I ended up going to Watoto Church, here in downtown Kampala, by myself. Until very recently it was known as the Kampala Pentacostal Church... but, the service was very much similar to our home church in Evansville, Crossroads Christian Church... similar contemporary worship style (including a Chris Tomlin song), similar multi-media technology, and the pastor read from an NIV Bible -- so it felt comfortable. The worship team wore these same outfits as in the picture on the right that I found on the internet...The church is initiating a capital building campaign, so the pastor's message was from Ecclesiastes 3, "There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven..." Kind of seems appropriate for this trip, huh? I was moved that God seems to get His message across to me whatever the context may be...
I ended up walking back to the hotel again after the service... this time was a little bit farther than last time, but I had a companion this time -- a young Ugandan man who had attended Watoto's service with me. I enjoyed talking to him, and I think he liked talking to an American -- he loves to read U.S. history, so he was asking a lot of questions. I'm fascinated by just how open and friendly the people are here in Uganda -- many people just want to talk to me. I also saw an
interesting sight after the two of us went our separate ways... check out the cows in the back of the truck in the photo... driving through the downtown area of a major city of over 2 million people... oh, and those are the local taxis -- van that they'll cram as many as 15 people into...I spent the rest of the afternoon reading in my hotel room and enjoying the weather with the window open... that is until it started to pour down rain... it was raining so hard at one point I couldn't even see the golf course outside my window.
I also realized I haven't shared much about my hotel room here in Kampala... it is just as nice as most of the hotels that I've stayed at in the U.S. It's a big room with a flat-screen TV, a little fridge, a nice sitting area with a couch and chair, and check out the wall carving that's above the bed -- except, there one thing missing... it has no clock anywhere in the room! I've also noticed that the vast majority of the people in Uganda don't wear a watch! It just confirmed for me that time is not valued nearly the same way in this culture that it is ours...This evening, I went and visited the shop of one of the Ugandans from this week's conference -- it's a small clothing store at one of the local hotels. The lady's name is Peace and she designs all of the clothes in her shop. Picked out something for Teresa, but wouldn't tell her what it is... Not telling you either -- you'll just have to wait until I get home and I'll take a photo of her modeling it.
Lastly, I just called and tried to set up a breakfast meeting for tomorrow with Ronnie, one of the Ugandans from the conference. We fly to Tanzania around 12:30 local time and I wanted to connect with him, but I learned that he's been extremely sick over the weekend. He thinks he may have malaria... Lord, I want to pray for Ronnie that he would be healed of this disease! He was one of the people that is an inspiration to me and so I ask for this in Jesus name! Amen!
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