I AM A SIGN AND A WONDER

Founder’s Word

I was born in a very small village 52 miles away from the capital City of Uganda (Kampala) in a Catholic family with 4 sisters and 5 brothers. In 1990, I moved to Kampala City looking for greener pastures and while there I met my old school friend who invited me to his Pentecostal Church where I heard the gospel. There and then I gave my life to Jesus Christ. I joined that same Church which had about 120 members and continued to grow in knowing the word of God. After two years, my pastor had already seen a gift and a zeal in me to serve God, he asked me whether I would like to attend the bible school. I accepted. I went to the Bible school for a month and my life was totally changed. When I finished studying at the Bible school, my church gave me the responsibility to be in charge of the musical instruments because I had learned to play music while at the Bible College.

In 1994 I got married to a gorgeous girl I met in Church and God gave us 4 lovely sons and 1 beautiful daughter. My wife was the Choir leader at the time we got married, so both of us proceeded to lead the music department and lead praise & worship in our Church. I continued to learn how to play different musical instruments as well as teaching others, using the principle of multiplication which I learned in the Bible College.

Our Church continued to grow in number and we realized there will be no way we will continue doing what we were doing without music skill and leadership skills. We looked for a Christian school which could help us in Uganda, but we could not find any. We tried South Africa, UK and United States, all in vain. In 2005, someone told us about Hillsong Leadership college, we accessed internet and got to the Hillsong Website, we immediately applied to go to the school. We printed out pastoral recommendation forms, our pastor signed them and we posted them to the Australia. One Month later, Hillsong sent us an email saying we had been accepted. We were so excited, thinking that was all we needed to do, little did we know that that was just the beginning of a very big process which also involved a lot of money which we didn't even have at the moment. We shared the developments with our pastor, he was happy with them but we had to find out how to get the money.

My wife and I didn't want to miss that great opportunity to go for more skills which we needed for our ministry. So, we decided to take a step of faith, we decided to sell off our small piece of land which God had given us in a miraculous way.

We sold the land and we got the money which we thought would help. A few weeks later, Hillsong College sent us a letter through the post address telling us all the information, the money we needed and at that point we realized the money wasn't enough for both of us to go. That wasn't good news to us! It took us a month to decide what to do and I remember my wife telling me, "You go. I will stay and look after our family." It was a very tough decision but later I agreed, and in 2006, I started the process. I got an Australian student visa and in 2007, I went for a one-year course in Worship & Creative Arts. Life was so difficult for me in the first 6 Months. You can imagine someone from a third world country going into a first world country for the first time. I was allowed to get a job and work for 20 hours a week according to the student visa but it took me 6 months to get a job. Yet I had to pay for my rent as well as buy my own meals.

This is why I am passionate about worshipping God. He is a gracious God and that is His nature. God provided for me and from that time my life was taken to another level in trusting God, seeking His face, having faith in Him and worshiping Him. After I finished my one year course, I was tempted to stay in Australia so that I might work, look after my family, and make money, buy the land to replace the one we sold but God said to me, "I brought you here to train you so you can go back and train my people". On the 15th of January 2008, I packed my cases and flew back to Uganda. I was very happy to reunite with my family after a full year. It was a great time. The Church was also excited to see me because they were not expecting me to come back to Uganda. In many cases, once someone leaves Uganda, they leave for good.

Pastors outside my church wanted my services of training musicians, worship leaders, song writers and singers. I and my other friends decided to start up a ministry called I AM Says The Lord Ministries. In 2011, I produced my first Album Called YOU'RE UNSHAKABLE which has 8 tracks, 3 are in Luganda and 5 are in English. I continued to look for more skills to know how I can be a blessing in my country Uganda. In 2011, I got another great opportunity to go to Bethel School of Worship in Redding, California. This was another life changing place. I was so blessed and gathered lots of new ideas to use in my ministry.

My wife and I are still worship pastors, we serve in our local church called Streams of Living water which is located in Lweza-Kajjansi. At the same time working as Directors of I AM Says The Lord Ministries.