Ugandan Baby Shower

Yesterday at church it was announced that we would be going to visit Betty who gave birth on Wednesday.  I was instructed to bring firewood to give as a gift to the new again mother.  I had to run to town between church and the visit, so I just stopped a man on the road who was taking firewood into town to sell and bought all that he had.  When I got back to the village I found Rose and Deborah collecting their share of wood.  When I stopped they were very surprised to see the truck bed loaded with wood already!  I told them we could load all the wood up in the truck and take it to Betty's, that way we didn't have to carry it on our heads. (There is no way I would have made it to her house if I had to carry one of the bundles of wood I bought!)

So we loaded up the wood and three jerry cans full of water and set out for Betty's.   We even added a few ladies and their wood along the way.

Betty gave birth to a healthy baby boy (which I never thought to get a picture of!) on Wednesday.  She went to a hospital near by when she knew the baby was close.  We asked her if she walked, took a bike, a motorcycle, or a car.  She told us that she took a motorcycle...while in labor!  I mean, really, I am a whimp compared to these ladies.  She came home either the next day or two days after the same way, bouncing on the back of a motorcycle.

But this is the way a "baby shower" goes here.  You wait until after the baby is born, then you bring gifts.  Gifts like firewood, salt, sugar, soap, tea, jerry cans full of water, and some baby clothes if you have any.  Betty knew we were coming so she had prepared food for all of us.  So we all sat on mats in a nice cool hut that had just been smeared (That is where they use fresh cow dung and smear it on the floor and let it dry.  It keeps the dust down but can smell very strong the first day or so.) and held the little baby boy and ate posho, atapa, and pork.  We then sang a few songs and then they asked me to pray for Betty and the baby.  It is always such a fun time when all these ladies get together.  I am so thankful that I get to be a part of their lives out here.  It is a wonderful blessing.

Betty is in the pink flower dress.  This was after we ate our meal.

You can kind of see the pile of wood that we brought.  And all the jerry cans are full of water that some of the other ladies brought.

Just some of the ladies that were there.  More where coming as we left, carrying water on their heads, or firewood.

It won't be long until we are going to two more "baby showers"!  Penna (in the blue) is pregnant with twins and has two months left to go.  These will be her 8th and 9th babies.  You can be praying for her.

