You can find the first part of Ngumbito’s story here. Ngumbito, a man from Independent Baptist Isanja, was wrongfully imprisoned and accused of murder. His family didn’t know where they’d taken him to jail, but it was somewhere away from the refugee camp.

We knew a couple important things about Ngumbito’s situation in prison. First, there was a strong chance he was not being fed or cared for in prison. Second, any intervention on our part (as foreigners) would make things worse, not better, for him.

We talked with several of the church leaders on Sunday. James helped them with money for transportation and bail money, and extra in case they had to pay “administrative fees” to help Ngumbito when they found him.

Zizi messaged on Monday that they’d found Ngumbito in a town over 3 hours from the refugee camp. They left early Tuesday morning to travel to the town and locate Ngumbito using the motorcycle God provided for our churches out at the refugee camp. It handled the three riders the whole distance without any trouble.

He was being held in a maximum security prison with men who’d been convicted of violent crimes. This prison is where they send the worst criminals in Uganda — and they send them there to die. They’d caught the actual murderers and they were being held at the same prison as Ngumbito. They didn’t feed him the whole time he was there.

We had strong rain the day the men traveled to the prison. Part of their trip was on a motorcycle through mountains — in the heavy rainstorm. 

The prison officials were prepared to keep Ngumbito at the prison until the trial, which won’t happen for another 6 months or more (probably much more). Byuma (Ngumbito’s pastor at Isanja), Zizi, and Kiza (a deacon at Sangano) negotiated with the prison officials for Ngumbito’s release. They paid his bail and hired one of the guards to make sure he had food and water until he was sent home.

They took this proof of life photo with the prison guard who promised to look out for Ngumbito.

(l-r: Byuma, Kiza, Ngumbito, Zizi, prison guard)

Ngumbito was release on bond the next Thursday. He was in attendance at our huge Easter Celebration Sunday and shared his testimony with everyone. He shared how God had protected him from people who would have tried to hurt him.

***

Now for the other part of the “Stranger than Fiction” story. Because, to get the full picture, you have to see what God did, behind the scenes, years earlier.

Our oldest son, James, had an abscess in one of his molars when he was 10 or 11 years old. It was a permanent tooth, so we nursed it along with antibiotics until the dentist finally decided it would be wiser to pull it.

Then we forgot all about it. His other teeth filled in the hole and we went on with life.

This week, he got his wisdom teeth pulled — all of them, that is, except the wisdom tooth on the side where the abscess had been. That wisdom tooth had grown in without a problem and replaced the molar he’d lost years ago. 

The cost we saved on that tooth removal was just slightly less than what we paid for Ngumbito’s bail and the transport to help our guys find him.

7 years ago, God provided for Ngumbito’s bail.

It kinda sends chills up and down your spine, doesn’t it?

Ngumbito still hasn’t gotten his bike back. They are holding it as evidence against the real murderers. He will have to testify against them when the trial finally takes place. He could have a long road ahead of him. If you think about it, pray for Ngumbito and his family in the months ahead.

When the Truth is Stranger than Fiction

Ngumbito wasn’t well acquainted with the men who knocked on his door. He’d seen them around, they were his neighbors, but he didn’t know much about them. They asked if they could rent his motorcycle to move something. Ngumbito agreed. He had a family to feed and every little bit of money helped. The men paid him, took his motorcycle and left. A few hours later they returned with the motorcycle, as agreed.

The next morning, police came to Ngumbito’s house. They asked if the motorcycle was his. He said it was. He had nothing to hide from the police. They arrested him and took him to prison in another district. 

His alleged crime? First degree murder.

Turns out, those men who rented his motorcycle, had used it to drive to someone’s house and murder them. Then they disappeared after returning Ngumbito’s motorcycle. Someone had seen Ngumbito’s motorcycled in front of the house where the murder took place and informed the police. The police didn’t ask many questions. They charged Ngumbito with the crime and took him away.

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Penal codes in Uganda are similar to the ones in the US Constitution. No one can be held for more than 48 hours without being charged. They must have sufficient evidence of the crime to charge them. They are entitled to a fair trial. Sadly, this isn’t always the way things work.

Ngumbito is one of the leaders at the Isanja church. He leads singing every Sunday, gives announcements, and helps with children’s church. Right now, no one at the church knows where they took him. This might be the most frightening part of the whole story. None of the police they’ve talked to will tell his family where he is.

Prisons in Uganda aren’t the same as prisons in the US. Inmates aren’t guaranteed three meals a day here. They might not even get one meal unless a family member brings it for them. They can be beaten or mistreated. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. 

Typically, a prison inmate’s wife or relative would bring him food, toiletries, and clean clothes. They’d need to visit several days a week. 

Trials can be put off for months. A person in prison for a petty crime might be incarcerated for several years simply because the judge doesn’t show up for their trial. It can take them months to work their way down the docket to that inmate’s case.

You can also be incarcerated with little to no evidence against you. Ngumbito is a case in point. 

Ngumbito is the man on the far right in this picture. If you think about it, please pray for him. Pray for those who are looking for him to find him soon. Pray that justice will be done and that he won’t be punished for someone else’s crime!

(Last fall, I managed to lose all the photos I’d taken for the previous 10 months. Yes, I cried. That event has been the single reason for the sporadic nature of my blogging the last few months. For one thing, I had pictures I’d been saving to use in future blog posts. Now I have to find those particular scenarios again and photo them. I got out of the habit of blogging and have struggled to get back into it. I’m trying to build back the habit. Hopefully, I’ll get more faithful with it over the next few weeks.)

A Church for Isanja, Update

A few months ago, I posted about Isanja’s need for a new church building. The building has only gotten worse since then. When we showed the Jesus video during VBS last August, we had to drape a sheet over the hole above the door to block out most of the light. Not long afterward, the entire front door fell out of the church. There’s been a gaping hole in the church since September last year.

Our desire had been to tear down the entire church and rebuild it with baked bricks – mud bricks that had been heated for several days until they are very hard. The baking process kills any termite eggs hiding out in the mud used for the bricks and makes them last years longer. They are, however, quite a lot more expensive than the mud bricks the people use for building their houses. 

Little by little the building has been falling down. It’s been in worse and worse condition every time we go out there. Finally, one Sunday, the people told us they were going to make the bricks and rebuild the church. After a lengthy (and sometimes heated!) discussion, we realized that our Isanja church folks truly wanted to do most of the work themselves. They didn’t feel the need for the more expensive bricks. In fact, they felt like a church made from them wouldn’t fit in their community. We were so thankful they talked to us about it.

Since then, they’ve been diligently making bricks and letting them dry. We’ve been getting a lot of rain so the drying process has been slow. They had 2,000 bricks stacked in the back of the church today (out of the rain) that they made in the last couple weeks.

They are so excited about it, too. It’s exciting for them to have a part in making their own church. We will need to help them with cement, metal windows and doors, and iron sheets for the roof. Sometime in the future, they’ll need more benches (they don’t have enough seating most of the time) and we’d like to put bookshelves and a small library there, too.

The mason who built the church at Ngarama will be going out there to check on their work in the next few days. I know he prefers the baked bricks. The mud bricks might be a hard sell for those church folks to make to Crispus. I’m sure there will be other discussions in the future. I’ll keep you posted on the progress.

Meanwhile, they have a man-sized hole in the church grounds. The guys who made it were pretty excited about it. I actually caught a couple of them smiling for the picture. (Is this the African version of a man hole? I’ve been wondering ever since I took the picture. 😉 )