Sunday, December 10, Church at Kiwatule

I slept about six hours, then snapped wide awake. I puttered around the room until 8:00 then went next door. Jon was up and looking pale yellow. He was moving slowly and would have no part of breakfast, so Jim and I went down.

The buffet was terrible, only bread, jam, and fruit. Jim walked to a table at the back of the dining room as I served myself. As he passed the only occupied table, a man said something about Chattanooga. It turned out that there was a large group from a Chattanooga church there in the guesthouse. One of the men was even from Ooltewah, not ten minutes from my home.

A waiter came up and asked if we wanted eggs. We took scrambled and had two perfectly prepared fresh eggs!

In the room, Jon was ready to go. He wouldn’t listen to reason at all. Even the story about the bathrooms at the church didn’t scare him back to bed. So off we went in the van when Vincent arrived at 9:30.

Church was already underway. A man I didn’t know was screaming at the small crowd of sponsored kids in Luganda. Joseph made us move up to the stage. The worship service started a few minutes later and ran for about 90 minutes. Michael’s skills on the keyboard have greatly improved, and the choir even sang one a capella song for me! As time passed, adults came and the kids were shifted to a mat in the back of the church. Then we went through a few comments from me, offering, and Jon climbed onto the podium to speak. His voice was quite weak even with the microphone, but he spoke for 45 solid minutes! I still can’t believe it!!

After church, many of the members, both young and old, came up to speak to us. It took well over an hour to get out, and I could have stayed much longer!

Jon wanted to go straight back to the guesthouse, so we hurried him back. Jim and I changed clothes, then went to the van. Vincent took us along with Grace to Steer’s Restaurant in downtown Kampala. It was a typical burger place. I couldn’t possibly stomach a burger, so I ordered a barbecue chicken sandwich and fries. The fries were great, but the sandwich had lettuce, tomatoes, raw onions, and mayonnaise to go with the very sweet barbecue sauce. And the chicken was not quite as tender as old shoe leather. So I ate only about three bites (and no, Austin, it didn’t get better).

Back in the van, we started calling on children. In the next four hours, we saw 15 children who lived near the church, many of them in their homes. The people were desperately poor, yet wanted to share sodas with us. In one home, both the father and mother are afflicted with AIDS. There is a new baby, who must also be, and there is another under five that looks quite thin. But the kids were happy and so very thankful for the sponsor fees.

We returned to the guesthouse at dark. As we walked up to our rooms, we passed a small group of men including those from Chattanooga. A man said, “Oh, I know that man.” I knew the voice at once. It was a Ugandan pastor who had visited Chattanooga recently. Lisa and I had taken the man to dinner in Chattanooga less than a month earlier!

Jon had slept all afternoon and was feeling 100% better. Although he had been snacking on beef jerky (of all things), he said he was ready to eat. It took forever for us to get our food, but Jim again reported that his spaghetti was great and I liked my grilled fish. We brought in packages of soup for Jon and the kitchen made one for him, which he gulped down!

I was exhausted and went to bed early. The purpose of our trip was underway