Our Easter Weekend

I realize that it has been a VERY LONG time since I (Ronnie) posted a blog.  I am afraid that Facebook has become my way of communicating with the rest of the world.  And that means that our blog has suffered.
But that doesn't mean that there aren't three or four blog posts that are not quite finished and are waiting to be posted.  For now though I thought I would write about our Easter weekend here in Obulle.
I have gathered from social media that Easter is the time to take beautiful family photos, but that is just one more thing we didn't do here - that and hunt for easter eggs, or give baskets of candy.  Instead it was truly centered about the celebration of our resurrected Savior which I appreciate.
On Friday Colin was asked to preach in a sister church about an hour away.  He wanted to do a very basic story of Easter.  He used my children's church material (picture cards) and storied through the creation story, then jumped to Jesus' birth, ministry and finally the Easter story.  He went with Dan and when they arrived at the church, only 5 adults were there.  About three times as many kids were there as well.  Colin had everyone sit in a circle and using the pictures he told the stories.  I later talked to Dan about how it went and his face just lit up!  He said it was one of the best teachings he had ever been a part of.  He loved it!  And he said that the rest of the people there also loved it.  Sometimes it seems like we need to "go deep" with folks here, but I am reminded time and time again that the more simple you make learning about the Bible, the better it is received.  The "deep" stuff will come, but for most, the simpler the better.
I stayed at our church here in Obulle.  There was a small group and it was nice.  I didn't do anything with the kids only because there were not that many.  Maybe around 20 kids, which is a very small group for me.  My friend Jennifer acted (or did a "drama") like she was Mary on Good Friday and told the story of Jesus coming into the city on Palm Sunday all they way up to him being crucified on Good Friday.
On Saturday we were all supposed to go door to door and talk to the community.  My ladies Bible study group had talked about going out to a few homes and practice their stories.  They picked four homes to visit.  I went and bought some soap, sugar and tea to give as gifts to the homes we went to.  Colin, Emma and a pastor that was visiting our village, went to homes where there were families that we not coming to church or that were unbelievers.  You can read about Colin's visiting in the blog just before this one.  The ladies and I had a great time and I feel like it was refreshing for these women to go and talk about Christ to their neighbors.  This was a "foot in the door" opportunity for us and I think we will go back as a group.  We even saw one of the ladies in church the next day!
On Sunday the church was full!  We ran out of benches for everyone to sit on.  After Jennifer did her "drama" I thought that I would pick up where she left off.  So I sort of interrupted the beginning of the service by running in to tell everyone that the tomb that they put Jesus in was empty.  I pretended to be Salome.  It was fun because I could see everyone's faces and lots of the congregation was really getting into it.  Then I took all the kids out for children's church.  About 70 children showed up.  We used the picture cards to tell the story of Passion week.  It was really great.  Then I gave an invitation and had 6 children give their lives to Christ!  While we were talking and praying one little boy (about 9 or 10 years old) who gave his life to Christ had tears steaming down his little face.  It was truly wonderful!  They then all got to color and I brought cookies for everyone to have.
After church was over I ran home and started cooking lunch.  We invited Dan and his family to join us and Rose requested that we have pizza for lunch.  I'd cooked pizza a few weeks back and had made too much for our family to eat so I took it to Rose and Dan's and they loved it!  So that is why Rose wanted pizza for Easter lunch.  How could I say no?!
So we had an Italian style lunch with pizza and spaghetti.  Then I made two huge bowls of popcorn to finish the day off.  It was fun and well worth all the work.  We hope you all had a wonderful Easter weekend as well!

sharing the Gospel house to house in Obule

Over the Easter weekend we had the opportunity to visit many of our neighbors and invite them to join us at church on Sunday and to share the meaning of Easter. It was the first time since moving to Obule that we have gone around to meet with our neighbors with the sole intention of sharing the good news of Jesus. The ladies from our church have been practicing telling the stories of the Bible in chronological order during their weekly women's Bible study. So they decided to go and share those stories with some families nearby. The men hoped on the motorcycles and went around to some other homes and shared The Gospel. After going around for several hours we met back at a friends home.

Some takeaways from our visits:
Most of the folks were welcoming and receptive to hearing us share with them the story of Jesus' coming to Earth as a man, living a sinless life, and dying a substitutionary death for us on the cross, and rising again after three days to make a way for us to receive salvation and eternal life.

Most people were resistant to accepting the free gift of salvation because of baptism they received as a child. Most people that we visited had been baptized as an infant and felt that was sufficient and they didn't need to make a personal decision to follow Christ.

Others who were resistant to accepting Jesus' salvation were living lives that they knew were not pleasing to God, but said "someday down the road I'll make a decision to follow Jesus." Essentially they were not willing to change their lives, but knew that they needed to. Even in a place where the average life span could be considered short, they felt they had plenty of time to make that decision at a later date.

A few folks felt they needed to clean themselves up first before coming to Jesus, or that their sins were too great. I think this is a universal issue.

Also, many thought we were trying to get them to convert to our church (or give up on their current church - even if they do not actually attend a church). We made it clear that we were here to share the good news of what Jesus had done in our lives and what He wanted to do in theirs. We were not trying to get people to switch churches. Still some were skeptical.

Religion is strong and idea of work-based salvation is still the norm in this area. The concept of free and unmerited grace is almost too simple for people to accept it. People feel salvation has to be earned and that God wouldn't just offer salvation freely - this is a big hurdle that folks are still stumbling over. A couple people felt that if they did more "good" things than "bad" then God would allow them into His kingdom when they died.

