Surprised by Uganda

So after fun on the Nile, we departed on a bus the following morning to head
north to our ministry contact in Lira, Uganda. 
This is North central Uganda and pretty good sized town.  It was originally a city of about 180,000
that rapidly increased to over 300,000 as it was the location of many refugee
displacement camps from the recent (as recent as 4 years ago) domestic violence
that I will discuss more a bit later.  
We arrived to accommodations and couldn’t believe how nice it was, for
Ugandan standards at least.  My team is
staying at the headquarters of a British NGO called LightForce
International.  It’s a lovely home with 3
bedrooms, large living room with several couches, and grass in the front yard
which isn’t found anywhere in Africa! 
There is a live in maid and cook who makes my bed every morning, does
our laundry daily, and cook 3 meals a day for us which have been surprisingly
nice variety of Ugandan and British foods.  
The gentleman from England who is here running the facility at the
moment, is a very hospitably Christian man who we’ve all come to love. He is
about the same age as my parents and has a great business mind like my father,
so I’ve really enjoyed listening to stories of past business ventures and how
he’s come to spend half of his year in Uganda away from his family during his
retired years.    There is also 2 girls
from England and 1 American (who ironically enough is a previous World Racer)
that are here volunteering with the humanitarian work that LightForce carries
out in the region.   So its been nice to
get to know other young adults who love to travel and want to leave a mark in
the world.

Our actual ministry contact who picks us up from our lovely
home every day is a Pastor of a local Pentecostal church by the name of Pastor
John.  Funny enough, this is the 3^rd
country in a row where the ministry contact has never worked with a World Race
team before. So its kind of nice to be able to be their first and set the precedence
for future teams.  But at the same time,
there can be some challenges since neither party really knows what the other is
looking for in our month together. 
Although they speak English in Uganda, their accent is sometimes very
hard to decode which has often led to hilarious misinterpretations and awkward
moments of “lost in translation.� 
Anyway, Pastor John is the Pastor of all local Pastors, so he seems to
be a very busy man as he is also running a church.  But he told us upon our arrival that he has
been praying and fasting for seven year that an American team would visit his
church and community.   By the size of
his mid-section, I don’t presume the fasting was for extremely long periods of
time, but nonetheless this was extremely touching and profound when my team
heard this.  So we are trying our utmost
to do out best in our interactions with his church and the surrounding
community.    He is planning on taking us
to the local hospitals, prisons, and home visits to be an encouragement to
others.   For far, we’ve most spoke at
evening small groups that meet at his church throughout the weekdays, and of
course spoke at the Sunday service.

I’ve been touched by the hospitality and openness of all the
locals we’ve come in contact with.  They
treat us, almost in an unhealthy way, as if we are angels sent from
America.   We try to tell them that we
are no different than they are in God’s eyes, but perhaps some of it is also
cultural.  So instead of trying to change
their culture, I am learning to graciously accept their warmth and humble
gestures.

The weather here is pleasant, often sunny and warm through
out the day, with almost the surefire rain shower in the afternoon/evening
time.  Funny enough it hadn’t rained here
all season until the first day my team arrived. 
In Kenya, our local contact gave me the Kenyan name of Wambura, which
means “bringer of the rain.�    So I
clearly attribute the rain to my new African name.