Uganda: Day 8

Tuesday was a much-needed catch-up-on-sleep morning. We had the option to go across the street to the hotel's pool, but it was our first day of rain in Uganda, so I spent a little longer under my mosquito net instead. We left around 10:30 for the Catholic martyr shrine in the city. Richmond was running late due to traffic, so he abandoned his car on the street where he was sitting at a stand-still, called his wife to come get it, and took a boda boda to the hotel. Kampala traffic puts a whole new perspective on how horrid I thought Houston traffic was. 

Rose met us at the shrine and introduced us to our tour guide. It was difficult to hear all that he was telling us, so to be perfectly honest I didn't learn a whole lot about the history of this place. Pretty much my only takeaway was that Uganda celebrates Martyrs' Day on June 3, so there was much preparation happening for that event to take place next week. 

 

 

Pretty different from my posts full of basilicas and the martyrdom at the Colosseum, but still a tragic and interesting piece of history. 

We met the majority of the PDN staff for lunch at Cafe Javas so that Dr. MacGregor, his wife Kelly, Alex, and Doreen could talk about a sponsorship program for the women in the slums that we had met on Sunday. Cafe Javas looks like a Dunkin Donuts and has a little mixture of foods from all over the place, from burritos to curry. We enjoyed the escape from the rain and some chocolate cake before we loaded back up for pastoral visits. Kelly and Becca split off from the group to go back to the slums and teach some of the women the crafts that they had taught at the conference the week before. 

We visited two of the Bear Pit winners from last year's conference to see their businesses and hear about their successes as a result of their Bear Pit funding. Michael, who we had met at dinner the week before, has a chicken business and his wife runs a school out of their spare building. We gathered on his porch out of the red mud and rain and prayed over his growing business. 

We had two extra passengers when we got back on the bus and they were live chickens and I'll be honest, I wasn't terribly pumped about that. Arthur had stuck them in a water bottle box and piled empty water bottles on top of them to hold them down. As if that would keep them from escaping. 

Dr. MacGregor had Rose and Pastor Luke tell their testimonies while we drove to the pastors we were visiting (and gifting with chickens). We got to see their homes and meet their families before visiting the other Bear Pit winner, Eve. She grows mushrooms behind her church, but she plants the seeds in something resembling cotton/fertilizer inside plastic bags and hangs them from poles hung across the room. The mushrooms grow up and out of the bags until she's ready to sell them, and the ones she doesn't sell get dried and packaged to be sold in a different form. It was so neat to visit these pastors and see the way that the Lord had grown the small investments from the year before into real, profitable businesses that bless these pastors, their families, and their congregations more than we can even comprehend. 

That evening Dr. MacGregor and Richmond had another meeting about a potential partnership with the BDC, the students with whom we had eaten dinner the week before. We attended one of their classes while the director met with our faculty and worked out some exciting new partnership opportunities. It was weird to be back in class, but really interesting to realize that they are learning so many of the same concepts that we've been taught in the business school, all the way across the world. 

Dinner was just at the hotel that night, and we all ordered fried chicken and French fries. More of our team shared their testimonies and we just spent the evening getting to know each other a little better. It's such a diverse group of people and personalities, and it's crazy to realize the ways that God has used each individual to contribute to His purposes for this trip across the Atlantic. One of the testimonies shared was Arthur's, which included songs that have impacted his life along the way. He has a phenomenal voice and a beautiful story of declaring dependence on the Lord of love. He has huge dreams for the future of youth ministry in Uganda and in Africa as a whole. Very soon he will begin a campaign to raise funds in order to put on conferences throughout the country to train 500 youth pastors on how to have effective ministry. Arthur is goofy and ridiculous, but he is also talented and ready to act in the name of the Kingdom. Pray for his ministry and willingness to pursue the paths God presents.