All in all it was a really encouraging time even though most folks decided not to make a decision to follow Jesus. The fact that everyone was so willing to sit and talk and share openly was encouraging. It was also great to be able to go into people's homes and show them that we do care, not only for their physical needs but also about their souls. A few of the people we met with did come to church on Sunday and hopefully some of the ladies will begin coming to the ladies weekly Bible study. We plan to continue meeting with our neighbors and answering their questions, loving and serving them, and continue planting seeds.

"Mommas gone"

For the next couple of weeks Ronnie is taking a much-deserved visit to the U.S.A. to visit family and friends, and get to be in on Thanksgiving with family in North Carolina. After a week or so in North Carolina she will head down to Texas to visit my side of the family, and get a chance to visit our sending church and Water for All. It has been several years since Ronnie was able to spend any holidays with family in the U.S., and Thanksgiving is her favorite of all holidays. So we decided now was a good time for her to make a short trip back. Hopefully the time will be restful, fun, and she will be able to come back home renewed. I am also hoping she will eat a lot of my favorite foods because I am vicariously eating my way across Texas with her - that means lots of Mexican food, unlimited chips & salsa, barbecue, chicken fried steaks, and refill after refill of iced tea.

While Ronnie is away, me and the kids are just getting some time to hang out at home and bond. I am pretty much taking some time off from work to care for the kids and home. The water well drilling work is still charging ahead full steam because of the wonderful men that are working with us to train families to drill wells. I am enjoying my time at home very much. It has given me a chance to better learn cooking with the ingredients we have available (not the easiest task and I give Ronnie a lot of credit for the way she creates variety with the limited ingredients). I am getting a chance to bond with little Aggie. Me and Silas get to play together when Aggie is napping. I am catching up on reading and listening to podcasts. I am happily watching my way through our extensive war movie collection - I have The Great Escape next on my list.

Ronnie has only been gone since Wednesday, but we already miss her very much and are eagerly looking forward to her return. I explained to Silas that Mom was going to visit family in America, but I'm not sure he is old enough to comprehend. He did wake up yesterday morning and as he was eating his oatmeal he kept saying "Mommas gone." He did get to see Ronnie board the small airplane in Soroti so it has been nonstop airplane talk since she left. Please pray for Ronnie as she is traveling. Also as you pray, please pray for her time there that it would be restful, full of fun and blessings, renewing, good health, and that she would be able to spend as much time as possible with family and friends.
Thank you,
Colin

Little baby sister

Just about everyone knows that we have a heart for adoption.  We knew before we were even thinking about moving to Uganda that we were going to be an adopting family.  Almost one year into our time here we started the process of fostering Silas with the intention of adoption after three years (Ugandan laws).  We have now had Silas for just over two years and for about the last year we have been prayerfully considering foster-to-adopt a second child.  

We visited an orphanage in another part of Uganda where you adopt two little ones at once.  We prayed and prayed for God to show us what was next for our family.  Nothing clear was coming to us.  So we just waited.

We felt like God was telling us to go back to the baby home that Silas came from, and so we went and told them to also be praying along with us about our second child.  

Colin and I were praying about a little boy who was just about 1 year old.  For some reason it just never felt like we were to bring him home and I just couldn't understand.   He needed a family, and we wanted to give him that.  

I got an email one morning from one of the ladies that works at the baby home asking if we could please come in and meet with them.  I figured that it was going to be about the little boy.  We knew that the boys mother was still somewhat in the picture (but was not mentally capable of caring for him on her own) and I knew that we were going to be told that he went home with her.  So I was preparing myself for that.  (Side note, he has not gone home with his birth mother and is still at Amecet.  Pray for him and the family that God has waiting.)  

When we got to Amecet, we were walking in and the social worker caught us getting out of the car.  He looked at Silas and said "Oh!  Silas are you coming to see your little sister?" 

All I heard at that point was "little sister".  I couldn't get my shoes off fast enough to get in the doors!

Little baby Aggie (or Hellen as they called her at Amecet) was brought in the day before and was only 10 days old.  Both Silas and Aggie share the same mother who is unable to care for herself and for her children, sadly.  

