The Journey Into Uganda continued

Playing at the Air Field

There is a Hasidic tale that goes like this:

“A disciple asks the rebbe, ‘Why does Torah tell us to “place these words upon our hearts”? Why does it not tell us to place these holy words in our hearts?’ The rebbe answers, “It is because as we are, our hearts are closed, and we cannot place the holy words in our hearts. So we place them on top of our hearts. And there they stay until, one day, the hearts breaks and the words fall in.”

This is an interesting Hasidic tale. At the initial reading of it, I find myself relating to the questioner (the disciple). Often times in a disciples life we want to rush the Words of Life into our hearts (even when we are not ready to handle or understand the truth). We have a developed zealousness that never seems to be patient and wait upon the Lord. We strive to understand all. And in understanding all (as we tend to think more highly of ourselves than we ought), we believe we need to teach all. And in teaching all, we develop strategies of discipleship for others when in all actuality we struggle to be discipled ourselves. The prestige of being a teacher/rabbi, one who is sought for advice and answers, can overwhelm the fragile words that sit upon our heart waiting for that moment when our heart finally breaks and the words sink in.

Discipleship is not for the faint of heart or those seeking prestige or money or fame or… Discipleship is long, slow and arduous. It is painful many of the times. It hurts when the heart breaks and the Words of Life sink in. It takes time learning to follow the heart and footsteps of Jesus.

I found this never more true then in Uganda. I was told, some time back, by someone who has been a missionary in Uganda, that if a missionary could disciple just 5 people, he/she would have made a world of difference. 5!

As I ventured into Uganda, I found that discipleship is extremely tough. When centuries and millennia have passed and evil (greed, abuse, witchcraft, demon possession) has been so incorporated into the culture, trying to follow Jesus let alone teach others to follow Jesus is truly counter-cultural. The steps of faith are taken with care and discernment. They are not taken lightly. Each step of a disciple echos throughout the past and into the future and resonates the song of life–the song of God. All the while, the centuries of evil try to regain each step that was lost. And many times succeed because people are unwilling to give themselves over completely to God. They harbor deceit or greed or lust for power/authority/influence.

Discipleship…not for the faint of heart in Uganda. Not for those people seeking instant success or money. Discipleship requires the Words of Life to sink in only when the heart breaks. And that takes time, patience and the Spirit of God.

Jeff, Cheryl, Andrew, Aimee Jo, Doug, Destiny, Charity, Isaac, Clea and all those who are (or have been) missionaries in Uganda keep taking each step of faith and keep on the long road of discipling. You efforts are not in vain (even when they seem like it). The Spirit of God is making a difference through you. Never forget that!

The Journey into Uganda

“The giving of God that populates our past and the reliability of God that marks our future makes life in the present different.”

- Walter Brueggemann

We stand at the foot of the mountains-the Rwenzori Mountains to be exact. Our past journeys have been full of companions that have walked with us and us with them. We hear the echos of the faith of those that our journey has intersected. Echos that whisper ever so softly into our ears and hearts words of love. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind…love your neighbor as yourself.” Words of mercy and compassion. “What does God require of you: but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.” Words of questing and adventure. “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness…” And words of life. “In him was life, and the life was the light of men.”

We stand at the base of the mountains and we know these voices will always be with us. The panoramic view before us is breathtaking and inspiring but also daunting and unknown. Do we step forward into a land and into a people whose culture we know very little about?

What we have experienced has deconstructed most everything we have learned in our western (American, modern, industrialized, church, etc.) culture. We have encountered a culture which does not have a moral foundation. BUT, they hold respect as a cultural must. They value peace/harmony above conflict. They value community above individuality. The last one (in my estimate) being the most important. Everything is done in and for the sake of the community, whether that be your immediate family or your tribe. Individuality is not valued. Coming from a culture which idolizes our individuality (even in our theology), this has been an eye opening experience. Let me give you an example. When we are sick in our western culture, what happens? Most likely we will stay home. We do not want anybody to visit us, we just want to be alone and let our bodies work through the illness. In the Ugandan culture (particularly the Batooro culture), when someone is sick, it is expected for people to drop by and visit. If a person does not then he/she is seen as not valuing the community or friendship. If the sick person refuses the visit then they are seen as not valuing the community or friendship. So when someone is sick, expect visitors to drop by and express their concern and love for you. Quite the opposite to what I am accustomed too.

