Uganda 2023 Day 6

Uganda 2023 Day 6

I woke up early for the sunrise, but decided it did not look promising for good color. Instead of waiting to see, I ended up trying to find what  passage to use for kids church. I thought about Esther and decided I would need more than an hour or so to prepare it because there is so much to that book. Then I thought about Psalm 23. I did not know how to do the passage justice for kids. I decided to call my parents and see what they would suggest. With dad giving me the idea of Matthew 18:1-5, I thought it would work great! So, I wrote up a message. Then it was time for breakfast. We had eggs, toast, muffins, and pineapple. We had to eat fast and run to church. I was with Nick and Elena in the youth group. We introduced ourselves before Nick did a greeting, prayer, and invited me to the front again. I have a message about the storms of life. I told them when they are going through storms to lean into God. There was still a bunch of time left, so Nick also gave a message. Thankfully he did prep one after I warned him mine might not be long enough. He then invited Elena up to pray. Three people accepted Christ and we also prayed for them individually. Nick accidentally forgot his guitar, so we did a cappella music. I thank they knew all the songs, but one bit well. The sound was so amazing! Their voices and the sound echoing off the walls made worshiping so much easier. When we had done about four songs, they took a turn leading as well.  After such a sweet moment, we had people who wanted, come up one by one and be prayed for. 

Next, we had church service. We were all upstairs for worship and dancing. Then, after most of the worship was over, Lany, Jen, Nick, Elena, and I went to lead kids church. We started off with four songs that we taught them dance moves to. After that we took turns giving messages and testimonies. For this one I talked about the passage dad gave me. It is about how we need to be like children to get into the kingdom of heaven. In between messages, we did what Lany called “brain breaks.” We would do a Simon says or a clapping exercise. We did songs again at the end, and passed out a toy and a sweetie to each child before we finished. They gave kids money if they brought their Bible, but the child had to show the teacher their Bible. It was cool to see one girl had an Operation Christmas Child Bible. 

We got to watch the very end of Joanne’s message. Then we headed to lunch.

We ate lunch at a café restaurant and the shopping area that has banana boat. Yoan and I were looking at two burgers. We decided to each get one and split them. The burger we were most interested it was called the big burger. It had both pickles and cucumbers on it. The other we got was the Hawaiian BBQ burger. Yoan was interested in it because he had never had grilled pineapple on a burger. When I ordered the big burger the guy gave me a shocked look and said, “Really?” I let him know that Yoan and I were sharing it. He said it’s ok and he did not need to know that, but I felt like I had to explain due to feeling judged. Haha! Yoan was not a big fan of the pineapple on the burger, but he ate his half. Ivan was sitting next to me and , while looking at my burger said, “you can move that mountain.” In less church words he meant, I know you can eat both those burger halves. I told him, I can move that mountain. With faith and my mouth.” But as I was almost finished with the second burger, I told Ivan, “I can move that mountain, but not the hill (while gesturing to the pile of fries).” I did finish the burger halves and ate a few fries, but was so full.

After lunch, we were able to shop at the store and/or banana boat for a few minutes before we went back to the special shopping market that has a ton of items to pick from. The venders if the booths are constantly asking you to come in. They will even say it is free to look. Then if you buy something, they try harder to sell you more items. I walked around with Destanie so she was not alone. Some of the team left in a van before others were done, but the second vehicle still left before our meeting time. 

Once back home, we had a dinner of  rice, pork, chicken, broccoli and avocado. After that we had our team meeting and free time.