(Aggie weighed only 2.7 kgs when she first got to Amecet.  Tiny little thing.)    

We knew right then and there that this is the child God had been preparing us for.  And how wonderful that Silas and Aggie are biological siblings!  God really knows how to take a sad situation and still make it into a beautiful story of love.

We would have wrapped that little bundle of pink up and drove straight home with her that day, but we needed to wait for the police and probation to do their jobs so we had the correct legal documents for little Aggie.  That took an extra two months (almost).  We would go on a regular basis to visit and Silas loved getting to hold her and play on the slide, however all my heart wanted was to get her HOME.  I don't know how families in the US who adopt overseas do it.  I can't even imagine waiting a year, or two.  But thank the good Lord we only had to wait for a little while.  

We had some stressful dealings with probation but on October 17th, 2014 the day little baby Aggie Hayes was able to come home with her family!

We have chosen to name her Aggie Hayes as an "Aggie" is just about the best thing a person could aspire to be, and "Hayes" is a family name on Ronnie's side of the family.

That morning when we first got to meet Aggie, Colin had a dream the night before, or a direct word about our next child.  He told me when we were driving home that first day that he knew when we left to go visit Amecet that we were going because they had a baby for us. He said that he either dreamed it or that God had told him, but either way he knew.  

I still can't believe that we are now a family of 4.  We have a handsome, almost 2 1/2 year old little dude that we LOVE more than words, and now God has given us this beautiful little sister who already has changed our home for the better.  

I sometimes find myself shaking my head because when we first visited the other orphanage I had sat down and proclaimed that I didn't think that I could handle having a "BABY" just yet.  Well, Ronnie, God says you can and you will so here you go!

One of our first meetings with Aggie.

She was about 12 days old.

Our wonderful friends Rachel and Daniel (who are also adopting a little one from Amecet) were with us the day that Aggie was handed over to us.

Els (the woman who started and runs Amecet) handing over little Aggie to us.

The first family photo...of many!

Philippians sermon series

I had the honor and blessing of being able to preach a seven-week sermon series at our Obule church over the summer. I had just read Matt Chandler's book To Live Is Christ. My pastor and I spent time discussing the book and what I was learning. What started out as a causal conversation and me sharing with him about what I was learning, somehow turned into me preaching a sermon series on the book of Philippians. I might have mentioned I was interested in teaching through the book, but he took that to mean I was ready to preach. Now I am not a preacher. I am not being humble here, I just know that is not my gifting. I am more of a teacher than an in-the-front-of-the-church-preacher type. As they introduced me as the speaker one week the pastor asked the church to "endure" the sermon. Knowing the church is enduring my sermon is not a real confidence booster, but I preached anyway.

Like Chandler's book, we started the study in Acts 16 looking at Paul's missionary journey to Philippi. We looked at the history surrounding the beginning of the church plant in Philippi. Prior to reading Chandler's book I had not made the connection between Acts 16 and Paul's letter to the Philippian church. It was pretty eye-opening to see Paul in Philippi meeting the first members of the church there - Lydia and family, the slave girl, and the jailer and his household. I had read Acts, but had not read Acts and then studied Paul's letters written back to those churches in chronological order. I never had "faces" to go with the letters.

Joy is the major theme of Philippians and Paul more than anyone could say that it is indeed possible to have joy even in the midst of great suffering. Paul had found the secret to contentment in all things - Christ. It was through Christ that Paul was able to endure great suffering, persecution, hatred, scorn, rejection, the loss of comfort - and in the midst of it all still rejoice. It was in the jail in Philippi where he and Silas are praising God for His goodness at midnight and God miraculously opens the doors of the jail. Paul's witness during his imprisonment helped him to lead the harsh, rough jailer to the Lord. I found as I taught about rejoicing always that suffering for me is still sort of theoretical. I know suffering as an abstract thing that others go through but I myself have not suffered. And here I was standing in front of a church full of people who have suffered in ways I will never know and I was telling them to rejoice, be joyful, that God was all-sufficient and He would be enough even when you've lost everything else. All of those are truths, but I felt as if I was speaking as someone who had not passed through suffering preaching to a bunch of folks who are suffering. I almost felt guilty for not suffering, for having an easy way of life. The truth is that in Jesus Christ we find joy, and our present circumstances do not change that. Our joy comes from The Lord.

