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In Part 1 of this blog story on Dennis, we were introduced to a young, able-bodied boy who at the age of twelve contracted cerebral malaria, fell into a coma and was pronounced dead. Three days later at his funeral, he came back to life, but not as he once had been…
Dennis returned from the grave not with the uncommon joy of one who had just come back to life, but lonely, confused and with a body gnarled by cerebral palsy. He was deaf, could barely speak, was paralysed in his right arm, and crippled. Where is the jubilation in that? What is the point of raising someone back to life like that?
I ask him how he came to know Neville. What’s the connection there? He breaks into a huge smile again, laughs and begins to shake his head as if to say, “You’re never going to believe it!”
One night while sleeping back in his village, Dennis had a vision. He saw a man wearing a white garment calling to him by a nickname: “Night! Night! Do you want to walk with your own legs? Do you want to study?” “All my people are dead,” Dennis replied, “I am the only one left alive, and I want to die, too.” “Don’t worry!” the man in the vision said. “Very soon you will walk and very soon you will study. You will study in foreign countries. Even if your parents were still alive, they would never be able to afford this. But I’m telling you that it’s true.”
Dennis accepted the words he heard in the vision. Some time later, his grandmother left him sleeping in a room while she went out to work in the field. Dennis suddenly woke, jumped up and started walking outside. He felt he had so much energy! His legs were still weak but he was walking! He tried to explain to his grandmother and others in the field what the man in the vision had said and though they probably understood little of that, they were still amazed that he was now walking around!
A friend was then able to take Dennis to a Deaf church in town. It was his first time to see people speaking and praying and singing in sign. He was fascinated and wanted to learn but the problem was he only had one good arm! How could he sign when half his torso was paralysed? The church was very supportive and worked with him so he could sign with just his left arm. He found a home there in the church and it became a big part of his life.
But what about Neville? I ask him. He laughs again and gestures for me to be patient. As he moves and speaks, I can see how debilitated he is down his right side but he keeps smiling and laughing. He’s quite the character. I can see that there is so much more to this man than his disability.
A couple of years later, Neville came to the church in Lira. Dennis was so scared of Neville because he’d never seen a white man before so kept a safe distance from him. On the last day of Neville’s visit, he watched Neville sign with a pen on a piece of paper. He wondered what it was till a friend told him that Neville had just signed for his school fees. Dennis was blown away by this extravagant generosity from a stranger.
So Dennis found himself attending the Ngora School for the Deaf in Eastern Uganda. On his first night there, he saw the same man in white in another vision. “Night! Night! I told you long ago that you would go to school and here you are! Don’t you see that my words have come true?!” Dennis conceded this. The man in the vision spoke on. “You will see even greater things than these. You will study in more places and do things your parents could never have imagined for you.”
This experience would repeat several times. When he finished at the Ngora School for the Deaf, Neville arranged for Dennis to study in Kenya. On his first day there, he saw the same man in white in another vision bringing a similar message. “Night! Night! I told you this would happen! Don’t you see? There is more to come!”
After completing school in Kenya, Neville encouraged him to continue with his studies at the Immanuel Deaf Bible school back in Kampala, saying that it would be good for his future. That was three gruelling years of his life that at times he wanted to run away from, but Neville kept encouraging him to not give up and to keep going.
On graduating from Bible school, Dennis returned to his hometown to find that his land had been taken over. He was devastated. Why would God allow such trouble to come upon him when he had been working so hard to do good? “We will have trouble in this world,” Dennis explains to me, but the good news is that God has overcome the world.” A Norwegian group, at Gunnar Dehli’s leading, built a house for him to live in and Dennis decided to open his house as a school to allow the disabled to get an education. What a great gift and what a wise use of funds!
The school has grown over the years. Norwegian supporters built dormitories for students and, until the pandemic hit, there were 300 students attending the school! (There will be more than this after the pandemic, Dennis assures me.) That’s three hundred disabled lives lifted and loved because God saw value in a dead man. Where people see physical disability and hopelessness, God sees worth and purpose. God continues to speak into Dennis’ life and provide for him, and through his preaching of the gospel at the school many people have been saved – more than he can remember.
What is the point of raising someone back to life like that? Ask the hundreds of students who study under Dennis or the many who have been saved at his school, and they will have a very sure answer for you.
I see that Dennis is holding a Bible and to conclude our interview, I wonder if he wouldn’t mind trying to read a little of it for me. He can make some sounds so I would love to hear the gospel read from his lips. He is thrilled to do this but not in the way I had anticipated. He signs the English Bible he is holding into Leblango, his local language, and then the interpreter interprets this back into English! As he reads to me, I hear the sweet words again that God so loves the whole world that he gave his only Son so that whoever believes in him – regardless of their ability or disability – would not die but have eternal life.
Dennis teaching (at right) outdoors to reduced numbers of students because of the Covid pandemic.
If you would like to know how you can support Dennis, any of the kids or teachers, or help meet any of DMI’s needs, please click on the donate button on the top right of the page, or mail to info@deafmin.org
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