1st Week in Uganda: Kampala Ministry

Our first week in Uganda was spent in the capital city of Uganda. We went to church on the first Sunday...church that lasted 5 hours!! But it was awesome. The church then took us all to a restaurant for lunch and we had a "Ugandan" meal. It was pretty, thought I'm not quite sure what it all was. Then the next few days we did school ministry. We did our "True Love Waits" program in many schools. On a typical day we would go to two schools. We would do our program as a big assembly and then break off into smaller same gendered groups. Or we would start in smaller groups if the school was very large. One day we broke into smaller groups to start. Our team divided into about 3 groups in the school. My MIG had one group of about 200 students. We had no microphone and my voice was not the greatest because of all the dust I had been breathing in. But I was able to do the program with God's help. So we started the program and I was doing the introduction and explaining who we were and where we were from, and then all the sudden I turned around and about 100 more students were walking over to our group. So I started over and was speaking so loud trying to be able to have the students in the back be able to hear me. It was a great presentation and the students really responded to us. At the end of the program we gave the students the option to commit to purity by signing a purity card... and we had such a response from the students that we ran out of cards! Another school we went to was a Muslim school. It was amazing that we were even able to go there being a Christian missionary group. But the school has a good relationship with the MCChurch that we were working with that we were able to go there. We did an all school assembly and all sat in patio furniture. It was pretty funny...not your typical school auditorium. We did the program and ended up making our program much longer because we were waiting for Pastor Ssempa to arrive. He got delayed for some reason so we had to stall for over an hour. We did skits and just kept going. At points it seemed like none of the students were listening, but when the pastor finally arrived and talked about leadership and asked who in the school wanted to be leaders, nearly 30 students stood up and said that they wanted to be leaders of the school. Pastor Ssempa was going to return and give them leadership training. One of the things that amazed me about this was that the students who stood up were serious about their commitment. And some of them looked like they were the popular kids in the school. Then we were allowed to pray for them in their school. It was amazing!
A few days we didn't go to secondary schools and were unable to do our typical program. One of those days we went to a primary school and did a VBS program which was amazing. I submitted a testimony to the GE website after that school and my mom posted it on here while I was in Uganda. That school was very amazing. We were in a 3rd or 4th grade classroom and did a good VBS program. One of the other days we did not go to a secondary school we went to an orphanage on an island in the middle of Lake Victoria. That place was very special. We had to take boats to get there. It was about a 2o minute boat ride with some very unique looking life jackets. The place we went to was called African Renewal Ministries and it is a self sustaining island village. Basically, it is a Christian run program and the island has a school, farm, clinic, housing and a camp. The orphans live in houses with "brothers" and "sisters" and house "parents" like a real family and they are able to grow up in a home. It was a really awesome ministry. The ministry also allows the kids to go to a week of camp. And they bring other kids in from surrounding areas for a camp week. We were able to take a tour of the island and talk to some of the house mothers. And then we did a VBS program for the kids. My MIG worked with the younger kids and did a few Bible story skits and some coloring. I sat next to and colored with a little boy named Henry. He was adorable! I drew Jonah and the Whale and he told me that it was really Jonah and the Big Fish. I laughed. He was very smart. He was able 8 or 9 years old.
Ministry in Kampala was amazing. The places we went were typically about 1 -2 hours out of the city and driving back from those places in the evening proved to be interesting....I never would have guessed that there would be so much traffic in Uganda. It was unbelievable. One night it took us a very long time to get back to the hostel for dinner because of all the traffic. It was totally stopped traffic. During this week we were also taken to the market to buy skits. Many of the girls on my team didn't bring enough skits to wear everyday, so that meant a shopping trip. All the girls bought skits or dresses for about 7-8 U.S. dollars.