THIS IS THE COMPLETE UP TO DATE REPORT FOR DAYS 1-4 – NEXT REPORT TO FOLLOW IN A FEW DAYS TIME

WE HAVE ARRIVED! Day 1 and 2 (Thursday and Friday in Nakabira)

Out journey was long and relevantly uneventful. We left Seaford at 1.30am arriving at Heathrow at 3.00 am for our 6.30 am flight to Amsterdam. We had a little problem when we checked in as one of our bags was very overweight despite our thinking that we were allowed more than the usual weight travelling to Uganda. It took a few minutes to discover that we were in fact allowed twice the normal weight but only in two bags – so a quick dash to buy an extra bag solved the problem! We arrived in Amsterdam at 8.00 am and picked up our connection to Uganda leaving 10.10 am. Fortunately we had managed to book seats with extra legroom and so our 8 hour flight to Entebbe was quite comfortable and KLM proved excellent carriers. We touched down on time at 6.00 pm (8.00 pm local time) to be met by Gerald Isabirye from the Baptist Union of Uganda, our host for the week and an old friend, along with our missionaries with BMS from our Dorchester Church Chris and Christine Leach. Exhausted we finally got to bed around 10.00 pm.

Day 2 started at 8.30 and by 9.30 am we were on the road with Gerald, Oscar and Phillis, our translators, down to the south-east of Uganda. We stopped at the old colonial centre of Jinja for lunch and then headed north toward Kamuli where we would be based for the next few nights. We are staying at the Pentagon Guest House - Kamuli’s finest with B&B costing about £7 each per night. For this we get a small twin bed room but electricity only in the evenings. After leaving things in our rooms we headed off again the 25 kilometres to the rural village of Nakabira. The only community building in this village is the small Baptist church led by Pastor Ronald a reformed alcoholic who started the church here just three years ago. The reason we have come to Nakabira is that Gerald’s family come from here and of the village population of 500 people some 300 are related to him. The road from Kamuli is a dirt track which is rutted, pitted and abounding with potholes so the journey is slow. The best part of the road is the last six kilometres when we turn off the main road toward Nakabira itself. This is because virtually no cars travel this road which was only built three years ago across a swamp that otherwise meant the village was almost totally isolated from the world. The village has no electricity and no running water and the nearest school is 3 km away across the new road and when we arrive at around 4.00 pm it is to find most of the village has been waiting for us since early in the morning. Most of the villagers have never seen a ‘muzungu’ (white man) before and there is much excitement a s we arrive and feel a little like animals at the zoo. On or two small children burst into tears at the strange sight of white men! The welcome they gave to us is beyond anything I have ever previously experienced and it becomes very clear that it is seen by all the villagers as a mark of great honour that visitors from overseas have come to meet with them. We are truly well feted wherever we go.

We are greeted by the village Headman, a Muslim, who is also Gerald’s uncle and a number of other pastors who have come just to meet us. On our second day the district chairman comes to meet us. He is the senior political figure in the area and also a fine young Christian man.

The church is a large mud hut and people sit on an assortment of chairs with some sofas for the guests and church leaders at the front. The worship is led entirely by the women of the congregation and much of it by the children’s choir. The only musical instruments are some bongos. They are very excited when Nathan sings to them using his guitar. There are lots of children in attendance as they have taken time of school to see the muzungus, but the young people are about to take their O levels and A Levels so that are not present. Nathan and Phillis take the children aside for their own programme which they have to hastily arrange and Nathan finds himself speaking to them with Philis translating.

From Thursday evening through to Friday evening I am called upon to speak five times to the congregation of several hundred as well as to take some question and answer sessions and to pray for people mostly with sickness of some kind. The numbers wanting prayer are so great that Nathan has to come and join the prayer ministry team and pray for people to be healed as well. Quite a number ask for prayers that relate to the presence of witchcraft in their families! There is plenty of food and the quality of the staples is very high though most of us would find the cuts of beef and chicken very difficult to eat.

