There are countless stories of what God is doing in the lives of young people through WOL Uganda.

Here are three ...

Yonna Oyugi never planned to go to Bible school.

The 25-year-old was working full-time as a nurse’s aide and volunteering with the youth ministry at his church, Kenya Student Christian Fellowship, when he was invited to be part of WOL Uganda’s pilot programme for their Bible institute in 2014. It threw him for a loop.

“I kept resisting,” he said. “I would hang up or see the number and not pick up or say, ‘I’m quite busy right now. I will call you later’. But I would never call.”

Then one day at the dialysis hospital, he got to talking to an atheist patient; Mr Oyugi didn’t have enough knowledge of the Bible to properly defend his faith.

“I kept quiet and felt bad because I couldn’t speak one word of the Bible to defend myself,” he said. “That’s one of the things the Bible institute has helped me with. Even if you don’t know the exact verse of the Bible line by line, you have a general idea of what the Bible talks about from Genesis to Revelation.”

Rachel Ashubwe didn’t have a picture perfect upbringing.

Her mother was extremely strict so whenever her dad would go away for business, she would run away from home.

On top of that, her half brother, who came to live with her family when she was seven or eight, started touching her inappropriately.

“I used to go through so much pain,” the 29-year-old said. “My dad was usually away for business and my mom was unapproachable at that time.”

Her father died when she was 16 years old. It was after that hardship she started to see that God was exactly who He said in His word — a father to the fatherless.

“God has been able to take care of me through it all,” she said. “He loves me. I feel that love and because of that love I’m able to come to WOL Bible Institute and learn more about what it means to be a Christian. I’ve learnt it’s not just about scripture memory. It’s about living like Christ lived.”

Prever Mukasa, a staff member at WOL Uganda, grew up in a Catholic home.

Her father passed away when she was just nine years old. It was her older brother who shared the message of Christ with her three years later.

“My dad was a staunch Catholic and kicked my two big brothers out of the house when they decided to become Christians, and they lived on the streets.

“We grew up with the understanding that anyone who defied what my father believed would end up on their own. So we would have to sneak out of the house to go to Christian crusades.”

Even after her father’s death, she still thought of God as “this big guy in the sky waiting to send people to hell”. It wasn’t until her teenage and early adult years she began to see God as a loving and forgiving Father, rather than a disciplinarian.

“I keep getting up and failing all the time, but His love has not changed for me so that’s one of the things I’m most grateful for,” the 32-year-old said. “I’m encouraged to know that I can always come back to him, however many times I fail, and still call him Father.”