The Love Kampala Festival with Andrew Palau drew around 82,000 people to Uganda’s capital city over weekend while proclaiming the love of Jesus Christ.

Palau, the son of popular evangelist Luis Palau, told the audience how Jesus Christ rescued him from his addiction to alcohol and drugs, and from a sexually promiscuous lifestyle. He then told people in the crowd that God can set them free too.

“God loves Uganda and He loves you,” said the 44-year-old Palau at the Kololo Airstrip in Kampala, Uganda. “God wants you to know that you can experience true freedom through His son Jesus Christ.”

Throughout the two-day event, and even in the days prior, security was tight because of terrorism fears. Just the weekend before the event, a Somali man was arrested on suspicion of terrorism during a KLM flight heading to Uganda. Seven members of the Palau ministry team was on the same flight.

After the arrest of the Somali man, Kampala police issued new guidelines heightening security for all public gatherings. As a result, all the Love Kampala Festival attendees went through metal detectors.

But judging from the numbers of attendees, the metal detectors did not discourage Ugandans from joining the festival.

The Rev. Henry Luke Orombi, archbishop of the Anglican Church of Uganda, praised the festival as being a foretaste of heaven because it united more than 1,000 churches across denominational lines behind the common goal to glorify the name of Jesus.

In addition to the weekend festival, Palau spoke to members of Uganda’s Parliament, at a sports event attended by some of the country’s top athletes, and at a banquet for women.

Palau also visited villages where the Ugandan Christian community – modeled after the Luis Palau Association’s Season of Service initiatives – helped build a public toilette facility and a water retrieval and storage system for the residents.

Other community projects included blood drives, food distributions, clean water projects, and neighborhood renovation works.

BMX biking, freestyle motocross and skateboarding professionals – regular features at Palau festivals – also performed at four prisons, including a maximum security prison, in addition to at the festival. Team members spoke to 3,000 inmates and helped lead more than 2,000 prisoners to fill out decision cards accepting Jesus Christ as their Savior.

The Palau team also trained thousands of Ugandan Christians on how to follow up with decision-makers and how to engage in friendship evangelism.

American Christian music artists Nicole C. Mullen and Dave Lubben performed at the festival.