In Uganda the sun rises every day of the year at 7.00 am and sets at 7.00 pm without fail so it is pitch dark by the time we get back to the guest house. However, praise the Lord (we have quickly learnt that all Christians start whatever they want to say by saying this), the electricity is on in our hotel so I am able to write this report. However, there is no satellite connection here so I cannot send this to you until we return to Kampala on Sunday evening when I had anticipated sending my second report so I shall have to combine this with my first into one report with part two to follow below.

Day 3 and 4 (Saturday and Sunday in Kamuli)

On Saturday we made our way across town to Kamuli Baptist Church where we were due to speak at a Youth Conference. As is normal in Africa at the time the Conference was due to start there was almost no-one there. Not even the promise of seeing muzungu’s could change African punctuality. It was a completely different setting and a completely different group of people being young people aged from around 13 upwards, ignoring the endless stream of children from the local houses who came along to see the muzungu’s as word got around, but the day was for us to be as amazing as the previous two in Nakabira. Many of the young people who came were from a local Christian School called the Central College Kamuli or CCK for short – sound familiar? I had planned the days teaching around the story of the Philippian church under the title of a ‘Young Church with Young Leaders.’ Amongst the themes I wanted to draw out of this story was that they should hold onto their dreams because it takes only one man or woman to change their country for God; that they should live lives worthy of their calling as children of God; and that Jesus has dreams for them as he wants them to shine like stars in the universe. Their willingness to sit and take in teaching for long periods of time, made more difficult by hearing everything second hand through a translator would put many of us to shame!

There were many opportunities to worship and they showed a great appreciation of Nathan singing to them ‘western style’ as they described it. However we were also able to worship through the schools two choirs, the first their Chapel Choir who danced their way to the front with an incredible rendition of the Hallelujah Chorus – African style, and continued in the same high quality of signing to lead our worship. A little later the school’s Scripture Union Choir were called forward and whilst their repertoire was different it did not diming one bit in quality of presentation from the chapel choir. The way these young people worship Jesus I assure you they would have no problems singing ‘O I feel like dancing’ but they would certainly not think it was foolishness but perfectly natural! During the lunch break their preferred method of relaxation and having fun was to treat one another to an impromptu concert. For sure they have no TV’s, playstations, radio, iPods, books and magazines, to distract them but watching them have such fun just praising the Lord together was a wonderful thing to see.

We had a number of opportunities during the day for them to ask questions and we were happy for them to ask us about anything they wanted and not just about Philippians. So we had lots of questions about relationships and how to find the right husband and what do you do when a man tells you that he has had a vision from God saying you should get married to him. There are two boys pictured one wanting to know hos you can tell false pastors from righteous ones and the second wanting to know why in England boys wear their trousers so low their pants are showing – I let Nathan answer that one. The day ended with a game of football. We bought one for the church here and the church at Nakibira and left it with the Pastor’s for them to keep and use evangelistically as the boys here are football and premiership mad. Mostly they follow Chelsea, Manchester United, Arsenal or Liverpool just like the kids at home. Tomorrow we return to Kamuli for the morning service with Pastor Herbert the minister leading the worship. Unusually he is not married yet and the church is keen to help him along but he is very busy because as well as being Pastor here he teaches at the national Baptist College in Jinja (70kms away) and is there most weeks of the year.

