Sunday in Kachungwa

Greetings from all of us in Uganda.  Today was a day of worship and celebrating God in Kachungwa.   As we expected, we need to be prepared for the unexpected.  We drove to the village this morning expecting to go to church, but instead learned that they have all of the children attend Sunday school before the adult service (which, by the way, the children also attend).  We were ushered to the school building and watched the children sing a couple of songs and as they were breaking up into small groups, we were told that we were going to be teaching the children this morning.  We had not even thought that this might happen and were all caught completely off guard.  They broke the children into groups by age and assigned a pair of us to each group.  Eventually, there were so many in some classes, they even broke those up into smaller groups – which meant some on the team had to teach alone. 

 

I was blessed with teaching with Bryan!  When we got over to the classroom, we talked with the teacher and asked him what he had been teaching.  He told us that they were currently studying David & Goliath. Bryan and I stepped aside to pray for God’s guidance.  He put on both of our hearts to teach about how God helps those afraid and facing big challenges to overcome them with faith.  So, we added discussion about Daniel and the Lion’s den, talked about Jesus’ love and shared how He will help them to not be afraid.  Finally, we opened the class up for questions and had a lot of interesting questions like “what does Abraham’s name mean?” and “what was God’s promise to Sarah”, “How did God make Jesus in Mary’s [womb]?” and soon.  Bryan and I both felt like we were  being quizzed rather than teaching!  These children are very well schooled in the bible!  Below is a picture of Ashley teaching a class.

 

 

After Sunday school, we walked down to the church building.  All of us had children holding our hands as we walked.  The service was unlike anything I have ever experienced before.  It went about 3 hours or so, with worship, Ken preaching a very powerful message (God was definitely speaking through him to our  brothers and sisters in Kachungwa.  There were some challenges with the translation, but it all worked out.    Below is a picture looking back over the congregation of the Kachungwa church.  They reserved the seats in front for their guests (us).

 

 

At one point during the sermon, a dove landed in the rafters directly above Ken’s head, then turned with it’s tail pointing out towards the audience.  Another first in church for me – I prayed for a bird not too poop on Ken (though, I admit that under different circumstances it would have given me some degree of pleasure and made up for some of the jokes he has been telling on the trip).  Ralph and Isaac had the chance to lead the congregation in a worship song – see the picture below.

 

You will notice Ralph holding the mic for Isaac.  The church now has sound powered off of batteries and a generator (not running during the service), but did not have things like mic stands.  They have a electric piano and are able to play CD’s off of a laptop.  This village has come a long way thanks in large part to Canby Christian Church.  All of the children sat in the front of the church on the floor, just packed in.  They sat that way for almost 3 hours and were incredibly well behaved.

 

At the end of the service the children filed by.  Each of them stopped by to give us a hug, shake our  hand and many knelt before us as a sign of honor and respect to us for being there.  These beautiful children living in mud huts honoring me!  I should have been honoring them for their faith, strength and the joy that they obviously have in Jesus.  When the children were done, all I could do was to sit and weep.  An elderly woman of the church took my hand and I cried on her arm as she stroked my head.  I looked up through my tears to see a smile and she told me, without saying a word, that she was honored by my tears for their children.

 

After lunch, we had some joyous time with the children out in the church yard.  They LOVE having their pictures taken, then getting to see them on the camera.  I was constantly mobbed by children wanting their pictures taken.  In the few days we have been here, we have combined taken over a thousand picture (though the number is probably higher than that).  As I stood up from a mob of children, I looked over to see Ashley, in her usual sea of smiling faces.  She absolutely loves the children and they adore her.  They are fascinated with her hair and she the picture below was just too good to not post.  This captures the essence of how we are connecting with the people here.

 

 

The last part of the day was another joyous and difficult time.  I do want to say that we are all finding that there is a lot of this – there are parts of what we do that brings great joy and at the same time great pain.  We gave our gifts to our sponsored children!  Not all of them yet, just the ones the people on the team sponsor.  The children getting the gifts were overjoyed at the gifts they received, like  the young girl obviously delighted at the first doll she has ever even seen (see picture below), but there was row after row of children outside the door and window wondering if there was something for them.  The sad fact is that of almost 600 children here, only 250 are sponsored.

 

 

THIS IS IMPORTANT – PLEASE READ:  There is an obvious difference between the sponsored children and those not sponsored.  Pastor Sylver told us that it is terribly sad to see the unsponsored children, many of whom have never owned a pair of shoes and their clothes are rags.  They attend school beside the sponsored children, but are not equal.  Often, one child in a family  is sponsored while their brothers/sisters are  not.  You can also see the difference on their faces.  The sponsored children have bigger smiles, they look healthy, they are cleaner and life is better for them.  The unsponsored children are hoping and praying for someone to help them.  The first day we were there, a man came up to me with his son begging for me to sponsor him.  He looked to be about 12 years old and both he and his father tried to dress well, but their clothes were just old, dirty and tattered.  Both were desperate for help.  I could only refer them back to the pastor and the church.  I also found that as I was taking pictures, mothers would shove their unsponsored children to the front so I would take their picture in the desperate hope of getting them some attention.  Please, prayerfully consider sponsoring a child.  We all talked about this tonight and agree that we could never have imagined the dramatic difference it makes in a child’s life and certainly would have had non way of knowing if we had never come to Uganda..

 

 

Tomorrow is where God begins to stretch us in ways that we can’t imagine yet.  We are starting the day going into the village in pairs with an interpreter/guide, distributing mosquito nets that Canby Christian (you) have previously purchased and also sharing Jesus Christ with them.  In the afternoon, we are going over to a high school to meet with the youth there.  We have no idea how many to expect, but could be upwards of 400-500 students..  Several team members are going to share their personal testimony, Isaac and Ralph are going to minister to them in song and I am going to share a message of hope and salvation in Jesus Christ – followed by an invitation to be accept Jesus as their personal savior.  PLEASE PRAY FOR US TOMORROW!  One thing that we are all discovering is that when we absolutely rely on God, He is faithful and powerful in answering.  We have all experienced Him in new ways and tomorrow will be even more.  I could really get used to being this close to God and experiencing Him working through us to reach even one more child.

 

The power is out again here tonight, but thankfully, no more rioting or tear gas…just a little too much excitement for us folks from Canby, Oregon.  I’m sitting hunkered down in the dark under my mosquito net as I write this note.  Please check back for more tomorrow night.  Thank you again from all of us for your support, your prayer and mostly for taking your time to share this experience with us.  We miss you all! 

 

In the name of Jesus we pray and believe!

 

Dave