Catching Up
I haven’t had time to blog this past weekend and wanted to catch you up on what happened, at least in part. I spent most of Saturday and Sunday with Fulukas and his wife Miriam and the four child prostitutes that they are trying to rehabilitate.
It was great to see Fulukas and Miriam (who had a baby a month ago) and the girls. I can see the progress that they have made with them. The fifith girl, Gladys, no longer lives with them but visits frequently. I wasn't able to visit with her because she was preparing for exams at the school she is now attending. The girls are always excited to see me and want to "show off" a little bit in terms of what they have learned. Since March they have learned how to make wax candles which they demonstrated for me on Sunday. They have learned how to make shampoo and a gel which I think is like a spot-remover. But they are all very proud (as they should be) of what they have learned. Fulukas and Miriam and the young woman that they have hired to help them work with the girls, Vicki, have worked with them about doing chores, and working on what they call "character formation." They have also connected a couple of them with their mothers, and in two cases the results are encouraging. (A couple of the girl's mothers our prostitutes, one of which has HIV/AIDS.) I have to confess that I find it moving to see the smiles on all of the girls' faces and the sense of hope that they have. On Sunday I went to church with them: UCC (United Christian Center). Wow. Three hours, 11:00 to 2:00. They sang very energetically for the first hour without even a tiny pause (I have a brief video of it. I was the only stiff white person there
.) The service was in the local language with an English translator, but the persons speaking in the local language didn't wait for the translator to finish the last translation before he or she would speak again with the result that I couldn't understand much of anything. Vicki was sitting next to me and from time to time translate a bit. But the congregation was engrossed and I didn't see anyone stairing at the ceiling or falling asleep. And the people sitting around me were very welcoming. I returned to Kampala (Fulukas and Miriam live in a town probably 15-20 miles northwest of Kampala called Wakiso) yesterday evening and spent the night in a hotel there.
This morning I attended devotions at the WVU national headquarters and then met the national director, Rudo. She is from Zimbabwe originally and has been the director in Uganda for five years. I was impressed with her intelligence, faith, and leadership. She led morning devotions and did I thought an excellent job. I told her afterward she sounds like a preacher. When I told her of my interest in trying to help strengthen marriages of the staff, she was totally on board and said it should be a weekend conference for any staff that want to attend and that WVU would pay for it! I have to find someone to partner with, however, because there is much I don't know about Ugandan culture. In any case, I was really encouraged with the meeting.
I had lunch with Vincent, the Director of Staff Spiritual Nurture to whom I referred last week at a good coffee shop not far from the national headquarters called Java. I had lunch with and excellent latte. I then headed up to Gulu where I arrived 5 hours later. I'm not sure of my schedule tomorrow. I am either going to St. Thomas More tomorrow and visit Beth's and my sponsored children the next day, or vice versa. At some point I will visit with the staff at the Children of War Center.