On Sunday we returned to the church for the morning service. It was due to start at 10.00 am but Gerald said that he would pick us up from the guesthouse at about 10.00am as no one would arrive for the service much before 10.30 am. We had no doubt he was right as this was the general pattern we had experienced even in just a few days. So Gerald arrived late, of course, and we arrived around 10.20 am with the service having started with about 20 people present. By the time we finished at around 12.15 pm there was around 50-70 men women and children in the building. Nathan again sang some songs to the congregation and I preached this time on I Corinthians 13. Just 100 yards from the church is another church building belonging to a cult group who follow a Ugandan prophet called Noah; they are very rich and wealthy. They call themselves the Church of Righteousness. Ugandan worship is always very lively, very real and accompanied by dancing but the Church of Righteousness were louder than most and as I was reading from I Corinthians 13 they became extremely loud with much yelling a screeching and I said to the congregation that they were the clanging cymbals of whom Paul spoke who without the love of Jesus would make a great noise but it would be without meaning (1 Corinthians 13:1-3). I then somewhat boldly felt led to say that now that we were going to hear the word of God the godless noise from next door would cease and not interrupt us. You may say I ‘got lucky’ but for the next 35 minutes there was no further noise and they did not start their yelling and screeching until we finished the service 45 minutes later.

After the service we met together with the church council which you will see from the picture includes both men and women, indeed at least two married couples. Pastor Herbert in his very quiet manner chaired the meeting which of course was arranged for them to share their needs with us. This did not happen in Nakabira and whilst in one way in their rural setting they had absolutely nothing there was a sense in which they therefore needed nothing! Whereas at Kamuli the church had just a little and so they had some clear needs which they were able to express though somewhat imperfectly. Although my experience of travel into the two-thirds world is limited I do understand the extent to which as a visitor from a rich, foreign white country, I am seen as a source of potential support to them. For this same reason both Nathan and I are constantly asked for our e-mail address but it would be unwise to give it out in this way and so we direct people to make contact through Gerald. It seems a little mean but on the other hand it is a wise thing to do. The church has five need as the spelled them out to us. Since their foundation in 1992 they have planted something like ten other churches in the villages becoming something of a ‘resourcing centre’ as well as the central church in the local association of which Pastor Herbert is the ‘Key Pastor’ but this work is hampered by a lack of transport. Pastor Herbert who has been at Kamuli since it was founded has not for example been able to visit the Nakabira Church. So their first need was for a motorbike to aid their missions. The second, third and fourth needs involved buildings. They have started but not been able to finish their new latrines. At present the Pastor lives in a small cubicle to the rear of the church (just behind Nathan in the above picture) and they would like to provide a proper home for him (their site is 100ft x 200ft so there is plenty of room) with space also for the missioners who visit the church often to aid with evangelism. This would solve their fourth need by releasing this space to enable the church to establish a proper office base for their ministry. Their final need was for the equipment needed to conduct outside missions (generators, PA system, musical instruments etc) and help their worship. The only instrument they have is a borrowed keyboard with missing keys. It was typically ‘African’ that when asked what the budget was for these needs they had no answer. I am in no position to make promises, and it would be foolish to do so, not least because we have only been here four days and there are ten still to go! However, to fail to respond to such needs or to be moved by the people you meet and the situations you encounter hardly seems an option either.

We have done a few small things already providing meals for the Conference in Nakibira and in Kamuli as in Africa feeding one another is a social grace of the highest importance. If we did not have Gerald protecting us we would have ended up eating four or five meals in Nakabira one after the others as we visited people in the village, even though they know you have had a meal already and even though the food they give you is all the food in the house! We also took footballs to both Nakibira and Kamuli which we bought here at a cost much higher than back home! Finally we will arrange to send some Bibles back to Nakibira through Gerald with the money some of you provided to us; small things but they will be appreciated.

We adjourned from the church to eat lunch in a restaurant which we were happy to pay for. A meal for 13 people cost about £25 in total. They would have been happy to cook for us at the church but this would have delayed our departure by some hours so this way we were able to leave by 2.15 pm. On the way back we stopped to visit with some of Gerald’s cousins who were not able to come to his wedding in May to pick up a chicken which was their wedding gift – a live chicken! In Jinja we stopped to meet with Gerald’s mother and a meal this time could not be avoided. By the time we returned home it was almost 10.00 pm and we were ready for a good night’s sleep.