Favor was founded in Uganda in the middle of a horrific rebel war.   At the time, the government and the people were unable to fend for themselves against Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).  Over 66,000 children were abducted, trained to kill, and turned into child soldiers where they committed atrocities against their own people.
‍A UN representative summarized it like this, “I cannot find any other part of the world that is having an emergency on the scale of Uganda, that is getting such little international attention.”
‍Hope was lost and military options to defeat the LRA had failed. Two million people were forcibly interned in camps called Internally Displaced People (IDP) under horrendous conditions with no healthcare, no sanitation, and very little food. The same spiritual darkness that bore Joseph Kony and his rebels was lurking over the camps. A whole generation and a society was marked for annihilation… until God intervened by gathering courageous prayer warriors from the land – and across the world.

To everyone’s surprise, Carole Ward, a 3rd-generation missionary, began to cry out for God to call her to a lifetime of serving in Uganda. She prayed this bold prayer, “Send me where no one wants to go and to do what no one wants to do.”
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In response, the Lord sent Carole Ward, a trained nurse and battle-hardened prayer warrior, to northern Uganda, into the heart of the war zone. He baptized her with a supernatural love for the people that drove out all fear of rebel ambushes as she drove alone across the Nile into the lands that everyone fled.
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Though needs were imminent and infinite, she began by doing nothing but 6 months of prayer and hugging and washing the feet of broken lives in the internment camps. The Holy Spirit filled her with a powerful vision to reach the forgotten people of this country by serving and training them into national leaders, to multiply and accelerate the Gospel to the rest of the land. She began simply by renting a house and put a sign on the front that read, “House of Prayer, 7a-7p.” Many indeed came with their brokenness that the Lord would later use to proclaim freedom to their neighbors, families, and country.
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God confirmed His Word with countless dramatic signs, wonders, and miracles.  A fresh unity emerged within a formerly fragmented church body and deliverance from spiritual bondage, poverty, and hopelessness was what God did in the lives of precious victims of war.

A real turning point in our story was the National Prayer Gathering in Gulu. The Lord prompted us to organize a gathering in the War Memorial Stadium to unify the tribes, leaders, churches, and regions in Uganda in repentant prayer for the ending of the war. We planned a 77 hour prayer meeting, 11 hours a day for 7 days in December 2005. Radio stations were contacted to spread the news and word spread like wildfire. The day finally approached and over 1,000 people, including political leaders, gathered inside this humble stadium to join in intense, radical, united prayer.

As a result, the war stopped and many significant stories of radical transformation followed. Pastors reported that they sensed heaven opening in a new way. Government officials called and testified of a strong sense that the spiritual climate over the area had changed. Miracles were occurring in local churches. It even led to inaugurating the month of January as the month of prayer.

Some time later, Joseph Kony’s right-hand general converted to Christianity and attended Favor’s New Life Bible College. When he learned of the prayer gathering that we held at the War Memorial Stadium and the specific time it happened, he testified that it was at the same time that Joseph Kony told him the demons who gave him power over the land had left him!

After a time, the LRA evacuated out of Uganda, bringing an effective peace. The LRA made many attempts to re-enter Uganda after the end of the war, and fill Joseph Kony’s vacant seat, but each one failed. As people returned to their homes, the Gospel accelerated across northern Uganda with salvations and discipleship. And the government admitted the healing of the land was brought about not by military might or diplomatic negotiations, but by prayer and fasting.