Hello again from Jinja.
It is now Saturday afternoon and we have been conducting our conference for the past two days. Each morning after breakfast, we worship in the thatch roofed meeting hall on the grounds of our meeting location. For those of who have heard that the African way of worship is slightly different than our way in America, you are right. What a wonderful experience. They usually start out with a few people singing some simple rhythmic hymns and as more people come, the singing grows. They don’t stand neatly in one place with their hands at their sides as we do. It is a full body experience. Everyone is clapping, swaying and dancing. It is really a beautiful way to praise and worship God.
Following our morning worship, the men and women split up into separate groups. Deb Brandon and three other women from our team along with two of the local pastor’s wives (Mary and Betty) have been leading the women’s conference. Their focus has been on emotional healing and forgiveness. There is a real need for this here in Uganda as women often don’t feel that they have a voice or an opportunity to have their emotional and spiritual needs ministered to in this male dominated society. Through the teams work, they are hoping to affirm these women and to demonstrate God’s love for them.
As mentioned earlier, the men are conducting a conference on purity. Our team is coming alongside Pastors’ Moses and James to minister to a group of pastors from churches around the city of Kampala.
The program created by the National Coalition for Purity in the U.S. and was designed to help men address the issues caused by the sin of sexual impurity. Gritty, but important topics such as lust, pornography & infidelity are covered. At the end of the two days, men were making pledges for purity and were thanking the team for addressing a topic that is often considered taboo to discuss. To our knowledge, this is only the second time this course has been taught in Africa. Our hope is that the men from this training will participate in additional trainings in Uganda in the summer and fall and then take it to surrounding countries such as Kenya and Sudan to help address this problem that is bringing down so many families in their society.
Here is a picture of the conference attendees. We developed some great new friendships over these past couple of days and have exchanged emails and addresses in hope of staying in touch and supporting one another.
While we were busy conducting our conferences, Matthew and Tom were traveling the countryside obtaining wood for their upcoming construction projects. Unlike our convenient trips to Home Depot or Menards to buy lumber, Tom and Matthew had to select the rough sawn wood and then take it to be planed and cut to size. Their adventure lasted nearly 12 hours. During their trip, they traveled by car, taxi and motorcycles called Boda- Bodas. At one point, they decided they needed to purchase some inexpensive sunglasses to keep the dirt from getting in their eyes while on the motorcycles because the roads were so dusty.
Here are some photos that Matt was able to take around the Nile River during their trip.
One of Matthew’s favorite stories was when he was traveling on the back of the motorcycle. He told me that as they rode past people from the local villages, the children would point, wave and yell “Moo-zun-go … Moo-zun-go” which means white person. Based on how they starred, he got the feeling that he may have been one of the first boys with white skin that they had ever seen.
Here are a few more pictures of a people that Matt saw while traveling today.
Tomorrow after worship and lunch, we head to Busana which is about an hour northeast of Jinja for a week.
As you can see, we are having a great time.
We hope you are enjoying the stories of our adventure in Uganda.
God bless,
David and Matt