doing it again Tuesday night.” And he poured me another cup of tea and handed me another chapati.