The End (For Now)

The big event for Sunday July 15 was the church services at St. James Church in Marare.  The first was in English (their “youth service”, although it was actually a fairly broad range of ages that attended) and the second was in Lugisu (their “traditional service” which also seemed to have a lot of young kids.)

We had been told that we were expected to contribute a lot to the service … certainly the sermon.  In the end Ralph from our team did this (for those who don’t know him, Ralph is a former Northgate pastor and is now the Dean at Taylor Seminary.)   We also decided to do a couple of testimonies from team members and a song.

For the song, I’ve heard the congregation and the choir at St James before and we knew we needed professional help.   Fortunately we had just that, in the form of Manjeri, one of the sponsored kids in the FH program.   Manjeri, who is 17, is an excellent singer and also actually writes her own songs.   So we brought in the heavy hitter  We practiced one of her songs (“Sometimes I pray” … we will teach it to Northgate when we get back) and were ready to be her backup group.  (we had Manjeri with us for the whole day, actually, which was really nice as we got to know her better)

Overall the services were a great experience.  Ralph gave a really good sermon on “Loving people even when we don’t actually like them”.   In the first service he gave it straight in English … in second he did it in English again but then David, one of the FH team, translated it line by line as it went along. After that Joshua, the Lay Reader, did what sounded like an extended recap in Lugisu … Joshua is a very passionate speaker, quite good to listen to even when you don’t understand a word.

(an explanation of “Lay Reader”.  There are far more church congregations than ordained ministers in the Church Of Uganda … for example there are five churches and one minister, the recently joined Rev. Alex,  in Marare Parish.  So the minister is in a different church each Sunday, and on the other Sundays a Lay Reader in each church leads the service)

For our testimonies first Tim shared how he came to follow Jesus … Ralph played a big role in that, with the two becoming friends through the friendship of their children.   Naomi shared hers, talking about the fact that she had been born with a number of physical challenges.  She then talked about how she has overcome them though God’s help to be the person she is today.   What she wanted was to encourage them to know that they too could overcome their difficulties; after the service one of the members came up to her to express how much this had encouraged her because they too have a child with physical challenges.

At the end of both services we sang Manjeri’s song with her.   Well, actually Majeri sang her song with us.  The congregation responded enthusiastically.   At the end of the first service they invited her to sing it again.  At the end of the second service many of the FH staff joined us.  It was great … a brilliant plan to have her with us!

A few words on the building … this is the new St. James Church that was still under construction when we visited in 2015.   It’s now done, and it’s really nice.   It’s about twice the size of the original church. And it has electricity!   We actually had microphones and everything!  I almost forgot I was in Africa …

… well, until I heard the congregation singing.   I distinctly remember the first moment, when we were sitting at the front with our back to them, and the congregation suddenly joined into a song in full voice.  I got goosebumps.  It is amazing to hear!

The two services ran from before 8 (when we arrived) to about 1:30, with only a short break in between them.  The last part of the second service is one of my favorite bits.   Keep in mind we are in an agricultural community with limited cash, so many people give their offering in produce.   When that happens they have an auction selling off that day’s produce to raise cash.  One of the congregation members brought a whole 7’ sugar cane and then gave it to us as a gift … we ate it with lunch, and it was delicious.

One other little aside that Naomi  observed.   The  soil in this area, like much of Uganda, is very red.  While wearing her white church shirt she discovered just how ubiquitous and invasive that red soil of Marare is.  Even though she didn’t actually touch it, her entire shirt is covered in a dusting of red.   You don’t need to go looking for the red soil; the red soil finds you.  (I can attest to this myself; I still have shoes with soles stained red from our last trip in 2015.)

After lunch we were able to visit Sharif, Tim’s sponsored child.  This is one of the 11 visits that we completed on this trip.

For many of these what we do is go to the sponsored child’s home at an arranged time (Molex, one the veteran FH staffers, does a bang-up job arranging these).  Going to the home is best, as typically we can meet with the rest of the family.   In this case we were greeted by Sharif’s grandmother, whom he is living with.  (that’s her on the left, with Molex on the right)

The sponsored child visits tend to be fairly short and informal.  The whole purpose is to convey our love and interest in the child and his family and to generally encourage them all.  Typically we sit down with them, conveying wishes from their sponsor (for sponsors not on the trip we brought videoed greetings to show the sponsored kids), pass them some small gifts and then make some conversation with them, finding more about them and their interests and lives. 

One thing about sponsored child visits is that they tend to be a spectator sport.   Almost every time we go into a home a group of small children gather and watch the proceedings.   In Sharif’s case this was particularly so, as he lives with a lot of children … his biological siblings and also a large (didn’t actually succeed in counting) number of cousins whom grandmother is caring for (at least two of their mothers, her daughters, appear to live there as well).

Of course we get a group picture....

And then at the end of this we then have a time to pray a blessing on the child and their family and home.  Often the children and almost always their caregivers express a lot of appreciation of us coming to visit; there is little question that the appreciation is genuine, sometimes very obviously so from the emotions expressed.  Sometimes they express this by giving us gifts, often of produce ... Sharif's grandmother gave us a whole bag of corn and large avocados!

The other big event was a thank-you dinner that we were able to have with the FH staff.   We really do appreciate the hard work that they do and wanted to make sure we expressed this as strongly as we could.   We ended up doing a bit of a recitation using candies we gave them (“You are real Lifesavers!  You are a real bunch of Smarties!  Etc, etc …. You get the idea).   We really hope we left them encouraged.

And now briefly on to Monday … I’m getting tired here, so I will leave most of this for sharing night, or perhaps a subsequent post.   The biggest event today was the formal goodbye.   

This is a very emotional and powerful event, but it has been described in some detail in previous year’s blogs so I won’t hit it much here.   We of course were dressed up in traditional garb….

… the school choir sang ….

… and the Adult Functional Literacy group did a song and skit describing the characteristics of each of us.  

After lunch (huge!), which was provided by parents from the community, we had a couple of hours just playing games and generally interacting with the children and others.   It was low key and quite enjoyable.   One highlight was watching Jennifer (see July 12), who is 62 years old, playing netball, and playing it well--making sure to block Tim.

Anyways, that’s all for now.   It was a great trip and journey, with still a lot to process.   Very thankful for good health for the team.  Thank you to all who were praying for us.  I am looking forward to sharing night, which will be September 23, 7 pm.  Join us if you can.  

God is good.   All the time.  And all the time.  He is good.  For that is His nature.