Emmanuel Ssemwanga was 23 years old when he first smoked heroin in a friend's flat in Katwe. By 26, he had lost his job, his marriage, his home, and very nearly his life. Today, at 34, he serves as a deacon at Kampala Pentecostal Church and heads the church's drug rehabilitation outreach ministry, reaching over 100 addicts in Kampala each month.

"I had tried everything to stop," Emmanuel says, leaning forward in his seat in the church's counselling room. "Rehab programmes, promises to my mother, promises to myself. Nothing worked. The addiction owned me completely. By the end, I didn't even want to stop — I just wanted to die."

His turning point came on a Tuesday night in 2018, when a street preacher outside a pharmacy in Wandegeya prayed with him after he collapsed in the street. "He didn't judge me. He just knelt down in the dirt beside me and said, 'Jesus loves you exactly as you are.' Something broke inside me. I wept for the first time in years."

Emmanuel checked into a Christian rehabilitation programme the following day and has been clean for nearly seven years. He is now remarried, has two children, and mentors young men in the same Katwe neighbourhood where his addiction began. "God didn't just save me — He sent me back to the very place where I fell, to help others get up. That is the grace of God."