Present for Uganda’s President

By Andrew McChesney, Adventist Mission

Seventh-day Adventist Church president Ted N.C. Wilson was thinking about religious literature when I arrived in a hotel lobby in Uganda to accompany him and other church leaders to a meeting with the African country’s president, Yoweri Museveni.

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“I have a pen for the president”, Pastor Wilson told church leaders, referring to a special pen engraved with the name and logo of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. “But do you have some books for him?”

I spoke up. “I have a nice-looking color ‘Steps to Christ’ up in my room”, I said.

Glancing at his watch, Pastor Wilson urged me to hurry upstairs for the book.

As I rushed to my room, I marveled that I had packed the book in the first place.

Two weeks earlier, I shook my head “no” when my father asked whether I planned to take any sharing books on the trip. I explained that I had taken five copies of “Steps to Christ” on my previous trip, to Russia, and had struggled to find any takers.

“You should take some books anyway”, my father insisted.

Reluctantly, I bought five copies of “Steps to Christ” at the Adventist Book Center in Keene, Texas.

But the books didn’t satisfy my father.

“Will you take a new Bible, too?” he asked.

I often buy a new Bible before a trip just in case I’m asked to give a sermon, and then I give it away. I prefer to read the Bible on my cell phone, but I don’t like to hold my cell phone while preaching.

“No need for a Bible”, I told my father. “I won’t be preaching”.

My father was not deterred. I bought a black-leather New King James Bible.

In the Ugandan hotel room, I remembered the Bible and took it and “Steps to Christ” to Pastor Wilson.

A short time later, President Museveni welcomed us to State House Uganda in Entebbe and immediately plied Pastor Wilson with questions about why Adventists keep the Sabbath on Saturday. Pastor Wilson gave a short Bible study and, later, appealed for the country to abolish Saturday exams for Adventist students. To his delight, President Museveni agreed to look into the matter.

Pastor Wilson presented the engraved pen to President Museveni and suggested that he could use it to sign important documents or, more important, to underline verses in the Bible.

Then he handed over the Bible and “Steps to Christ” to President Museveni, left, who smilingly raised them for the guests to see.

That evening, I excitedly called my father on Skype. “Thank you for listening to the promptings of the Holy Spirit”, I said.

Now in my travels, I always carry a brand-new Bible and copies of “Steps to Christ”.

Produced by the General Conference Office of Adventist Mission. Find more mission stories at adventistmission[dot]org

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Further Thought: Read Ellen G. White, “Confession”, pages 37-41, in Steps to Christ.

In Nehemiah 9:25, the Hebrews talked about how their ancestors “delighted themselves” (NKJV) in God’s great goodness. The verbal root is the same as the name Eden, as in the “garden of Eden” (Gen. 2:15). Perhaps, the best translation would be “they edenized themselves” if only edenized were a verb.

Image © Stan Myers from GoodSalt.com

The gospel is, after all, restoration, and what better symbol can there be than Eden to represent what we are ultimately to be restored to? God raised up the Hebrew people and brought them to the crossroads of the ancient world in order to create the closest reflection of Eden that could exist on a fallen earth. Even after the captivity and return, the potential was still there. “For the LORD will comfort Zion, He will comfort all her waste places; He will make her wilderness like Eden” (Isa. 51:3, NKJV).

Yes, the people enjoyed the material blessings that the Lord had promised them, blessings that, to whatever degree possible in a fallen world, were reminiscent of the abundance of Eden. And that was fine. They were supposed to enjoy them. God created the physical world precisely in a way that humans could enjoy, and ancient Israel — blessed of God — enjoyed it, too. Their sin was not in “edenizing themselves” in God’s great goodness but in forgetting the Lord (Ezek. 23:35), whose goodness they were enjoying. The blessings became an end in and of themselves instead of a means to an end, which was to reveal God to those around them.

Discussion Questions:

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