Tuesday, November 6, 2012

The Body

We walk into the mud structure, voices of three languages filling the air. The voices are strong, but not in an angry way. These voices are full of passion. There is a man standing up front, tall and clothed in a full dark blue suit. His eyes are full of energy as he speaks from his heart. He speaks in English, but has a man on his right side and a woman on his left side repeating his words in Luganda and Swahili simultaneously. Casia and I are ushered to the front of the building where they have two plastic chairs set aside for the "visitors." Along the way, congregation members pull us aside to shake our hands and say, "You are most welcome." And we feel most welcome. This is the church: the body of Christ. Worship begins and the music starts, but it is only the music of voices and clapping. But just voices? It almost sounds too full to be only voices. These are the voices of Africans, full, deep, and loud. They are jumping and clapping as they worship. Their hands create a rhythm that resembles a full percussion orchestra. Sweat falls from their faces, their hair, their arms, drenching their clothes as they "shake the devil," "jump on the devil," and "dance like a winner in the Lord." The songs almost sound childish, but then again, these people are children of the Lord. They are the body of Christ, worshipping and praising the same God as Community Evangelical Free Church worshipped and praised just 8 hours later. Worship time finishes, and the pastor proceeds to preach (with his two interpreters alongside him) of Daniel and his devotion prayer. "God's network is always clear." God hears our prayers, whether we are in a remote village in Uganda or in a mega church in America. Following a prayer service and a full spread for lunch, they give us a tour of the new church that they are building around the current church. Until it is complete, they will worship in their current building. However, the current building is weak and crumbling. So, the congregation has been tithing to build a new building on the same grounds (the old structure is literally within the walls of the new structure; they will just knock the current building down when the new one is complete). THIS is the body of Christ. In the middle of Katunda, a remote village out in sugar cane fields, a small body of believers are scrapping together tithe from their small salaries to build a house of God with no outside funding. Praise God. Casia and I hop on a boda with Sarah, a Ugandan who works at the GSF baby house, and her husband, Herbert (yes, that is four grown adults on one small motorcycle). They drive us to their home about 10 minutes away. Sarah and Herbert have two children as well as three orphans living at their house. You read that correctly - they have taken it upon themselves to raise three orphans because they saw a need and stepped up to the plate. What another beautiful picture of the body of Christ functioning well. We spend the next few hours fellowshipping with Sarah and Herbert, exploring each others cultures and sharing our hearts.

There are two GSF employees, Sam and David, who felt a calling to start a church in our next door village, Buundo. After a great deal of training and orchestrating, Sam and David are stepping out in faith this Sunday for their first church service. God provided a nearby unkempt building that Sam and David can rent each week for a small fee. This week Sam, the teenagers of GSF, and a handful of other workers went to the building to begin preparing it for church (whoever started building it ran out of money, so it is not in very good condition). It is a mud brick building with a loose, dirt, uneven floor. The teenagers worked on collecting scattered bricks and slashing the grounds while the other men hoed the dirt to level the inside. This is a start, a new seed that will, with prayer, grow to be a body of believers that function as the church in Katunda does. It may be a shaky old mud building at this point, but God does not see the building - He sees the people. And as they gather this Sunday to worship Him, hear truth, and fellowship, I pray that God's spirit would fill that little mud structure with His glory and presence.

I ask you this week to please pray alongside me for God's hand in this new beginning.


The future church!

Future head pastor, Sam!


The teenagers slashing the grounds


Organizing the bricks

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