Makerere Guild Leadership Training Day Report

Last Saturday we had the opportunity to have a full day with the most influential students on our campus! Here is a play-by-play of the day:


7:30am – we arrive at the campus and are the only ones there. We are glad to see that the custodian is here to allow us to come in! We can’t take this for granted
 7:45am – a few other of our Life Ministry staff arrive. We begin setting up our registration, which is opens at 8:00am
 8:00am – we are ready to receive our students!
 8:45am – no students have yet arrived. In Canada, we would begin packing up our stuff and head home, wondering if we could have done better advertising. In Uganda, we wait and assume they are coming but are late.
 8:49 – our first student arrives!
 9:23 – students are continuing to trickle in.
 10:10 – about 12 students have arrived (we are preparing for 60). We make an announcement that we will start at 10:30…. AM….
 10:35 – we start. I am today’s MC, so I welcome them, have them each introduce themselves (there are about 30 here now). We then sing the Ugandan National Anthem. I am struck by how well Ugandans sing. They know melodies and harmonies and it sounds really good!
 10:45am – Peter Asiimwe, a senior staff member in Life Ministry Uganda, is our first lecturer, speaking on “The African Dream” and “The African Leadership Challenge”. Some interesting quotes from these lectures:
 ·      Africa is the most religious continent on earth yet the most corrupt.
 ·      “Whereas the American as gone to the moon and come back, the African is yet to reach the next village due to absence of roads”
 ·      China, western Europe, New Zealand, India would all fit within the continent of Africa.
 ·      “Africa needs Godly leaders of integrity with a compelling dream of the future”
 ·      “Everything rises and falls on leadership” John Maxwell
 12:15pm – our National Team Leader in Uganda, Mr, Dickson Obwoya begins delivering a seminar on “How a Leader earns a right to Lead”.  This is leads to great discussion as students agree that there needs to be a shift in mentality from “receiving” a leadership position to “earning”.
 12:45pm – Ugandans tend to have lunch a bit later than I am used to in Canada, so I am getting a bit hungry. As my stomach growls, one of the student leaders besides me looks amused.
 1:10pm – there is 5 minutes left in Dickson’s message, and I am told that lunch will not arrive on time. Too bad there is no “30 minutes or free” deal here. Now we delay by taking Q&A.
 1:32pm- I just got the thumbs up that lunch is here!
 2:12pm – I have just gone through the line for lunch. We served rice, matoke (unripened, cooked bananas), potatoes, peas, chicken, and spinach. I went through towards the end. The chickens here are not like the ones I remember from Swiss Chalet. They look like they have been on a diet.
 2:22pm Also, it appears we have had a few people join us for lunch who were not part of the training event. 90 plates of food were served to our group of 70.
 2:36pm -The PowerPoint stopped working and I was asked to come up to fix it. Quite interesting to try to fix a A/V problem when everyone is looking! I will be more patient with and thankful for church A/V people in the future!
 2:40pm- Our current session is on “Habits of highly effective people. Our numbers ave gone down a little bit after lunch, but that is understandable as we are heading into Exam season.
 4:04pm – we are doing evaluation forms now, and people are sharing what they have learned and what they will apply. One student has just shared that “when I am an MP, I will try to think ‘win-win’ for the good of everyone”


Overall it was a great day that we pray will lead to many of the Student leaders on campus hearing the gospel and making decisions for Christ. It was an amazing opportunity that God gave us to be with so many leaders at once!