What it means to be a street preacher
http://www.monitor.co.ug/artsculture/Reviews/-/691232/1332502/-/ac025/-/index.html
By Christine Katende
Posted Wednesday, February 22 2012 at 00:00
My name is Joel Nshuti. I am a 29-year-old street preacher who resides in Nsambya-Kolombe. I preach the Gospel around Shoprite traffic lights. I was born a protestant but as life went on, God called me into the saved world with the aim of saving his people from the bondage of sin. Most people who see me preaching say I am either mad or have nothing to do.
The fact is, mad people don’t behave like me. The scriptures I preach about transform peoples’ lives. I started street preaching in 2008.
One night, I heard a voice telling me that I should go out and start preaching the word of God to the people who need salvation. This happened a few months after I had lost my job as a cleaner in Nsambya hospital.
I truly believe that it is by the power of God that I now preach because when I left Rwanda in 1995, I could neither speak Luganda nor English but now, I properly preach the gospel in Luganda. This gives me a chance to proclaim to as many people as possible. Being a primary five drop out, I found it easy to learn Luganda. I stopped school when my father passed away during the Hutu-Tutsi war in 1994. You may wonder if I can’t preach without raising my voice high.
Yes I can, but the problem is that I preach to hundreds of people, meaning that if I don’t raise my voice they won’t hear the words of salvation. I raise it so that even people seated in other taxis can hear. Most people say we are paid yet it is not true. Personally, I do this to get a reward in heaven which is eternal life.
There are families which abandon their children when they get saved; I am lucky mine was happy about the news. My mother just told me to be strong because that’s the only way I can find God and help others meet him. I only receive spiritual guidance from my pastor, Richard Kahiru of Right Temple International Ministries in Nsambya but not money as people think. He doesn’t pay me for anything.
For the hot sun in which I always stand as I preach the Gospel, it will be God to reward me because I don’t feel it. Here, the money I get is from well-wishers and my part time milk selling business. I wake up at 6am and sell milk before heading to my street preaching station. I preach on a daily basis from 8pm to 1pm, then go for the lunch hour fellowship at Pastor David Kiganda’s Church in Mengo Kisenyi after which I return to my duty station untill 9pm. Most of the time I go without lunch because I am busy spreading the healing word of God. I always target traffic jam hours because it is the best time to get people’s attention.
It is three years now since I joined the Gospel street preaching crusade, and it is from that that I have been able to rescue people’s lives from the bondage of demonic powers and curses that have tied them for long. I have brought back hope into people’s lives. I realise this when different people come back to me with testimonies of how the word I preach changed their lives. They get healed; get jobs and others have gotten married.
Although I have had all the good things, the worst comes when people start yelling at me. Some people have a negative attitude towards what we do, but I know it is hard to please all mankind. They abuse me but this doesn’t stop me from preaching to them, though it hurts. I will never forget the day I was attacked by three men in a taxi. It was last year around December when I was heading to Najjera. As I travelled, I thought it would make sense if I preached the Gospel to the people in the taxi I had boarded. Little did I know that the preaching was annoying the rest of the passengers, it was after one of them asked me to shut up that it got to me.
As if it was a joke, I continued. In the process, a man grabbed me by the neck saying they were going to throw me out for being big headed.
He immediately stopped the taxi and threw me out. I got very scared and asked God to forgive me because I could not stand such insults any more. Something reminded me of Psalms125 which says: “Those who trust in God are like Mt Sinai. They will never be shaken.” Meaning, God takes care of every situation. It is from then that I became stronger and continued to preach the word of God untill now.
As told to Christine Katende
