Simeon Nsibambi: The Man Who Lit a Fire

Simeon Nsibambi was a well-off, respected man in Uganda, in East Africa. He had a good government job as a health officer, fine clothes, and a comfortable home. He was already a churchgoer. By every outward sign, he had everything a man could want.

But Simeon was not satisfied. Something in him was hungry for more of God than he had ever known — a real, living, joyful faith, not just a respectable one. He could not shake the feeling that there was far more to knowing Jesus than he had yet found.

One day Simeon met a young English doctor named Joe Church, who felt exactly the same hunger. The two men shut themselves away for a whole weekend with nothing but a Bible, reading and praying and asking God to fill them with His Spirit and make them truly new. And God met them. Something caught fire in Simeon's heart that never went out.

He could not keep the joy to himself. Simeon gave up his fine job and took to the roads of Uganda, stopping rich men and poor men, strangers and friends, anyone who would listen, to tell them that they too could know Jesus and be washed clean and made new. People thought it strange that a man would leave a good position to do such a thing — but they could not argue with the joy on his face.

Others caught the fire from Simeon, and then others caught it from them, and the flame spread from village to village and country to country. It became the great East African Revival, a wave of new life that swept across Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya and Tanzania and changed hundreds of thousands of lives — and it is still burning today. Simeon Nsibambi is remembered, quite simply, as the man who lit the fire.