The U.S. Buyamba Story Part 1

Part 1: The Beginning

Brother Jerry Lehmann, one of Buyamba’s founders on the U.S. side in New York, was stationed in Uganda as a Mennonite missionary from 1984-1987. Jerry told the story that during that time, he decided one Sunday, to walk through the streets of Gonzaga to find a church. As he passed a few people on the way, he asked, “Where do the saved ones meet?” Each person on the street he asked would smile and instruct him to keep walking for he would "run into them soon enough." As he approached Pastor Bethuel Dongo’s open-air church, Jerry heard the singing, saw the crowd, and listened as Pastor Dongo got up to share the gospel. Pastor encouraged the assembled believers as they sat under the crude sheets nailed to posts which offered a semblance of a roof over their heads to block the sun. It was then that Brother Jerry began attending Pastor Dongo’s church.

It was 1984, and shortly after Pastor Dongo had lost his fingers in the confrontation with the soldiers of Idi Amin. Jerry tells the story that the newlywed couple, Bethuel and Florence Dongo, were in their home one night in Katwe when the soldiers barged in during the night and demanded all of their belongings. This violence had been going on in the area for some time, and the Dongos and other neighbors in the village around them knew it might one day come to their home.

The soldiers took everything…their dishes, their clothes, and even the bed sheets out from under them. They were terrified. While Florence, who was pregnant, sat weeping on the floor, the soldiers asked Dongo to step outside. When they were ready to leave, they told him to go back inside and shut the door. It was then that the Holy Spirit spoke to Bethuel, telling him to stand away from the back of the door and to shut it to the side. This positioning saved his life, as Bethuel reached from the

side to close the door from the inside, the bullets rattled through the door, shooting off two of his fingers. God had spared their lives as Dongo followed the leading of the Spirit.

The shattering of that hand became one of Pastor Dongo’s signatures later on in his life, as he was asked over and over to tell the story, from the littlest ones to the older people, both in Uganda and America. As Jerry used to say, “What other person would God have allowed his hand to be ‘reshaped’ into the sign language symbol for love?” And love is what Bethuel continued to do on both sides of the globe. His trust in following the lead of the Spirit in every situation would prove to be a faithful foundation in trusting God, both for himself and others.

Continue to Part 2...