Agandi, Murie Muta?! (Hello, How are you all? Etc)
YAY another blog post!! Where to start… I have been trying to include as much new stories and info for you buys as possible, but seeing how I don’t really have a consistent blogging system, I can’t always remember what I wrote about last time, or what I have told you and haven’t told you. So please forgive me if I am repeating myself. I suppose it would be better that way then leaving lots out. So I am actually writing this blog at Canada House and I will copy and paste it into my blog later. I think its better than paying to sit in the internet café and type. So hopefully I can send off some emails today that I have been dying to send off. To you Adele especially. I wish I could communicate better with you all, but there just aren’t the means, unless you have my cell number and then we can text message each other for cheap. If you would like it, and you think I would like to talk to you, then you have to call my mom and she will discern weather you can have it or not. So anyway, I can’t remember weather I told you about MPC Mbarara Pentecostal Church. It is affiliated with KPC Kampala Pentecostal Church and they are booming. I went last weekend and yesterday as well. The first weekend I was there turned into a healing service, it was amazing, people with headaches for 10 years, and back problems and stomach pains, tons of people got healed. It was a huge sanctuary with no windows (for security maybe), and I guess they can’t afford lighting cause there are only fluorescent tubes hanging down above the stage. There is never consistent power anyways, so when it’s out they would need the generator and it probably could power a whole sanctuary full of lights. Anyways, the pastor is Allen and his wife Denitz, and they are an amazing couple. The whole church was so welcoming. The pastor invited me over to his house for dinner on Saturday (two nights ago). They have a huge choir and dance team that is on stage for worship everyday. VICTORIA KATONGA YOU NEED TO SEE THEM, oh man I could not stop wishing you were there, they are awesome, so high energy and you would just LOVE IT. I will try to remember to bring my video camera next week so I can tape them and you can learn some moves. I will try and learn too for you. Haha, no promises though. So I love it there, its all in English and the Holy Spirit just fills that place to overflowing. On Saturday night I had dinner with Pastor Allen and his wife and some of their friends who live with them. It was so lovely. They had amazing beautiful house, I felt like I was almost back in Canada. They leave worship music blaring in their home when their not there, so we arrived to worship, it was so nice. Denitz then showed me 7 photo albums of lovely pictures from their wedding and her graduation. It was so cool to see the cultural differences in the wedding procedures. The cake they had was immense!!! I have never seen a cake so big, they had 1000 people at their wedding, so I’m sure you can imagine, I think there were 6 tiers. Yesterday church was awesome too. I had a different experience though. One of my new good friends Andy took my glasses; he said I need to have more faith. So I reluctantly gave them to him, thinking “Fine, I will just walk to the church without them, and he’ll give them back, satisfied that I gave them up for a while.” Well, he kept them for almost the whole service, telling me he smashed them, and I don’t need them, because I will be healed, IF I believe it. With out my glasses I felt frustrated that I couldn’t see. I was very irritable and just wanted my glasses back. I lost my concentration. I couldn’t focus on the sermon. I felt like I couldn’t hear. It was a weird experience. I prayed and prayed that I would be healed, and I wasn’t. It brought so many thoughts up for me, like, where is my faith? What does my faith mean to me? Do I have such little faith, I can’t be healed? If I get up every morning, and put my glasses on so I can see, what kind of faith is that? We are supposed to live by faith and not by sight, and I felt “Oh my gosh, I am literally living by sight and not by faith.” I was so confused and just wrecked really. All because someone took my glasses. Took my sight. I honestly am not all that clear yet on this whole experience. I didn’t exactly leave feeling like I had this huge revelation and all these great insights were made clear. I left feeling quite the opposite really. It’s the start of something though, I know that. God is working in my heart and I am convicted daily by the displays of faith that I see lived around me. People trusting God with everything, for their all, the food they eat, their clothes, health, somewhere to sleep, money to get their kids through school. Then there is me, North American girl, who has everything. I mean, my family isn’t rich compared to others in our town, but compared to the lives I see around me here, and the majority of the world, we are so blessed, materially. And I take it for granted. I want more stuff, more things, in hopes of subconsciously filling some spiritual void that hovers over my nation. Got to cram more stuff, more TV, more meaningless relationships, more trash into our lives. And amongst all this, I feel there is so little faith, so little reliance on an unseen yet all powerful God. Why have faith in something unseen when you can just grab onto something seen, whenever you want to fill your voids. Have a few drinks and unload all your garbage onto a friend, while they spew theirs all over you, never really working through anything, just dumping it on each other for temporary relief. Wadding through the trash and pushing away the piles that creep up to your nose so you can breathe for just a few more days. You grab onto a frayed, decaying rope to pull you up from it just long enough to stretch your neck above the heaps that are slowly, but definitely surely suffocating you. There are better answers. There is a life boat with your name on it, an evacuation crew that is waiting for your call, a search and rescue team trained specifically for your rescue. There is a hope beyond circumstance. There is a light stronger than all darkness. There is a wind that will come and lift you out of your garbage pile. Raise you up and above and beyond it, so far, you will never have to look back. God gives you a whole new world to look at, a whole new spectrum of dreams and visions and hopes. A Technicolor, Wizard of Oz, Cinderella’s Ball, Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory dream world, just for you and just for me. God is on our team, he created it, and wants to give us immeasurably more than we can think of or imagine, in every area of our lives. When we just put our trust, put our faith in him. Take your whole life and place it before him. His promises are true. He’s not going to leaving you to die when you give him your all. I can’t even imagine all the glorious things that will happen.
Ooops, that was a little bit of a tangent, sorry. I will wrap this up, because I know that I don’t like reading mile long updates, and I’m sure you don’t either. So I am chilling at Canada House today, getting some much needed typing and work done. I will have lunch with Richard and Jenny, and then head to town to do some errands. I have a meeting with Hilda from TASO tomorrow, about memory books. So please pray that I will have a clear understanding of what to do next and that God would provide all the people needed for this work, all the wisdom, and patience, understanding and love needed. We have an off coming up this Friday, so pray that we have safe travels to where ever we decide to go. No cell phones stolen and sane and safe bus drivers. I am either going to visit Kristy in Kampala, or go with the team river rafting down the Nile. Not too sure which one yet.
I love you all, thanks for listening to my ramblings, and I pray you are all safe and well. Adele, please save your money and meet me when I am done and we will TRAVEL!!! I am going to try and email you today. I miss you more than you love slushies.
Ruhanga Abie Nyiway. (God be with you)
PS. I got a pedicure and a manicure for $2.50 ($4,000 UGSh)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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