“For He shall give His angels charge over you, to keep you in all your ways.” — Psalm 91:11
Written by: Pastor Kabagema Joseph Bright (Influencer Bright)
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to every soul who has ever felt the weight of a divine calling upon their life — those who ran, those who hid, those who doubted — and yet found that God’s hand never left them.
To Apostle Reuben Habaasa, whose life is a living testimony that God marks His servants from the womb and pursues them with the patience of eternity. Your scars became scripture. Your surrender became a sermon.
And to every reader who picks up these pages: may you recognize the fingerprints of God on every wound you have carried.
— Pastor Kabagema Joseph Bright (Influencer Bright)
A WORD BEFORE WE BEGIN
There are stories that entertain. There are stories that inform. And then there are stories that reach into the chest cavity of a man, take hold of his breath, and refuse to let go until something changes inside him. This is one of those stories.
What you hold in your hands is not a theological textbook. It is not a polished biography edited for comfort. It is a raw, God-breathed account of one man’s journey — from a river baptism in Mbarara to a divine visitation in a prayer mountain in Seguku — spanning fifteen years of pursuit, pain, and ultimately, surrender.
Apostle Reuben Habaasa did not seek fame. He sought escape. And yet, heaven found him. Again and again. In dreams. In operating rooms. In prison cells. In foreign lands. God does not lose track of those He has marked.
I have written this book to ensure that the lessons embedded in Apostle Reuben’s journey are not lost. Every scar he carries is a chapter. Every operation he survived was a sovereign act. Every dream he received was a love letter from the Almighty.
Read slowly. Reflect deeply. And if by the time you finish this book you have not paused at least once to examine your own life and ask, “Is God calling me?” — read it again.
Pastor Kabagema Joseph Bright (Influencer Bright)
CHAPTER ONE: THE BOY BY THE RIVER
Mbarara, Uganda — 1990
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you were born I sanctified you.” — Jeremiah 1:5
A School Unlike Any Other Day
In 1990, Mbarara Junior School was not expecting the unusual. It was a school like any other, with chalk-dusted blackboards, crowded classrooms, and children whose greatest concern was the afternoon meal. But that year, something broke the ordinary.
More than ten evangelists arrived from England. They were white men with foreign accents and burning hearts, and they carried with them something that cannot be imported or manufactured — the presence of God. Students, teachers, and members of staff gathered to listen. The air was different. Even a twelve-year-old boy named Reuben could feel it.
Young Reuben was not yet a man of God. He was a boy — curious, open-hearted, perhaps unaware that this would be the day heaven placed a mark upon his name.
The Name That Made the Evangelists Laugh
One of the evangelists asked the boy his name. “My name is Reuben,” he answered simply.
The men smiled and laughed — not in mockery, but in holy recognition. “You are the firstborn of Israel!” they said. The boy did not understand. He was twelve. He did not yet know that Reuben was the eldest son of the patriarch Jacob, the first child of the nation of Israel, a name that carried prophetic weight across millennia.
They gave him a small New Testament Bible. They prophesied over him — that he would be a servant of God, that his life would carry meaning beyond what his young mind could comprehend. Words were spoken over that boy that day which would take fifteen years to fully unfold.
📖 Lesson One: God Calls by Name
When God calls you, He knows your name. He knows its meaning. He knows its weight. Reuben did not understand what his name meant that afternoon in Mbarara, but heaven had always known. Your name, your history, your family line — none of it is accidental. God speaks the language of your identity long before you learn to speak it yourself.
The Waters of River Rwizi
The evangelists called for those who wished to be baptized. Among the gathering stood young Reuben. Something stirred within him — an impulse that he could not have explained with the vocabulary of a child, but which we now recognize as the drawing of the Holy Spirit.
He stepped forward. Ten children walked to the banks of the River Rwizi that day. The waters were deep. The English evangelist named Peter lowered Reuben beneath the surface and spoke the ancient words:
“I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”
When Reuben came up from those waters, he did not yet know that his life had been sealed. That the act of water baptism had been witnessed not only by men on a riverbank, but by a heaven that was watching closely.
The English evangelists departed. They had come. They had preached. They had baptized. And just like that, they were gone. The boy Reuben returned to his ordinary life.
But heaven was not finished.
CHAPTER TWO: THE NIGHT HEAVEN OPENED
Two Days After the Baptism
“For God speaks in one way, and in two, though man does not perceive it. In a dream, in a vision of the night…” — Job 33:14–15
The Dream That Changed Everything
Two days after his baptism, something happened to Reuben that would mark the rest of his life.