Another example would be the concept of time. In our western culture, we value being on time to appointments and meetings. I can’t count the many conversations I have been a part of discussing how people do not value something because they do not seem to show up “on time”.

Time is money…

Time is precious…

Time is important…

We have our days scheduled (over scheduled most of the time). We get frustrated driving on I-5 because the traffic will make us late for whatever. (I know because I have done it many times.) Our lives revolve around time.

Here in Uganda, time is not valued. The event is valued over time. Two Sundays ago, “church” is supposed to start at 10 AM. We started at 11 AM because that is when most everyone showed up. So instead of ending at noon, we ended about 1:30 PM. Now to a westerner, how ANNOYING would this be? Extremely! But let us challenge the priority of time. Say we started the worship service at 10 AM like we were supposed to. We would have been worshipping with ourselves. What does that communicate? Time is more important than people. Is that really the message of Jesus? One might even ask some of the Ugandans where they were and why they were not “on time”. Their response may be that they were greeting someone on the road. Again, in a culture that values community, do you berate the Ugandan for not being committed or question their devotion to God because they are late? I think the Apostle Paul would say something along the lines of “BY NO MEANS!” The Ugandan was acting appropriately in the culture–he/she was valuing the community by greeting the person on the road.

But let us not deceive ourselves. Uganda is not a bastion of holiness. The evil in the culture is so real, you can almost reach your hand out and touch it. Witchcraft is rampant. Deceit is valued. Selfishness is cherished. Greed runs rampant. The list could go on.

Let me tell you a story. A few days back a Ugandan man was doing something (nobody knows quite sure what) on Lake Saaka. For those that have been here, that is the lake that almost completely surrounds Camp Saaka (where Faith Quest is held). He drowned. His body wasn’t found for 3 days. Here is where the story gets intriguing. Lake Saaka and the land where Camp Saaka is is said to be the place where the Bachwezi spirits are supposed to live. Tradition says that the people would sacrifice a life each year to please the spirits or the spirits would take a life. The death was perceived that the spirits took the life of this man (who is rumored to an excellent swimmer) for this year. As you can see, the deception of the Deceiver is strong. He has had a strangle hold on the culture for many centuries. This is a land that calls evil a trusted friend.

The view from the base of the mountains is breathtaking and inspiring but also daunting and unknown. We stand at the base looking up, not because of the terrain but because we know only God can lead us in the direction of the future–a future that may possibly mean new companions. Our present is different because of our past (including our limited experience in Uganda) and future. We view things differently. So we stand at the base, in the present, waiting…

Uganda pt. 4 Fort Portal

Sunday we worshiped with the Fort Portal Church again. During worship we would get together with 2 or 3 people and pray together. I enjoyed this practice very much. We would pray for each other and for whatever requests we talked about. It was an intimate time with God and with the Ugandans we were praying with/for. After communion the kids and speaker were called to the front and someone would offer a prayer of thanksgiving, protection and hope on behalf of them. What another wonderful way to use prayer in worship!

Some of the church members had a hard time getting to worship today because of the riots that were happening in Kenya. The cost of fuel sky rocketed while we were there. Because petrol was not coming from Kenya, the government of Uganda decided it was best for the city of Kampala to have most of the petrol in the country. A fuel truck even pumped petrol out of a fuel tank at a gas station in Fort Portal to take it back to Kampala. With that being written, petrol was in high demand. The highest price we saw it was around $12 a gallon. Americans are complaining about $3 a gallon and here in Uganda it was $12 (and these people really can’t afford that).

Church ended and we headed to lunch at Mountains of the Moon Resort. For lunch I had a 2 liter bottle of water, fillet mignon and potatoes. I paid $13 for fillet mignon. There is something not right about that. It was good though!

We went back to the hotel (Rwenzori View Guest House) and rested some. We had dinner at the hotel and then called it a night. Greg had the Smore Fest (everytime Greg comes he brings smore stuff and Kinley, Alex, Isaac and Silas have smores).

On Monday we went to a waterfall that was close to town and some caves (they really weren’t caves just some indentions in the rock).  I did find a tree that intrigued me though. Here is a picture of the flower that was on it. One of the interesting things about this tree  was the bloom was only on half of the tree. The left side of the tree was green and the right side was bare with these flowers on it.

Monday afternoon some of the team went swimming at Mountains of the Moon. I sat on the lawn chair and read some in one of the books I brought. It was a nice relaxing day. Tomorrow we would head to a village and spend some time with the Ugandans there.