As our sermon series wrapped up I felt that we had really gone deep and studied a book in a new way. I felt the truths found in Philippians did resonate with the folks in Obule. I know some went away knowing that by focusing on their circumstances they had been robbed of their joy. I know I grew through my preparation each week and the church grew as they saw Jesus as much bigger than their current struggles - that the joy we find in Christ goes much deeper than our present difficulties. Now I get to try and live out what I preached all summer. I pray that when I do face struggles that I will rejoice in my suffering - even if that means singing praises to God from lonely dark jail cell.

Youth and Marriage Conference

A few weeks ago, well almost one month ago, I (Ronnie) was asked to teach at the yearly youth conference at our church.  My friend Jennifer was also asked to teach as well.  It was nice to have her doing it with me because we were able to come up with some great things to do with the youth and we even were able to talk about what we were going to teach on with each other.  

The topic of discussion was Luke 15 and the prodigal son.  I taught on the first 10 verses of Luke 15, which are the stories of the lost sheep and the lost coin.  Then Jennifer prepared a teaching on the lost son.  

We also planned games and some fun things for the youth to do.  We had them play a game of musical chairs, and had them play the game where you have to stand behind someone and the person behind has to do things like wash the other persons face, brush their teeth, ect.  It was fun.  Our goal was also to give them something fun to remember about coming to a youth conference as well as a good message.

Jennifer and I helped cook the first day and that is always nice.  We get to spend time with our friends in the kitchen.  We made a vegetable stew thing and it was such a hit they asked it we could cook it again the next day for them. There was about 160 youth and about 60 little children under the age of 5 that we fed both days, plus all the adults.

Just a view from the back of the church on the first day. 

One of the games we made the youth play.  Jennifer is also in this picture. 

It was a really great time and the youth seemed to really enjoy themselves.  They got to watch the Jesus Film that night and that was a big hit too.  I never know the impact that these types of things have on the lives of those that come.  They all say that it was good, and that they liked it.  Just a very generic answer.  However, I guess someday I will know if lives were changed.  It will be neat to get to heaven and meet someone who's life was forever changed at this event.

Then the next week both Colin and I were asked to teach at the marriage conference.  The theme for this one was Eph. 5:25, the famous "husbands love your wives and wives submit to your husbands" passage.  I however didn't teach on that at all.  Instead I taught on the 5 Love Languages.

It is an old book but filled with great wisdom!  And it was received really well too. The concept of the book is that we all have different love languages and we need to learn what ours is and then learn what your spouses and it can greatly improve your marriage.  I don't think that the couples that I was teaching had ever thought of such a thing before in their lives.  Colin told me that after day one, our friend came up to him and said that after 18 years of marriage he was finally learning how to love his wife, how to "do" marriage.  

I hope to get a bunch more copies of this book to give to the leaders of our sister churches so they can have an on hand copy to learn from.  

Marriage here is so different from what we see in the west.  There is still a "bride price" or "dowery" that needs to be paid to the brides family.  And it would seem that from the moment that the price is paid that young bride becomes property.  A baby producing, cooking, cleaning, digging, planting, water hauling, and clothes washing machine for who ever came up with enough cows and money.  Love is a foreign word.  However, there is always hope.  We know that marriages don't have to look like they do in the west, but they can look like they should according to the Word of God.  Our goal and prayer is not that we mold people into our image (the western way), but to Christ's.  Slowly, slowly, slowly we will get there.  We will see change in our friends and their marriage as long as we endure with and encourage them.  As I sit and write this now, I am filled with a wonder of what life here will look like in 10, 15 or 20 years as God continues to work in this community and allows us to do some work for Him.  I hope I remember this post and give thanks and glory to the One who is deserving.