Chicken Chicken Cow - February 14, 2010
The shrill laughter of about twenty kids has just died down as I start this post. After a long day of worship and meetings (my kind of day), we took tea back at the pastor’s house, then played with some of the local kids who kept peeking in the door. Kelly (of the John and Kelly Sanders duo) took the lead with about 10 minutes of copy cat. We then took it up a level and tried Uganda-fying Duck Duck Goose. We went for Chicken Chicken Cow (or “enkooko enkooko entay”). It was a hit and thus the constant laughter. I had to duck out (no pun intended) when Teddy, one of the girls taking care of us here softly but demandingly told me it was my time for “shower” (I couldn’t tell if it was because I stunk or because she didn’t want the water they had graciously heated for me to cool). So now I’m clean and using up some precious battery power to make a post.
John and Kelly are well, apart from having their luggage lost on the Amsterdam to Entebbe flight. They’ve been three days in the same clothes and aren’t dead yet– they’re troopers. The bags should arrive tonight at 9pm and Paul will bring them to us in the morning. John and Kelly have been awesome companions and have taken the cultural adjustment (and lack of clothing) in stride.
We started today off with another amazing, joyful, jubilant, watery-eyed worship service. Kelly and John led Sunday school and shared the story of Joseph. I was invited to preach and spoke from Nehemiah, encouraging the community to work together to “rebuild their wall” and stay faithful to the Lord. After a quick lunch, we returned to the church in the afternoon for a meeting with the business committee and the 30 proposed loan recipients. The community has done great work in preparing loan applicants, and we were able to share about a business training plan and the micro enterprise strategy, which will be employed shortly. John assisted me by wonderfully explaining the economic principle of supply and demand.
The leadership structure here continues to grow and I am more and more optimistic about the success of our partnership. They have identified two assistant administrators to work with Fredrick Makumbi, Pastor continues to demonstrate integrity and effective management, and the community members are successfully accomplishing the projects. It’s truly a work of the Lord here, and I am privileged to be a part of it.
Lastly, the Simply the Story (STS) training team has arrived after more than twenty hours of travel from Nairobi. We had a wonderful chat with them over tea and I think this week of evangelism training is going to be incredibly impacting on the community.
Tomorrow, we will join in the STS training as well as have our first computer training session with the administrators. Please continue to pray for us, for wisdom and humility in all of our dealings and pray that the STS training team would be refreshed and effective in the training of community members.