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JERSEY SHORE -- The Jersey Shore Area Ministerium is planning a five-day, multi-church, evangelistic crusade for the area with visiting international evangelist Pastor Richard Nyakaana from Uganda.
The crusade is called "Jersey Shore for Jesus 2017" and it is planned for Sunday through Thursday evenings, July 9 to 13, the week immediately following the Town Meeting Festival.
Musicians from area churches are invited to be a part of the programs, and volunteers from the churches will be trained as counselors who will help those who respond during the crusade.
Pastor Nyakaana provides pastoral oversight for eight churches in Uganda, five of which he founded. He has done evangelistic rallies at high schools and colleges in Uganda and the surrounding countries, and more recently, at churches in the United States, for more than 20 years.
His ministry (New Song Churches, ISCEM) provides schooling support and resources for 45 orphans in Uganda, with more than 200 on a waiting list. The ministry is also in the process of building a school, with hopes for a future Bible seminary and a radio outreach.
Pastor Nyakaana is also a gospel singer, music instructor and songwriter, with several popular albums playing on local Christian radio in Kampala, Uganda's capital. He typically sings, plays his guitar, leads familiar praise songs (in English, the national language of Uganda), and teaches Ugandan African songs with enthusiasm before his preaching. He has started a school in Uganda to teach worship-leading and music for other church leaders and musicians, which provides all his personal income and some of the funding for his ministry.
He received Christ as his Savior during the terror-filled genocidal reign of Idi Amin in Uganda. He is no stranger to tragedy, having lost all of his eight brothers and sisters, some to the AIDS epidemic in Africa, his first wife to a stroke, and his first son to an accident at age 2. However, he says, his deep faith in Jesus enabled him to persevere in life and ministry, leading hundreds of people to Christ and becoming a church-planter. Today he is remarried, and his wife Claire and three children are a great support to his ministry.
Grateful for the American missionaries who brought Christianity to Africa, Richard now feels a calling to mission work in America and does evangelistic rallies and mission conferences at churches in the United States for several months each year.
He has sung and preached here before, at the Jersey Shore Presbyterian Church, with a great response, reports Rev. Charlie Winkelman, pastor of that church and president of the ministerium.
The local church has helped support Pastor Nyakaana's missionary work.