Richard stumbles along the road in a long, tattered shirt, wearing shoes that don’t fit. At first glance, he looks like madman – dirty, unkept, muttering.
“I cannot remember the last time I had a shower,” he says. “Every time I shower, when I try sleep afterwards, I have dreams of snakes crawling over my body.”
Tortured by nightmares, avoided by other people who think he is mad, Richard feels like demons are chasing him.
But Richard is not mad. He is broken.
Richard’s wife left him and his children want nothing to do with him. He has no hope on his own.
“I feel like my life has no meaning,” he says. “I have no job, no family, I just loiter on the streets to see if I can find food.”
Having been tormented for so long and feeling pushed to the edge, Richard decides he is better off dead. He plans to go to Lake Victoria, and throw himself in the water to drown.
But then, a man approaches him and smiles. Richard blinks, tries to think if he knows the man. The man asks his name, reaches out his hand, and touches his arm. Richard is shocked into stillness.
He hears the man’s voice telling him about God, telling him that Jesus forgives all sins, no matter how great they are.
Richard finds himself crying and tells the man he wants Jesus to save him.
That day, Richard becomes a child of God, thanks to the work of an African Enterprise evangelist who reached out to a dirty, broken man on the streets of Kampala.
“I cannot express enough how grateful I am to you for praying for me,” Richard says. “Now all I want is to be reunited with my family. No more rejection! No more torment!”
Richard is broken no more.