In the night, while the world was still, heaven opened. A figure descended — surrounded by rays of light so intense they framed his head like the sun itself. Reuben, the twelve-year-old boy, did not know what he was seeing. He only knew one thing: fear.
He ran. He screamed for his father. He tried to escape. But the figure reached out and took hold of his thigh — the right thigh — and no matter how hard Reuben struggled, he could not break free.
Then he woke up.
The Pain That Was Real
Dreams fade with the morning. But this one left something behind.
The thigh where the figure had grabbed him in the dream — it was paining. Reuben told his school friends. They looked and saw the area was swollen, reddish, as though blood had pooled beneath the skin. They gave him the only explanation they had: “Maybe the English evangelists bewitched you because of your intelligence.”
This is a reminder of how spiritual encounters are often misinterpreted by those who lack spiritual understanding. What looks like a curse from the outside may actually be a consecration from above.
📖 Lesson Two: Not All Pain is Punishment
Reuben’s pain was not the result of a curse. It was the residue of a divine touch. When God’s hand rests on a person’s life, the weight of it can be felt in the natural realm. Jacob, the patriarch, walked with a limp after wrestling with God at the ford of Jabbok — and that limp became his testimony. Never assume that the place where you are suffering is the place God has abandoned you. It may be the very place He has claimed you.
Three Operations, One Sovereign Hand
The pain worsened. A nurse at the dispensary observed that the swelling looked like blood clotting. Reuben was sent home. His aunt Kengongoma Judith, a teacher in Jinja, stepped in and insisted he be taken for proper treatment. That journey to Jinja was the first time young Reuben had ever left his hometown.
At Jinja Referral Hospital, the doctors confirmed it: blood had clotted in the thigh. He was taken to the theater. An operation was performed. The blood was removed.
But it came back.
He was taken to Mulago Hospital in Kampala. Another operation. The blood was removed again.
But it came back again — seven years later. A third operation was performed at Kisimenti in Kampala.
Three hospitals. Three operations. One thigh. One divine touch.
No doctor could explain it. The body kept returning to the site of the encounter, as if refusing to forget. As if the place where heaven touched him would not simply heal and move on.
📖 Lesson Three: God Marks What He Claims
Three operations could not erase the mark. This is not coincidence. In the same way that Jacob’s hip was altered by his encounter with the divine, Reuben’s thigh bore witness to a transaction that medicine could catalogue but not comprehend. When God touches a life, it is permanent. You cannot surgically remove a calling.
CHAPTER THREE: THE YEARS OF RUNNING
University, Prison, Tanzania — 1990s to 2006
“Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence?” — Psalm 139:7
A Calling Without an Acceptance
In the years that followed his baptism and the supernatural encounter that left a mark on his thigh, Reuben grew up. He attended university. He built a life. He pursued his own path.
And all the while, God was calling.
But Reuben was not listening — or perhaps more accurately, he was listening and choosing differently. He was dodging. The word he himself would later use. Dodging the calling of God.
This is one of the most honest admissions in the story of Apostle Reuben Habaasa. He did not claim to have always been faithful. He did not pretend that his journey to the pulpit was a straight and willing road. He ran. He detoured. He tried to build a life on his own terms.
God Uses Every Season
During those years of running, Reuben was imprisoned. He crossed borders and found himself in Tanzania. He experienced the full spectrum of human difficulty — confinement, displacement, uncertainty.
And it was in Tanzania, in 2006, that the veil finally began to lift.
In a foreign country, far from home, far from the riverbank in Mbarara where he had been baptized, Reuben came to a conclusion he could no longer avoid: God does not want me to do anything else. He wants me to serve Him.
Fifteen years had passed since the baptism. Fifteen years of divine pursuit. Fifteen years of a patient God who had never once withdrawn the calling.
📖 Lesson Four: You Cannot Outlast the Patience of God
Reuben ran for fifteen years. He went to university. He went to prison. He went to Tanzania. And God was in all of it — not to punish, but to pursue. If God has called you, no amount of geographic or spiritual distance will cause Him to abandon the assignment He has placed on your life. He is not in a hurry, but He is not giving up either.
