Outreach Preparation

We leave for outreach in ONE WEEK! I can't believe how time has flown.

We are going to Western Uganda for our outreach.  We'll spend the first month in a place called Mbarara, and the second month somewhere else.  Our accommodation in Mbarara is a small four-bedroom house, that has no running water and no electricity.  18 students and 4 staff are going on this trip, so imagine 22 people living in one house with no water or electricity for a month.  Whoo!  We'll have a water tank that catches rain water, and there is a well nearby where we can draw water if it doesn't rain for a few days.  They said we might possibly have some solar power by the time we get there, but I'm not counting on it.  We won't have beds, and might not have mattresses of any sort either.  I'm buying a sleeping bag this weekend so that I have at least something to sleep on.   It's going to be so crazy, and we're all expecting to fight and bicker at times, but we have been praying for unity for weeks and we're trusting the Holy Spirit to help us live together!

I'm not sure what all we'll be doing while on outreach, but I know it will be a lot of ministering and sharing the gospel and performing.  We'll still be waking up at 5am to pray together for one hour, then having personal quiet time from 6-7am, then breakfast.  We'll have our work duties in the morning while on outreach, to keep our place nice and tidy.  Then all except two people will go out for ministry activities.  The two left behind are the cooks for the day.  Everyone else divides into groups and goes out for awhile, then comes back for lunch, then goes out again, then comes back for dinner.  After dinner we all meet to discuss our day.  Then it's bedtime!  We'll be doing this Tuesday - Sunday, except for Wednesdays will be our weekly fasting and praying day where we stay at home.  Monday is rest day!

I know for sure we'll be doing door-to-door ministry...and this initially gave me so much fear.  In America it is not common or welcomed to go door-to-door and talk about religion.  But I have since learned that it's much more common here in Africa, and even welcomed by many people.  I still have hesitancy, but now it's more because I feel unprepared than because I think people will slam the door in my face.  For sure there will be people who don't want to talk, or who challenge us and don't agree with us...I expect rejection at times.  But I find comfort in the idea that sometimes all God wanted to do was plant a seed in someone's heart.  Maybe they aren't ready to learn about Christ right now, but they are ready for a seed to be planted...you never know, years from now they might look back and think, "If those kids hadn't come talked to me that day, I would never be a Christian today."  So, I've been trying to mentally prepare for how to do door-to-door ministry... how to start the conversation, how to answer questions, etc... I'm sure it will still be hard, but it will be a good experience.

One of the things I've been really challenged with here is the fact that I grew up in such a politically correct culture.  It's as if religion starts so many arguments in America that you can't even talk about it unless you're in a church.  And so I grew up feeling like it was each person's own responsibility to find their religion... like I personally have no responsibility to help people know about Christ unless they actually ask me.  Maybe once or twice I've invited people to come to church with me, but that's as far as I've gone.  In my mind, I found Christ and I'm working on living my life His way, and everyone else is responsible to do the same.  But the thing is, when you read the New Testament, that is very much not what Jesus says.  I mean, what about the Great Commission, for crying out loud?  Go and make disciples of all nations!  How can you make disciples if you never talk about Jesus?  And look at the life of Jesus and his disciples.... what did they do?  They traveled and taught, and spoke, and preached.  Jesus didn't train his disciples and then tell them to just live a right life, and everyone would come to Christ because of their example.  No, he sent them out to travel through cities and teach people about the Kingdom.  Now, I do not believe he was sending them out to yell and shout on street corners or to condemn people for disagreeing with them...no... but I do think he was sending them out to approach people and talk to them.  To have personal conversations, in people's homes, about life and religion; to ask if they had question; to preach sermons in the churches; and to discuss religion with people they served or helped.  I am really finding out that part of a Christian's responsibility is to share the Gospel....not just to know Christ yourself and live rightly.  It's very hard for me, because I am kind of shy and quiet, and I don't like conflict...so I don't like conversations that I think might make someone uncomfortable... and that is why this outreach phase is going to bring so much growth for me.  I expect to come back much more able to talk about what I believe and why, openly and boldly.