Uganda pt. 3 Faith Quest

We left Fort Portal on Tuesday. We spent that morning packing and getting things around to load on the Lorie (truck). The gang arrived at Camp Saaka in the afternoon and we began to pitch the tents. We had an exercise in manhood. Here is the situation. 3 new tents that have never been assembled before. 3 men that have never worked together assembling tents. The contents of one tent were dumped onto the ground and directions were sewed onto the outer bag. What do you do? If you chose the option go straight to the contents on the ground–welcome to manhood. About an hour later all tents were assembled and we were sitting in some chairs enjoying being at Camp Saaka. Behind the relaxed atmosphere was the reason we came to Uganda in the first place. Faith Quest Uganda was starting tomorrow. Some saw the New Year with singing, I was exhausted so I slept the New Year in.

Tomorrow arrived and we began to make the final preparations for Faith Quest. The theme was Aluta Continua (the battle/struggle continues). Our passage was out of Ephesians 6–the armor of God. Teens from all over Uganda began to arrive (Mbarara, Kampala, Jinga). Fort Portal, Kyenjojo, Rwebisengo were already there. Welcome to Fort Saaka. You are now joining the army of the Lord. Are you willing to give up everything for the sake of your King? So began boot camp. People were divided up into squads and boot camp commenced. Shouts of Aluta Continua echoed over the water, obstacle courses were run and claimed a few injuries. One guy even tried to decapitate himself (sorry Johno).

I have to be honest with you. I did not know what to expect here. You think teens are teens wherever they are in the world but you never know until you experience it. I was thankful that I did not have the opening session. As darkness began to set in, worship began in the amphitheater. Welcome to Uganda worship! It was an amazing experience. The teens were singing and dancing, with songs in Ratooro, Swahili, English and a few other languages (I don’t remember them all). It was an amazing experience. It reminded me of that future event when all nations will come together and worship the King of kings. I did not understand most of what was sung that night but my soul was using it’s own language to worship with all those present. Here are a few pics.

I had the privilege of speaking 3 times. About two hours before my first time to speak my mind and soul began to be unsettled. I sat alone at the amphitheater and just began to pray the Jesus prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God have mercy on me a sinner. All I knew to do was to repeat that prayer and repent of my sins. So I began to list my sins before the Lord and lay them at the cross asking for forgiveness. 2 hours of this happened. I was beginning to panic because my soul was still not settled and there was this little voice that kept telling me I didn’t have anything to say. The teens began to sing, my group prayed over me and still no peace in my soul. I still repeated the Jesus prayer throughout the songs of worship and then on the song before I was about to speak—silence. Peace descended on me and hushed everything and every voice. I can’t explain it. Try to imagine the noisiest place you have ever been in and then all of a sudden there is total silence and peace. I thanked God for the peace, stepped toward the microphone and spoke. You want to know what I spoke on that night–”Strength in numbers.”

We all took our turns speaking and leading activities. There are many more stories to be told. One evening we went into the village next to the camp and worshiped around a bonfire. I can’t even begin to have the words for that experience. All I can say is AWESOME and NUTS!

We had purity classes taught by Jeff and Cheryl Cash. We had conversations about God’s view of power and how to use it. We had prayer warriors praying for each request of the teenagers. We had dramas, paintings and tribal dances. A cow was slaughtered to eat. Flour bombs were thrown at each other. Glow lights were thrown at Greg dressed in a fireman’s suit. That was an experience because they had never seen glow lights.

The last night of Faith Quest was bitter sweet. I was so tired and ready for a shower (a real shower), but I was enjoying what God was doing at Faith Quest. The last worship ended and I was sad to see it go. I was ready to go into the early hours of the morning. But some of the groups had to get an early start the next morning. A group of us conversed some at the tents and then I called it a night and crawled into my sleeping bag.

The next morning we said goodbye to Mbarara and Rwebisengo, Jinga and Kampala. We packed our bags and loaded our luggage. Jeff let me drive the hilux back to Fort Portal. Thanks Jeff. We unloaded some of the equipment at the Cash’s house. Relaxed some during the afternoon in the shade. And finally around 5 PM checked into our hotel and took a shower.

A wonderful 5 days of worship, bible study and prayer. Thank you Cheryl for all your work praying for the teens. What a great privilege it was to serve with Jeff, Cheryl, Andrew, Aimee Jo and the rest of the gang!