Day Two

I thought we had died and gone to heaven’s throne early! The worship at Ggaba Community Church this morning was phenomenal. The team of twenty singers were not only praising God with their voices which were intense and perfect pitched but they praised the Lord with their “whole self” with movements that were not choreographed except by the Holy Spirit at the moment. We did experience a bit of heaven on earth. Then, after such amazing worship, we were introduced and it was our turn. One of our team slipped up alongside me and asked are we really going to sing after them? And boy did we sing. The Lord had led us to sing “How Great it Our God” and I was so thankful to God that our team was so bathed in the spirit because it was not as if this was a singing contest…we opened our mouth and the Lord’s glory fell. Crystal belted out the verses solo and then when we joined in on the chorus…so did the whole church. This is one of their favorite songs!...in English! We were lost in the moment and there was neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, American nor African in that moment. We were just the family of our great God.

Hmmmmm…what to Preach

Well, the Lord did it again. Any preacher who has preached more than five times in his life knows the feeling that comes when God changes your tune at the last moment. Knowing that I would preach at perhaps the greatest evangelical church in Uganda (in front of Pastor Peter Kasirivu, one of my heroes) I had worked for a couple of weeks on a sermon from 2 Kings on my favorite King…Josiah. I really wanted to preach that sermon. But Saturday evening I could not get peace about it so I called for several of our team to come and pray over me for wisdom. I went back to my room and opened my bible and a sermon dropped out of the back cover (a “throw down” I keep in case I’m ever in any church where the pastor suddenly cannot preach…I’ll be ready). It was a sermon I had actually developed for my evangelism class and taught at staff meeting when Pastor James asked me to speak recently. It was only a skeleton of a sermon actually, a rough outline but I knew this was God’s answer when I realized that it was the story of the man that according to Christian tradition had been led to Jesus by Philip and had subsequently taken the gospel for the first time to the continent of Africa! It was the story of Philip and the Ethiopian Eunich. I’m not sure what all I said but a preacher always knows when God takes over…it was particularly moving for me that several young men came forward to surrender to be church planters or everyday evangelists in their communities. Praise God…he alone is worthy.

And then Chaos Ensued…I think they call it Sunday School.

After the service was over we went to minister to the children’s and student’s Sunday School. I have never in thirty two years of full time ministry seen anything like it…there were kids everywhere. We were led into room after room, two or three of us on a team, where between 100 and 300 students were waiting (approximately 650 total). We had brought crayons and coloring sheets and some craft items but were totally unprepared for the sea of children we faced. God took over the situation, we adjusted and flexed (Bro. Si always says: blessed are the flexible for they shall not be bent out of shape) and in the end we sang, and taught the Helping Hand to Christ, and told bible stories and gave our testimonies and ended up with tearful eyes and joyful hearts again as the 650 mostly poor children came together at the end to get porridge a white milky liquid that would be for some of them their only meal today.

Tears flow like rain here.

My eyes are wet here quite often and again we cried as our nurse Diane Elrod shared about doing crafts with second graders. The idea was for them to put their hands on a giant stamp pad and them put that imprint on a paper plate with a bible verse…something to hang on their wall. Her heartbreak came when she dipped many of their little hands into the paint only to realize that they were riddled with sickle skin disease and they couldn’t straighten out their hands because their knuckles were arthritic and frozen in place. We cried some and prayed for them and remembered that their hairs are numbered by our loving Father.
–Donnie Anthony

I am so blown away by the children here. I continue to be in awe at the responsibility level of the children. They are given responsibility for their siblings at such a young age. I watched this morning as a boy, no more than first grade carrying his sleeping eight month old brother slumped over his shoulder fast asleep up two levels of stairs all the while carrying his chair in the other hand.

Sickness and disease seem to be all around us and while at home it’s so easy to turn the channel and look away- you cannot here. For example, there was the child who obviously had hydrocephalitis. His brain was swollen to the point where he could no longer hold his own head up. His sister who was not much bigger than he was, carried him in and sat him in chair right next to her. Tears ran down my face knowing that this condition is more than likely going to be fatal. I can only imagine as a mother how painful watching this process must be.

Today doing the craft with them was so much fun. We were in way over our heads but none the less it was fun! There are no words to describe how many children actually were and also how much they enjoyed this. How simply amazing that they will treasure this and it’s only a paper plate with their own handprint on it!

We connected with these children in such an awesome way. We did not have enough hands to hold them all, they would reach up non-stop and pull at our arms. What a gift they are, their faces will be forever etched in my mind. Each one touches you in such a special way.
-Ginger Cunningham


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