Anyway... pray for us, that we will be safe and we won't get too tired of each other.   Since we won't really have electricity, we won't really have internet.  If we find an internet cafe or something in the town, maybe you'll see me post on Facebook once or twice during the two months, but for the most part I won't be able to communicate.  I have a local phone that I can send texts with, but it costs money for each message, so not many people have my number.  Just pray and trust that in January you will hear from me again :)

 Thank you to everyone who has been keeping up with me and praying for me.  I can tell that I have grown so much over this experience already.  My relationship with God is so much deeper than it could have been without DTS.  I know Him better, I hear Him more clearly, and I have learned a lot about following His direction and letting him guide me.  I have learned that we all make mistakes, but God's grace is so sufficient.  I have met some of the most amazing people here in Uganda, and I have praised God an endless number of times for how incredible He is to have created such people. 

I'm still not sure what I'll be doing after DTS.  As of right now, I don't feel ready to come home yet...two months of outreach may change that, but we'll see.  I have a flight scheduled to come home in January, but of course that can change if God leads me somewhere else.  I have to extend my visa this week, and the office says that if I might stay later I should just buy a one-year extension, so I'm doing that just in case.  One of my classmates who lives about five minutes from the base said that I am welcome to stay with her if I ever want to.  And there are a lot of volunteer opportunities here at the base.  So I really don't know what God is doing....what He is planning... I'm trying my best to just let Him work it out and then tell me what to do later.  I'm praying that He'll show me what's next either while I'm on outreach or maybe during our debrief week once we get back, so that I have some time to plan... but I have learned that sometimes God waits until the last minute, to test your faith.  In one of the books we read about how YWAM got started, there are many stories of God waiting.  One in particular comes to mind, about Loren Cunningham, the founder of YWAM, waiting at the airport with a student.  The student was supposed to go somewhere, he was so sure that he had heard God call him, but he didn't have the money to go.  But in faith they packed his bags and went to the airport to get a plane ticket.  They waited and prayed, as the time for the flight got closer and closer.  Boarding time came around, and still nothing had happened.  Loren started to wonder if this was really what God had said.  And then maybe twenty minutes until the flight was supposed to leave, someone came and gave them money... exactly enough for the plane ticket.  So they bought the ticket and the student went to where he was going!  I am really really hoping that God doesn't re-enact this for me...I would really prefer to know what I'm doing BEFORE the day I pack my bags... but really, it's all up to God.  He already knows where I'm going and He'll make sure I get there.  I just need to trust that, and rest in it.

Okay, so, I think that's about all... this weekend we are all trying to prepare for outreach a little bit.  I need to buy a sleeping bag, and make a packing list... and catch up on my bible readings... we've been so busy with dance practice and skit practice and outreach meetings that I've fallen behind!  Next week we have some classes on Monday and Tuesday, but we have Wednesday through Friday relatively free so that we can finish preparing to leave.  Maybe I'll write again before we leave, but if not, thank you so much to everyone who helped make this journey possible!  I could not have done it without your support, and I am eternally grateful! 

Pictures

Hello! I was able to borrow someone's laptop, which makes it much easier to post some pictures.  I also borrowed pictures from other people, because I haven't taken very many... so here are some more photos of what life has been like for the past three months!

 A group photo from when our class and staff did the Challenge Course at Discovery Center.

 

 The first part of the Challenge Course.  It's a fun course!  Lots of ropes and tires and balance beams.

Our classroom

 

The "dining hall"

The office, also known as "the Wifi"

The preparation area of the kitchen

The cooking area of the kitchen

Our dishwashers :)  Sometimes there is even soap!

The preschool on the base

Discovery Center

 Discovery Center

A few weeks ago our class hosted a "Cultural Fun Night."  Everyone was welcome to present something, and it was a blast!

