Sunday service and more baseball
Greetings from Uganda! Today we had another day full of baseball and children, all done in the name of Jesus. But unlike the rest of the days that we will be here it began with going to church since it was Sunday. Our first stop of the morning was to Gaba Community Church (GCC) in Gaba where we were able to stay for the opening worship and listen to the first few minutes of Pastor Peter’s sermon. Unfortunately we needed to leave so that we could make the service at Buloba Community Church. It was, however, incredible to see a dynamic church like the GCC that has planted many churches in Uganda and spread Jesus’ name to so many souls. The worship was very much like the services that we are used to in the U.S., contemporary style. So much so that we commented later that if we closed our eyes the singing felt like we were back home singing praises.
When we left GCC we headed out to the Buloba community to Buloba Community Church (BCC) and were blessed to be able to participate in the worship and service. The church members there were very kind and welcoming to our team and allowed for us to sit on the front row. They honored us very much by their actions. After we sang, were given the opportunity to listen and see the singing and dancing of both the children’s choir and the adult choir. We then watched as Lisa, daughter of pastor Eva the current head pastor at BCC, and her new fiancé were introduced to the community as engaged to be married. Mark, who was asked to give the sermon for the day, was invited to pray for them as they prepared for their upcoming wedding in January. After this Mark began the message and went through scripture in Matthew and Luke that detailed out the calling of Matthew and then Simon with James and John. Using those stories he posed the question to everyone in the audience if they really knew Jesus and, if not, to know that Jesus said, “My burden is easy and my yoke is light” so do not fear coming and surrendering everything to Jesus. The message was well received and all the people in the congregation, including myself, understood and were touched by the message.
Soon after the service we headed to pastor Eva’s home where she fed us for the second day in a row. We also found out that she will feed our team lunch for the rest of the time that we are in Uganda, which sat well with everyone since the food in her home has been consistently delicious. After letting our meal digest we headed to a new field to teach baseball since we were expecting a very large group.
To be honest, the idea of a very large group worried us a bit. We thought thisway mainly since there had been a rumor that the entire community would be coming out to watch and learn the game. When we arrived at the field, however, there were only 25 children, which later grew to roughly 40. This was a huge blessing and we thanked God because this gave us the opportunity to have a ratio of about 7 children to 2 of us on the mission team, which meant we could spend a greater amount of energy per child teaching.
After going through the basics of catching and throwing, we moved to how to field a ground ball. This proved to be a little difficult to teach but after some repetition the kids caught on began to improve. After this we then moved to batting and taught the children how to swing and then divided them up into four groups to hit off of the tees again. When the children had practiced this skill we set them up for a make shift game with the goal being that one team would be batting and running the bases while the other team attempted to field the ball as they were hit. This did not go as planned. It ended up looking a little, or a little more than a little, disorganized but the children were able to practice hitting and chasing down the balls and most importantly they were having a good time and were smiling as they went.
When we finished, we had to vacate the field quickly for a soccer match that was scheduled right after our practice. Mark reviewed some of the techniques briefly with the children and then Austen Crook, one of our team members who is a collegiate baseball, shared a portion of his testimony and then prayed with the children to conclude practice. We thoroughly enjoyed our time with the kids and told them that we hoped to see them tomorrow after they finish with school. Afterwards we stayed a little while to watch a bit of the soccer match but quickly decided to head home to relax for the evening.
Upon returning a few members of the team decided to attempt going for a run in the area around the house for some additional exercise. We ran down to lake Victoria and were able to see the lake as the day waned towards night. After a few sprints up the hill we settle down for dinner and devotion afterwards. As we relaxed for a little while longer our team one by one faded and went to bed to prepare ourselves for tomorrow.
Tomorrow will be a great day as we help the local community folks build rain catches in the morning and teach more baseball in the afternoon. Today was such a blessing and we cannot wait to see what God has in store for us tomorrow. Until then, from us in Uganda, God bless, goodnight, and know Yesu Akwaagala (I misspelled “love you” very badly in the last post!).
On behalf of the team, Woody Parramore
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