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Bringing Spiritual Light
to Those Who Are in
Physical Darkness
By Kerri Phillips
I was in a classroom at one of the many
government schools in Uganda. In front of
me, more than 200 children were sitting in
one room when God brought Luke 1:79 to my
mind: To give light to them that sit in
darkness and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.

As I looked at these children through
God’s eyes, He opened my heart
to their needs. My burden to share
the Gospel with our community
expanded that day to include those
who sit in physical darkness.

For several years, the Lord has
given me the opportunity to use
my teacher training as well as my athletic
training for the Lord’s work here in Uganda by
connecting “Bible and Basketball” in the area
schools. However, I had never considered that
God would use me to minister to the
blind! One day at a basketball training
course for sports teachers, I was
approached by the sports teacher
from Saint Francis School for the
Blind. He invited me to talk to
their head teacher about starting
a class with the blind students. The
challenges involved with such an
undertaking did not cross my mind; I was just
excited about serving at another school. The
next day I met the head teacher. She wanted to
observe me teaching a Bible class before she
would invite me permanently to her school to
teach Bible and basketball.

For the Bible lesson, God led me to teach
John 14:6 and to use a narrow board as an
illustration for the blind students to walk
across to get to a “sweet” (candy) at the other
end of the board. In front of many teachers,
I explained how Jesus is the ONLY way to
heaven. After this lesson, the head teacher
gave me permission to begin regularly
teaching at Saint Francis School for the
Blind! What an open door to give the light
of the true Gospel to these children sitting
in physical and spiritual darkness!
I was excited about teaching Bible, but
I did not give a second thought to the
challenges of teaching basketball to blind
children! What was I thinking? I had no
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