📖 Lesson Five: Brokenness is Often the Doorway
It was not prosperity that brought Reuben to his knees. It was imprisonment, displacement, and the accumulated weight of years spent running. God often uses the seasons when we have tried everything and it has all failed to finally get us still enough to hear Him. If you are in a season of difficulty, do not interpret it as divine rejection. It may be divine redirection.
CHAPTER FOUR: THE SECOND ENCOUNTER
Seguku Prayer Mountain — March 2006
“Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” — Joshua 1:9
The Mountain of Return
There is something deliberate about prayer mountains. They are places of withdrawal, of seeking, of ascending toward heaven with intention. In March 2006, Reuben found himself at Seguku Prayer Mountain. Whether he arrived fully surrendered or still wrestling is something only he truly knows. But heaven met him there.
In a dream on that mountain — fifteen years after the first encounter — the angel came again.
The Angel Who Spoke His Name
This time, the encounter was different. The first time, the figure had come in silence and taken hold of his thigh. This time, the angel called him by name.
When God sends a messenger who knows your name, it is not a coincidence. It is a continuation.
Reuben looked at the figure and, with the directness of a man who had carried a mysterious wound for fifteen years, asked the question that had no doubt lived in him for a long time:
“Are you the one who has been making me suffer?”
The angel’s response was measured and clear: “I am not God. I am not Jesus.”
And then the angel declared his identity:
“I am from your God — the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, whose name is Jehovah. He wants you to serve Him.”
The Question That Unlocked the Mystery
Then the angel asked Reuben a question:
“Do you remember what happened to your thigh fifteen years ago?”
Fifteen years. The angel himself confirmed the timeline. From 1990 to 2006 — fifteen years of a wound that would not heal, three operations that only temporarily resolved the clotting, fifteen years of divine patience with a man who kept running.
And in the dream, Reuben looked at his right thigh — at the scar from all those operations — and saw something that stopped his breath:
Written on the scar was the name: JESUS CHRIST.
The mystery that had followed him for fifteen years was not a curse. It was not witchcraft. It was not bad luck. It was a signature. The Almighty had written His son’s name on the body of the man He had chosen.
📖 Lesson Six: Your Scars May Be Scripture
Reuben carried a physical wound for fifteen years that no surgeon could permanently resolve. What medicine saw as a recurring medical condition, heaven had always known as a divine inscription. Before you dismiss the unexplained wounds in your life — the grief that keeps returning, the struggle that will not leave, the area of your life that has been to the operating table multiple times — ask God if there is something written there that you have not yet been able to read.
The Gifts of the Dream
In the same encounter, the angel gave Reuben many things — revelations and instructions that Reuben documented in what he calls the Book of Reuben. These have guided his ministry from that day forward.
He was also directed to a scripture in Revelation 19 and to the passage in Isaiah where Jacob’s name was changed — a passage that held personal significance for the man standing at his own crossroads of identity.
Like Jacob, whose name meant “supplanter” and was changed to Israel, meaning “who prevails with God,” Reuben recognized that his own name carried a story. He had been born in Tanzania, where his father had called him Afazari — a Swahili word meaning at least, or finally — because his grandfather had refused to allow the family to turn to witchcraft for the blessing of a male child. Instead, the grandfather had commanded them to trust the God of Israel. And God had answered.
Habaasa was the Lunyankole equivalent of Afazari. And his grandfather had added Reuben — the name of the firstborn of Israel — because he was the first boy born in that family.
After the encounter at Seguku, Reuben made a decision. He set aside his father’s surname, Gasharagati, and returned to the name written on his baptism card — Habaasa Reuben. He became Apostle Reuben Habaasa.
📖 Lesson Seven: Know the Story in Your Name
Your name is not random. Behind it is a history, a faith declaration, a prayer once prayed by someone who believed before you could believe for yourself. Reuben’s grandfather refused witchcraft and trusted God — and the boy born as a result of that faith eventually became an apostle. The faith of our fathers is often the foundation beneath the callings of their children. Honor your spiritual lineage.
CHAPTER FIVE: THE COMMISSIONED LIFE
From Encounter to Assignment
“For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” — Ephesians 2:10
When Surrender Becomes Assignment
After the encounter at Seguku Prayer Mountain in 2006, something fundamental changed in Reuben Habaasa. The man who had spent fifteen years constructing detours around the will of God became the man who walked directly into it.
He began to preach. He began to teach. Not from a curriculum of his own creation, but from the revelations given to him in the dream — from the Book of Reuben, the divine instructions he had received and carefully recorded. He knew that the source of his message was not himself.
