Uganda 2015: Day 5

It’s Sunday! We were split into five teams today for the different churches we were going to visit. My group went to saints gate church. Elena, Kristi, Nikki, and I did city kids. Last night we prepared what we would do and wrote a schedule. Intro of the team, prayer, game(s), music, I would tell them about Jonah, Elena would give the message, then if we needed to we could do songs again and more games. When we got there, we sat in service for about 30 min to make sure all the kids were there. Then they loaded the kids into a bus. Last year we just walked a few yards to the building. Us muzungus walked with the leaders to the building they have kids church in. When we got there, they already had plans.we both adapted our plans. It ended up them talking and doing music, is introducing ourselves, our music, then they split the kids up by age and we had two groups to teach. Elena an I had the older kids. I told them about Jonah and then Elena talked. For the younger kids Kristi talked about Jonah and gave a little message. At the end they passed out snacks for the kids. Then we passed out gifts of foam visor hats and foam stickers.

When kids church was over we went back to the main service. During the songs Kristi grabbed one of the girls hands and started dancing with her! Within a couple minutes Elena, Nikki, and I all had 1-3 kids to dance with! They are so fun and so very precious! The service went long and right into the women’s day celebration. So, some of our team went home because it was so hot. I was one of them.

After dinner we had our group meeting. We sing before we start the talking part. I was sitting there singing and listening to the sound of our team singing. We sound so beautiful praising God together! After worship we share about the day. Julia shared her story from a village church. Other than getting a letter from a guy there with a proposal in it, she and one more incredible experience there! I will do my best to remember it as correct as I can. She gave her testimony during the service. It was about her dad, but I won’t go into detail. When she got to the car after, the pastor asked Julia if she would be his daughter! Him and his wife love her so much. He then said, “our daughter needs a friend right now. Her name is Hope and she was recently raped by three guys.” This broke Julia’s heart and she said, “of course I will be her friend.” (The quotes are not 100% correct… It has been two days since she said it). As a group we prayed for Hope. Now I request that you pray for her too. This young lady needs healing in her life. Emotional healing, maybe spiritual healing, and probably physical healing. Please pray that God will help her with the struggle of what happened and she would grow closer to God every day because of it. There were other stories share, but this was the one that touches my heart the most.

Sorry this is all choppy and I am skipping around, but, it happens. 🙂