Greetings! I preached in Kabuye Baptist Church this weekend. As always, driving to the villages is an adventure. It was certainly no exception this time. It's about 170 km to Kabuye from Mbarara, and roughly halfway there, we had a blowout. Seriously, the tire exploded and disintegrated. Alright. I felt kind of glad I'd brought my tools, and the nice 20 ton bottle jack that came on our container. I get to work changing the tire AND…. the nuts holding the spare are bigger than the nuts on the tires, and my biggest socket only fits the tires. Sigh. Some guy steps out of the crowd and, seeing a chance to make some money, offers to help. He hunts up a spanner, and we manage to get the tire spare and the blown tire off. He gets the new tire on, I pay him for his work (about 5 bucks), and I start to pull away. What's that weird vibration? Ahhhh…. the rim to which the spare was attached is the wrong kind for my car. The tire is the right size, but the rim doesn't fit, so the tire can't turn. Yippeee…. Alright, for another couple bucks, the guy takes both tires further down the road to a town, and gets the good tire put on the right rim. We put it on, and, after a brief, heated argument about me needing to pay him for buying a tube for my tire (HA! yeah right, tube tire indeed), we finally get underway.
This puts us at our destination hours later than planned. Now, the laws of hospitality require that they feed us supper. It was getting dark when we arrived, but they were determined to do it anyway, so around 9 PM, we ate. It's now 10 when we finish, and Pastor Patrick still wants us to speak to the people, so, I had to whip up a sermon out of thin air (that's that whole "instant in season and out of season" thing). I preached on being controlled by the Holy Spirit, and being Spirit-filled. It was a great time. Now it's 11 PM, and time for bed. We're going to sleep in the church building. No problem. I had my sleeping bag, my bivy sack, and a sleeping pad. They provided a mattress, so I didn't need the pad. No mosquitoes at that altitude (about 7,000 ft), so no need for the bivy. I would need the sleeping bag, because it gets quite cold at night up on the mountain. After a few minutes, I notice that the crowd is not totally dispersing. I need to get undressed for bed. I asked Pastor Claudian (Rwandan fellow, lived in Fort Portal for years) what was going on. Evidently, they were all planning to sleep in the church with us as well. Ah Ha. So, I slept in my clothes. My fan club, a row of village kids, took up position on a bench to watch a mazungu sleep, you know, in case I changed into some kind of hideous beast after midnight or something equally interesting. They found the prospect of a 6'6" tall white man sleeping in a sack to be most amusing.
So commenced a long, peaceful night of non-sleep. You see, there were at least 2 screaming babies, and scream they did – all night. Another child had to have whooping-cough or something, so between the lung cancer ward and the screaming meemies , we got zippo sleep all night. Sleep deprivation – my favorite. So, shortly after daybreak, I decided I'd pretended to sleep long enough, and opened my eyes – yep, there was my fan club, hanging around still to see how a mazungu wakes up. I think they must have been up by like 5 AM or something. Thankfully, I'd brought a thermos of coffee, so I staggered out to the car to get myself properly caffeinated. Since my fan club was determined to not let me out of their sight, I had a bit of a dilemma figuring out how I was going to change clothes for church without causing psychological harm. It finally occurred to me that the only private place there seemed to be was the toilet ('bout like my house), so I went up to the latrine and got into my preachifying clothes.
Services were at 10 AM, so we got started promptly at 12PM (this is normal here). We met outside in a kind of pole structure pavilion with a tarp roof, because the church building wasn't large enough to hold everyone. The reason for this is that several other Pastors (I use the term loosely) from the Pentecostal and Anglican congregations in the area were also in attendance, along with delegations from their respective churches. After the introductions and speeches (all public gatherings must begin with introductions and speeches), and comments from some local politicians (no trouble with separation of church and state here), I finally got to preach. I didn't pull any punches. I preached salvation, and I made it very clear that religion is useless, as are "miracles", speaking in tongues, being slain in the spirit, praying to Mary, and being baptized for salvation. It is faith alone in Jesus Christ that saves us from our sins. Nothing else can do it.
Overall, the service went well, I thought. Now, we cannot leave, because the laws of hospitality require they feed us lunch, so we have to wait for it to be cooked. It was worth the wait: goat stew, roasted matoke and millet. You dip everything in the broth, and it's awesome. We head out to the car, and now begins the leavetaking process. First, one of the ladies wanted to give us a stalk of matoke (green cooking bananas). Not a problem. I love the stuff. Next, the Pastor wanted a picture with me. Good idea. I'm filthy, unshaved, unwashed, and sleep deprived, so of course I think we should preserve this photographically . This opens quite the can of worms, since now everybody in the clan wants a picture with me. Thank God the photographer didn't have a digital camera, or I'd still be there.
Claudian makes some closing remarks (all public gatherings must end with a proper goodbye and greetings to everyone gathered), and we finally made our getaway. I'm driving on four questionable tires, with no spare, and praying they remain whole, 'cause we're out of range of any kind of cellphone to call for help if we have another flat. We made it home, just as it was getting dark. It was an exciting, tiring, and most profitable weekend.
Pray for us. We are continuing language study (as always). I still have discipleship duties, and now that Dan Olachea has returned to the field with my Hebrew stuff, I'm going to begin studying that as well. Pray for our health. Pray for the coming school year with the kids. Pray for the growing baby.
