As the sun went down, roughly 1,200 children, parents, guardians, and others from surrounding villages trickled in and sat in the white plastic chairs lined up on the field. By the end of the night there were more people than there were chairs, so many stood. With their eyes locked to the screen (well, our version of a screen), our Ugandan friends laughed and cheered for two hours as they watched The Jesus Film.
The Jesus Film is a two-hour docudrama about the life of Christ based on the gospel of Luke and it has been translated into hundreds of languages since its release in 1979.
We’ve shown the film several years in a row on Amazima’s land in Buziika, and it’s an all-hands-on-deck kind of evening for our staff when we do it. We go all out for this event because we can’t think of a better way to celebrate Easter than to share the story of Christ with people. Showing the film gives us the opportunity to invite people into a relationship with Christ, and into a relationship with different team members who can hopefully disciple and encourage them in their faith if they are followers of Jesus already.
So every year, we sit and watch and we wait and we see. We never know who will fill the chairs, who will leave forever changed, or who will walk away unmoved. There are many things we do not know, but there are some things we do know. People heard the gospel on Wednesday, April 1. Jesus was glorified and He is moving in the village of Buziika and all around the world. He is causing what’s dead to come alive, He is giving us strength to serve Him, and we have seen too much redemption, too much hope, to not believe…
Yes, He is risen. He is risen indeed.
Yes, He is risen. And He will always be.





