WORLDMISSIONS
Ugandan church looks to mission efforts in Malawi and beyond
bearing new fruit By Michael Rokenbrodt
S
ince Nate and Rhoda Jore and their family first came to Uganda in 2006, the AFLC has been blessed to have missionaries to Uganda. But now an era has arrived for the AFLC to have the blessing of seeing missionaries from Uganda. In the past decade of its establishment, the Ambassador Institute of Uganda (AIU) has been overseen by a Ugandan committee whose members work closely with Pastor Jore, who directs the work. The near-original committee when I arrived in 2015 included Pastor Musasizi Wilson, Rev. Mufumbiro David, Momma Fauzia Tracy, Pastor Bagatya George, Bishop Eliab Kinene, and Momma Nissi. According to our constitution, officers who have finished two terms of service then join the Council of Elders, whose job is to advise and disciple the officers they elected to take their place. Upon obtaining our first elders in 2019—Wilson, George, and Tracy—it seemed appropriate for them to keep attending the national executive meetings alongside their successors, and business continued as normal. Upon receiving two more elders in 2022—Kinene and Nissi—it became evident that indefinite elder attendance of committee meetings was not sustainable. With each election, we would gain an ever-increasing number of executives. Yet the elders expressed a desire “not to be retired, because we are not yet tired.” To meet this desire, AFLC missionaries Nate and Rhoda Jore, Brent and Emily Raan, and I decided in our January 2022 Field Conference to recommend the Council of Elders begin conducting their own meetings and formulate a vision and purpose for themselves. At the same time, the International Orality Institute (IOI), a parachurch ministry founded by Pastor Kevin Olson and operating in oral cultures, was extending an invitation for the leaders of the Ambassador Institute in Uganda to help plant a new institute for IOI in Malawi that would disciple and train Malawians in the orality method used by both IOI and AIU. Thus, the idea came about for the Council of Elders to participate in foreign outreach. This vision has steadily gained momentum, especially following 12
THE LUTHER AN AMBASSADOR