The beginning, waiting for the acts to start.

Some of us performed the Electric Slide

 Me and two classmates.  Rebecca, on the left, is wearing a traditional dress from Uganda.  Ezekiel, on the right, is from Tanzania and just loves to look sharp!

Some of my classmates held a fashion show

Last weekend we were invited to an overnight prayer and intercession at a church about 40 minutes away, in a town called Lugazi.  Our teachers for the week that we studied Holy Spirit are pastors of this church, and they always invite the DTS class.  So our whole class and many of the staff went for the overnight.

Singing worship songs.  The way that Africans worship is so incredible! Notice someone holding up a chair, in the background...

My class performed two dances and two skits.  This is from the beginning of the skit that I was in.

The overnight was quite an experience.  We arrived there around 10 or 10:30.  We were special guests, so we were seated to the right of the stage.  There was a lot of intercession and prayer throughout the night, as well as guest pastors giving short sermons, our class performing, a few other performances, and the worship team performances.  I think everyone managed to stay awake the whole night...it ended around 4:45am.  It's hard to sleep when some of the African pastors are preaching...it's just like you might imagine it, with so much passion that most of the sermon is yelled rather than spoken.  I'm getting more and more used to this style of preaching, but it's still not necessarily my favorite.  Sometimes the person is screaming so much into the microphone that I can't even understand what they are saying...and if they're speaking in Lugandan first and being translated, they often don't wait for the translator to finish their English sentence before they start their next sentence, so I get lost very easily.  But in times like that, I just sit back and think about how incredible it is that I get to be in that place.  Even after three months here, I'm still often struck by a sense of awe when I think about all the things I've gotten to see and experience that so many Americans will never get to experience.  I still find the African style of worship pretty amazing...they really sing with their whole heart, and they move around and dance like no one is watching.  Because in this culture, no one IS watching, because everyone is dancing! (:  There is one song in particular that they sang at the overnight, and has also been sung in the church I go to here, where everyone starts carrying things around, like bibles and chairs.   Our class formed a line and danced around the church.  It was great!

The other thing about African church that has struck all of us Westerners is the spiritual warfare.  There is much more emphasis on spiritual warfare here in Africa.  And to a Westerner, it's quite an eye opener.  The West doesn't really talk about the demonic forces at work in the world...we believe in Satan and that he and his demons are working, of course.  But we don't often attribute them to much...and we certainly don't have sessions of casting them out.  But things are different here.  There is so much witchcraft and other things that happen, and the people are much more aware of the spiritual world.  It's hard for me to write about, because to people who have never experienced demons, it sounds unreal and silly... I myself used to think it was such.  But now I have seen things, and once you see them it's very difficult to deny their reality.  Sometimes even here at the base during prayer or worship sessions, people will faint or shake or scream.  At the overnight they had a session of anointing, where everyone was standing in prayer and the pastors and a few others were walking around, praying for everyone.  There were several instances of people falling on the ground and rolling around, and there was screaming and convulsing and other things.   I'm telling you, once you see these things with your own eyes, you can't deny them.  People are doing things that they would never do in their own right mind.  And when you go back over the Gospels and read what it looked like when Jesus cast out demons, it sounds very similar... demons calling Jesus by name, throwing people on the ground, and coming out with screaming... it's almost eery to read these scriptures and now have a real life experience that is so similar. 

Now, the Africans know that the West is extremely physical and that Africa is extremely spiritual.  We've talked many times about how each culture needs to balance better.  The West barely even believes in the spiritual, yet Africa is overly spiritual.  Some of the Africans on the base even joke with me, "Everything is a demon.  A frog hops into the church and we cast it out as a demon!"  So awareness about the physical world is growing here, but I don't think awareness about the spiritual world is growing in the West...it's a tough thing, because you really need to see it to believe it. 

Anyway, I have learned a lot!  I am so grateful that the Lord gave me this opportunity to experience Ugandan culture.  Life has been good :)