Sunday Worship

I got up at 7:30 this morning. I wake up at about 6:30 though as that's when the kids get up and make a lot of noise. After spending time in God's Word and in prayer, it was time for breakfast. One of the other girls offered to make scrambled eggs for those who were up, so I only had to make the coffee. 

Above is the washing lines for the babies. 

Below is two of the girls waiting for our ride to church

Just before 10am a girl, Emily, came and picked us up for church. Emily is the niece of the lady who runs Amani and is taking over more responsibility from her aunt. She's a little younger than me and is from Florida.  

We went to a church called Worship Harvest Ministries, where most of the volunteers from Amani go. One of the girls goes to a Catholic church and a couple of the younger ones went and visited a different church. 

I loved the service, but it also made me miss all my church family. 

There was lots of beautiful singing, clapping and dancing. Strangely enough I felt very comfortable there. I've been to churches back home where they were very animated in their worship and they made me feel uncomfortable, like it was all a show. Yet, here it was just so enjoyable. I felt privileged to be a part of it and it made me a little emotional. Everyone sings beautifully and so loud! There was maybe just over 50 people and their singing was probably 5 times as loud as the singing at Frankston. The songs were easy to learn. I only knew one from home, "Man of Sorrows". Every now and then the words on the projector would be wrong or they'd forget to change the slide, but everyone would just sing their own thing until the slides caught up. We sang about 5 songs and the 3 or 4 people got up and shared different things that God had done in their lives recently. Then we had communion. This is rare, some of the girls who have been here a couple of times said they've never had communion here before. We had bread and red cordial. 

They took up the tithe then, and called up the musicians to perform as the bag was passed around. It was a little different but the music was great. The music leader would point at a musician and say "listen to Brother Timothy!", then he'd do his own little solo. They had 2 electric guitars, 1 acoustic, drums and a keyboard. After that we had the sermon. The text was John 6:22-33 and the sermon probably went for about an hour. It was a bit unstructured compared to what I'm used to. He would read a verse, then talk about it, move onto the next verse, talk about it etc, but he wasn't very consistent with his theme. I'm not actually sure what his main theme was. He also "ended" the sermon twice before he actually finished. He'd read a Bible verse and say "we can end the sermon here, because it wraps it up", and then he'd keep speaking:). 

The little catch phrase they use for church is "church starts on Monday, Sunday is garage time." It means something like Sunday is when we get our "nuts and bolts" tightened for the week. 

After church I briefly met Emily's aunt, Danyne, who sort of "owns" Amani. She says "y'all" a lot:).

We went back to Amani to get ready for the party. I wasn't sure if I really wanted to go or not, but I'm glad I did. It's hard not knowing anybody. Even the girls I'm staying with I still don't know very well. I got to meet some more people today though. To begin with I was sitting with Katelyn, but Danyne noticed it was almost completely locals on one side of the room and mzungus on the other. So she announced, "Okay, new rule, no more than 2 of the same colour next to each other!" So everyone got up and moved around and I ended up sitting with 3 Ugandan men and Charlie, the Australian girl who took us to Budundo yesterday. I found out that Charlie is from Perth and she does the administration side of Amani. 

So I met Patrick, Edward, and Paul and asked about their families and work. Patrick has been to Sydney once and couldn't believe I'd never been there. He said, "You've flown half way around the world to Africa and never been to Sydney!" He asked about my work and he said he'd been to a McDonald's once in South Africa. He thinks McDonald's is very organised because we everything is done a set way and very fast. Patrick has 5 kids and the eldest is named Joel. 

When I was talking to Edward, and he asked about my work, I had to explain what McDonald's was. When I said part of my job was to train new crew and teach them how to do things the correct way, he said, "Ah, you touch people's hearts with knowledge." I didn't know what to say to that! I can't imagine any of the trainees feeling that way!

The food was so good! We had rice with a beef stew, chapatis, chicken and beans with capsicum. 

Most people left after cake and ice cream. I have to say they definitely sing "Happy Birthday" much better than we do! They add more verses to our tune like, "how many years are you now?" and "you are looking very beautiful". I'm told celebrating birthdays is a fairly new tradition for Ugandans. 

Us girls stayed a little longer and played Uno. I find Uno is always different rules with different people. I taught them Ultimate Uno which the youth at Frankston play. They thought it was great until someone made the rule where you swap hands every colour change, then they got sick of it pretty quick. 

The photo above is Jonah, the little boy with the blood infection. He's still staying with Sandra but he seems much better. He was not as listless as he has been, in fact he wouldn't sit still long enough for me to get a good photo!

We got dropped back at Amani at about 5:30pm. When we arrived back all the kids were playing in the fenced front yard and yelled, "Aunty! Aunty! Come in here! So we went in and played for a little while. 

Little kids clinging to my skirts is a feeling I missed from Malawi. A few people back home asked me to give cuddles to the kids for them. I felt like I didn't have enough hands though! When 4 kids want to be picked up, do you pick up one and leave the others crying? 

Above is Jay. Apparently he will be in my cottage:).

Above is Katelyn with some of the boys who are trying to destroy a tree stump. 

A few of these boys asked me where I'll work and were very excited to hear that I'll be in their cottage. 

One of the older boys, William, told me they'd found 2 frogs today. I told him I liked frogs, but he didn't. He wanted to know why I liked frogs and I said that I like lots of things like frogs, lizards, geckos etc. I think William thought I was a little nuts:). He wanted to know if I liked lions, and I said I'd never seen a lion except for in a zoo. He proceeded to tell me that lion tastes very good and how they kill a lion and cut it open to get the meat out. 

Above is Elena.

This is Londa.

This is Jay again. He ended up on my lap most of the time. 

Jay was pretty happy with his prime spot until I had to go.... 

...Then, he bawled his little eyes out when I put him down. 

I just waved goodbye and he stopped crying as soon as I was round the corner. 

I've only just met them and I'm wondering how I'll ever leave. 

The power went out tonight for a good 45 min and I thought wouldn't get any blogging done, but it came back on so I'm not behind. 

I get to start work tomorrow! I feel like I haven't done anything yet, so I'm looking forward to getting into routine. 

"Whoever receives one of these little children in My name receives Me; and whoever receives Me, receives not Me but Him who sent me." -Jesus

Mark 9:37