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The Ugandan mother had given birth to twins—and for her people, this signaled impending sorrow. Someone else in her family would soon die. She must hide the children from sight so the village would not share her misfortune. Then, baptized Christian though she was, she must visit the witch doctor to propitiate the spirits.

But then an evangelist arrived at her hut. He picked up the twins and presented them openly to the village. The people stood frozen. Surely the spirits would punish such outrageous behavior with death. But nothing happened. The children—and the rest of the village—lived.

The evangelist knew exactly what he was up against. Born in 1864, Waswa Munubi had survived the death in infancy of his own twin brother. He wrote, "If a twin dies, the parents do not weep. They announce the death by saying the child has gone back, and everyone knows what that means."

Waswa grew up the son of peasants in the country now known as Uganda. His parents apprenticed him to a witch doctor, but when he discovered the man tricking people out of their possessions, he left him to learn about Islam, recently brought to the chief's court by Arab traders.

"Our father first began to learn to read in the days of Mukabya from the Moslems," Waswa wrote. "Kabaka Mutesa commanded all his chiefs and people to read from the Moslems and to keep their fasts."

But when Waswa turned 13, H. M. Stanley, who had discovered David Livingstone in 1872, paid a visit to Mutesa's court and persuaded the chief to begin "reading" in the Christian religion. The chief was probably more impressed with Stanley's guns than with his Bible, for Mutesa had already parted ways with the Arabs and now needed protection. But the chief's welcome opened the door for his people to embrace Christianity.

Stanley's expedition opened the way for other missionaries too, notably Alexander Mackay, who arrived in 1878. Waswa credits Mackay with planting seeds of belief in his life. "When I looked at the European," he wrote, "his eyes sparkled with kindness." Mackay organized a church, and members of the chief's court began attending his classes.

But then the chief rejected Christianity and put Mackay under house arrest. When Mutesa died in 1884, his son Mwanga unleashed a violent persecution on the infant church. No one knows how many perished, but in a single vicious rampage in 1886, Mwanga ordered the execution of 32 Christians—the famed "Uganda Martyrs" whose memory is still preserved in an Anglican and Roman Catholic feast day.

Mwanga lost his people's support, however, and together Muslims and Christians seized power from the chief. Predictably, the alliance dissolved, and as Waswa was still considered a Muslim, he was forced to join their army—now raiding the countryside. But his heart was not in it; when his companions began setting villages on fire and burning their victims, he abandoned them and took up residence among the Christians.

Waswa briefly flirted with hemp smoking, but when he began attending Christian classes, he quit the practice. Shortly after this, he converted to Christianity.

Waswa requested baptism in 1894 and took a new name—Apolo Kivebulaya. "Apolo" honored the evangelist of Acts 18:24-25; and "Kivebulaya"—meaning "the thing from England"—was given to him because he wore a suit under his long white garment.

Shortly after this, Apolo's fiancée died. He later viewed this as providential, as it freed him for missionary work.

Meanwhile, the Christians with British military aid expelled the Muslim armies, and the call went out for missionaries to enter the recently stabilized region of Toro, or western Uganda. Apolo answered the call and began planting a church there. But in a series of unfortunate incidents, Apolo was accused of storing the chief's belongings and arrested and imprisoned by the British in Kampala.

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