SMOi

Friends and family,
To be honest I could not forget to mention the last few days here in
Uganda. I must say it is unbelievable knowing that I will be leaving so
soon. I do not think it will set in that I am out of Africa until I set
foot in the Dallas airport.
I look forward to seeing each of you when I get back to the States. As much
as I include in these emails, I leave out many other stories. However I do
want to tell you about the most recent incident at Bible study. To give you
some background, I have held a Bible study for the local church at my
house. As of right now the membership consists of me and about three
others. As African custom insists, the person who hosts the meeting
also needs to lead it. I still have not understood why I need to lead
every week but I went with it. This last week I was extremely busy at
work so I was unable to prepare like I wanted to Bible study. So
instead of having an in-depth look at scripture, we decided to talk
about essential ways a Christian should live. It was a very practical
discussion. The discussion was about Biblical accountability. The
members of the church were familiar with accountability but were
unsure why they needed it and how it was to be incorporated in their
everyday lives. We discussed the nature of man as being sinful and
that only through faith in Christ can we have victory in this life and
be seen as fully pleasing to God. Therefore, we must have our
brothers for the men and the sisters for the women being active in our
lives so we can help each other live a life worthy to God. We spoke
about the importance of same sex accountability and in marriage your
wife or husband becomes your main accountability partner. The
discussion went very well and I look forward to seeing how they
implement this new but old thought into their church. One of the
attenders of the study is the college/young adults leader. He plans
on teaching this to the group.
So the background was a little long...sorry, but many times something
funny happens every study. Well the other day, one of the members
(Dan) picked an electronic appliance and asked "John what is this
for?" Now you must understand that Ugandans are very resourceful and
can do or make anything dealing with their hands but they are not used
to seeing electronic appliances that are specialized for only one or
two purposes...so with that in mind I enlightened Dan that what he was
holding is for roasting bread and is called a toaster. He looked at
it funny and put it aside. The locals here think that toasting bread
is a silly think to do. They wonder why someone would want to take
soft bread and burn it to make it hard.
I had a good laugh about it on the inside and realized just how many
luxuries we have that we see as necessities but are BY FAR luxuries.
We had our last service at church today and the members of the church
surprised some of us with going away gifts. They say that good byes
are not necessary because we will see each other in Heaven, so they
gave us a gift and said "if you come back to Uganda, come see us...if
not we will worship beside you in Heaven."
This email is longer than I planned so I will cease my stories.
Please pray for me these next couple of days. A lot is going on and I
am very anxious to see my family and friends. It is going to be
really hard to say my farewells to my friends here.

God satisfies more than anything else.

John