This is the hallmark of a genuine calling: the messenger is always aware that the message belongs to Another.
The Threefold Witness
Consider what confirmed the calling of Apostle Reuben Habaasa:
First, in 1990, English evangelists prophesied over him at school, gave him scripture, and baptized him in the River Rwizi. They were strangers who would never see him again. They could not have orchestrated what followed.
Second, a divine encounter left a physical mark on his body — a mark that persisted through fifteen years and three operations, resisting every medical attempt to fully resolve it.
Third, in 2006, a heavenly messenger identified himself, confirmed the timeline of divine activity in Reuben’s life, and delivered a clear commission: to serve the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Three witnesses. Across fifteen years. Spanning two countries, multiple hospitals, a university, a prison, and a prayer mountain.
📖 Lesson Eight: God Confirms What He Commissions
A genuine calling from God is rarely a single event. It is a thread woven through time, confirmed by multiple witnesses, validated by both supernatural encounter and natural circumstance. If you are questioning whether God has called you, look back across your life. Can you identify a thread? A recurring theme? A wound that will not fully close? A name you cannot escape? That may be your testimony assembling itself.
The Book of Reuben
Apostle Reuben Habaasa speaks of a Book of Reuben — a personal record of the divine instructions and revelations given to him in the encounter. This is significant. He did not trust his memory alone. He wrote it down.
There is wisdom in this. When God speaks, the act of writing is an act of reverence. It says: I take this seriously. I do not want to forget. I want to be accountable to what was given to me.
Apostle Reuben states that what is written in the Book of Reuben guides him to this day. His ministry is not built on feelings or shifting human philosophies. It is rooted in a recorded encounter with the divine.
📖 Lesson Nine: Record What Heaven Gives You
When God speaks to you — in dreams, in scripture, through confirmed prophetic words — write it down. Build your life and ministry on the record of what you have received, not on the mood of the moment. Apostle Reuben has been guided for years by what he recorded in a single night of encounter. Do not underestimate the power of a faithful written account.
CHAPTER SIX
WHAT THIS STORY TEACHES US ALL
“For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.” — Romans 11:29
The story of Apostle Reuben Habaasa’s first encounter with his guardian angel is not merely a biographical account. It is a theological classroom. Let us gather its core teachings.
God Is Faithful Across Generations
Reuben’s grandfather refused witchcraft and trusted God for a male child. The child born of that faith was named Habaasa — meaning at last — and Reuben, the firstborn of Israel. Decades later, that child became an apostle. The prayers of our ancestors do not expire. They accumulate interest in heaven and pay out across generations.
Heaven Can Reach Us Anywhere
A riverbank in Mbarara. Hospital theaters in Jinja, Kampala, and Kisimenti. A prison. A foreign country. A prayer mountain in Seguku. God does not need a church building to find His servant. He is not limited by geography, by circumstance, or by the stubbornness of the called.
Angels Are Real
This account affirms something that the modern world often dismisses and that the church sometimes reduces to metaphor: angels are real, they carry specific messages, and they are dispatched by God to accomplish His purposes in human lives. The angel in Reuben’s encounter was precise. He identified himself. He referenced a specific timeline. He carried instruction. This was not a vague spiritual impression. It was an encounter.
Calling Outlasts Rebellion
Perhaps the most comforting truth in this entire account is this: fifteen years of running did not disqualify Reuben from the calling. God did not find a replacement. He kept the assignment on hold and kept the man in sight — through operations, through prison, through Tanzania — and waited.
If you have been running from what you know God has placed on your life, this story carries a message for you. It is not too late. The calling is still there. Heaven has not moved on.
A FINAL WORD TO THE READER
You have walked through the life of a man who was touched by heaven at twelve years old, carried the mark of that touch for fifteen years, and finally surrendered to the One who had been calling all along.
What do you carry? What unexplained wound has followed you through the years? What dream do you remember that you have not yet fully understood? What calling have you been circling around, approaching and retreating, year after year?
The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — the One who sent His messenger to find Reuben on a prayer mountain in Seguku — is the same God who is reading this book with you.
He knows your name. He knows what He placed inside you. He knows the scars you carry. And like the name written on Reuben’s thigh — Jesus Christ — He has already signed His name over your life.
The only question that remains is the same one the angel asked Reuben:
“Do you remember what happened?”
Remember. Return. Surrender. And serve.
To the glory of God alone.
Pastor Kabagema Joseph Bright
(Influencer Bright)
