Crazy Uplifting TLT testimonies!

By Anthony:

As I continue to send out and coach Ugandan TLT trainers to lead different groups around the country, I enjoy hearing the testimonies and reports about how God is using his people. So I've collected a few stories for you to enjoy. As you read, continue to pray for these leaders and groups. Not every person who goes through TLT has testimonies as powerful as these, and yet these are not uncommon TLT stories either. I continue to be amazed at how God is working through this program.

Here is Boniface, a TLT student, and also a former student of ours at Pentecostal Theological College in 2009.

Boniface is from Pallisa, Uganda. In his community, they have 500 people sharing the same well. It had become really dirty and broken down, and the dirty water was causing people to get typhoid regularly. For his TLT action plan, Boniface worked together with the Local Chairman (LC1) to mobilize the community members. Together they repaired the well and put a fence around it so that it would stop getting contaminated by animals and pollution. This was all done by the community without any outside direction or funding.

In this same Pallisa group, Isaiah bought and planted 30 trees on the church land as a long term investment so that the church could benefit financially from those trees in the future. The church members are the ones watering and caring for the trees now.

Rose decided to teach families on personal hygiene and sanitation in order to avoid sicknesses and help people be good stewards of their bodies for the glory of God. She was able to train three families and they really appreciated it.

Peter Opolot reported that before he went through the manual, From Harm to Harmony, he did not know how to honor his wife. His wife had planned to take him to the probation office to demand he buy her clothes and take good care of her. She blamed him for only taking care of their children and neglecting her needs. After the training he realized he was not acting well towards his wife. He repented and prayed to God to give him some financial help. After God provided him some money he surprised his wife by buying her very nice clothes. He says “My wife is now the smartest woman in the village. Our love for each other has improved greatly. We enjoy time together and plan together. Our family growth is clearly being realized. I thank God for helping me to be a better husband through TLT.”  ("Smart" in Uganda means "looking nice" or "well dressed").

Here is the rest of the TLT group from Pallisa:



In this same Pallisa group, they recently went through the Preaching TLT manual with facilitators Emmanuel and Joseph. The participants were shocked and touched by how much they learned and the realization of the ways they had been misusing the Bible in their former preaching. Emmanuel reports: "In moments of prayer the participants could be heard praying and repenting aloud in tears for the way they ever abused the Scripture before and they were desperately asking for God’s grace to help them clearly understand the Scripture and preach it out in a way that glorifies God. Together with the pastorate leadership, they asked that all pastors in their pastorate should be trained on the Biblical Preaching manual."

Emmanuel continues: "The participants decried the current emphasis in our culture of seeing a miracle and power as the center of preaching. They then appreciated the 4 step method of writing the sermon as a very simple way of writing a sermon. Each participant wrote a sermon out of the given texts to practice.  

 At the close of the training, as we prayed for the action plans and closed, the unusual move of the Holy Spirit occurred - participants prayed in tears, and several people spoke in new tongues. The prayer session which was not expected to be long became unusually long. People could be heard pleading for mercy, confessing and making commitments to the Lord. There was unspeakable joy among all participants who hugged each other and felt the blessing of the Lord."

Another picture from Pallisa:

There is another TLT group in Gulu, Uganda, and they are about to finish and graduate. In that group, Rev. Canon Richard made an action plan to visit those who worship demons or idols to preach the Word of God to them and pray for them. In the end two witch doctors got saved! Additionally, other people he talked to were convicted that they were sinning in using ancestral shrines to worship. Members of those families were delivered from demon possession and in total these families completely destroyed five ancestral shrines.

Also in Gulu, Rev. Alfred organized a program of preaching and evangelism for his TLT action plan. Preaching was done in five parishes and in total 47 people trusted in Jesus as their Savior!


Yet another ongoing TLT group is in Apac. God has been using the leaders who are being trained in their churches and communities. Here are a few stories from their action plans from manual 1, Caring for God's People. Peter visited four elderly people from his church. When Peter visited one of them, a widow, he found that she was living in a desperate situation. Peter mobilized the church members to provide her with food items and they also repaired her grass thatched house that was in a very bad condition. When the people of the community saw this, people began to respect the church more. More people started to attend the church and both the number of members has increased as well as the amount they are collecting in church offerings. People are trying to follow this good example by visiting and caring for each other in love.

Otto planned to visit six elderly people in the community (not church members) and give them some material support as well as spiritual counseling. He did succeed in visiting them and his actions motivated the whole church to be more active in supporting the elderly, both elderly church members and other elderly people from the community. The other community members, neighbors, were touched by this care for the elderly and ten people have confessed Jesus Christ as their savior. This has resulted in a new church being opened in that community beginning with these ten new believers!

Felix's goal was to reconcile three different church committee members who had felt hurt by the church and were not greeting one another anymore and were not attending church services anymore. Felix was able to visit them and talk with them. They forgave one another, and these three members have resumed attending church services and are even serving in committee meetings again.


After reading such stories, what can we do but praise God for the ways he works through his people?