Just to make sure my next blog isn't too long, I've decided to blog just about yesterday; one of the longest and most ridiculous days of my life.
Michael is the Alpha coordinator for the east of Uganda, so a couple of weeks ago he invited Sam and I to go to Nabuyoga in the Tororo district, a couple of hours south of Mbale, to be guests at an Alpha training day. So we accepted and took a Matatu - a small minibus that packs four or five people where there is only supposed to be three, cozy - to Tororo. When we arrived in Tororo, the farce began. We half an hour late for the conference when we had only got to Tororo. Pastor Amos, one of the leaders of the day was supposed to be taking us there in his car, but it was broken, so another Pastor had offered to let us use his car, this 'service' obviously came with a charge, he wanted 60,000 USh (£15) but we got him down to 45,000 USh (£11), and of course the Ugandans looked to the Mzungus for the money, which would have been fine but as soon as we drove off the fuel warning light came on, so we went for fuel but I only had 10,000 left because I was paying for Matatu back, so we could only put in 20,000 in total, definately not enough to get us there and back. Essentially, we got ripped-off.
On the way we soon discovered that Pastor Amos isn't the best driver in the world. He makes some pretty stupid decisions as he's driving along, sort of like a 17 year-old at home who's just got a licence and a car and naively thinks 'I can make that gap' or 'I can take that bump at the speed', and disaster strikes. There hadn't been much rain in Tororo recently so instead of the mud being sticky and making you stuck, it's really hard and rips things from your car. So Amos decides that the car definatley has enough ground-clearance to make it over a mound of hard mud and the spare tyre comes off the bottom, lifting the whole back of the car off the ground and making the left side of the back bumper loose. At this point I was stressed enough about the money situation that I was like 'everybody stand back, I'll deal with this' so I rolled up my sleeves and fixed it. No worries.
When we finally arrived, 2 and a half hours late, we entered the classroom where the training was taking place and were greeted like celebrities almost. As we entered the whole room stood and welcomed us, which felt really odd. I just sort of rejected it and we sat down in our special seats at the side of the room, where everyone could see us of course. The training began and Sam and I had to give a brief greeting which was OK. Amos spoke for a couple of hours and then Michael spoke for a couple of hours and then I spoke for 20 minutes, then they asked questions, which weren't at all related to Alpha for about an hour. By this point we were beginning to tire quite a bit. Sam had been away for the weekend and not got much sleep, then when he got back he was so sun-burned that he only slept for a couple of hours, needless to say he wasn't in a good mood. It was also almost 4 and we were both only fueled on a couple of Weetabix each, so we were pretty hungry, but the idea is to feed the delegates late, because often some will only come for free food, so they eat and leave, this way they have to earn it by sitting through hours of boring speeches that they often don't really understand.
Finally we ate and then Michael realised that we weren't gonna get home until pretty late at this rate so he razzed through the last session in record time. Good lad. One of the main reasons we were there though was to give out Bibles to the people who didn't have. So we brought ten to give to these people and another ten for Amos to give to some prisoners who had been saved. However, the demand was more than the supply. There were 13 people who needed bibles, so we originally gave to the first ten and then two people came to us and said they needed bibles, so we gave out of what the prisoners were getting. One of them couldn't speak English but could apparently read it, so we gave her a bible but afterwards a thought 'wait a minute... yeah she's just gonna sell it, nuts!!' They all got a photo with their new bibles and whilst Sam was taking another guy came to me and said he didn't have a bible. I didn't want to take anymore from the prison's lot so I offered him my personal bible which is small and brown, with small writing (all key elements). He took his place in line to have his photo taken and I saw him looking at it with an unimpressed expression and tried to trade it with another in line, he rejected it too. It turns out that he didn't think it was fair that he got a bible that was smaller than everyone else's, that was less bright in colour and that had smaller writing, so he went into the boot of the car and pulled out of the prison box and left my bible with one of Amos' friends, and then legged it on his bike. I was pretty discouraged by this to say the least. How can someone be picky about something he's getting for free? Gladly God's a good lad. I was really encouraged by two things that I had heard/read coming to the end of the day: On the way back in the Matatu Sam and I listened to a Bill Johnson talk and he just said this one throw away line which stuck with me, 'the spiritual world is so much more real than the visible'. Then when I got back I still wasn't feeling great so i was praying and felt God call me to continue reading 2 Timothy (this book has taken me ages, there's just so much good stuff!) so I read 2 Tim 3:12 'In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life will be persecuted' and I was encouraged. I realised that I should be taking this as an encouragement from God, that because my relationship with God has been massively accelerated as I've been out here, of course I will experience attack, because the enemy is scared, because I carry the presence of God. So as Billy-Bob said, I should be referring more closely to what is happening spiritually in relation to what is happening visibly and through that, I have been encouraged and built-up, instead of discouraged. So I learnt a lot from that, even if I am still a little gutted, I just need to have a fuller kingdom perspective.
There's more craziness that went on on the rest of the evening, like getting lost because we had to go a different way due to a road-blockage, a mentally-ill person getting made-fun of by some kids and Sam getting his teacher act on, arguments in the matatu and chatting to high street-kids who we know from CRO, but that seems like a good place to finish, plus it's bed-time.
Sorry to make my blogs a bit like London buses, but hey.
Much Love, Dan x
jengauganda.org
P.s. Doing a CRO night-walk on Thursday looking for Street kids and seeing where they sleep, would appreciate prayer x
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