Birthdays and Grasshoppers

Posted on November 19, 2012 by Lorna

Well we’ve had four birthdays since my last blog and there will be another on Thursday. Last Sunday was Marina and Nic’s birthdays (two of the volunteers) so we invited them over after church and cooked pizza, which is Marina’s favourite, for them. I also made a cake with no whisk and with an oven that has no temperature gauge!
This Sunday was Esther B’s 19th Birthday (one of the UK gap year team). It was such a great day for all of us. Clare and I got up early to go and set up the living room – we arranged all of her cards and presents in a ’19′ shape on the floor, we had wrapped them all in newspaper and string, and we put up a paper-chain and a banner. She opened the cards and a couple of presents before church. We got boda bodas to church (motorbike taxis) because we all enjoy them but we don’t usually use them because taxis are cheaper. The LT warriors who are a dance troop from Kampala Baptist church performed in church because the youth were leading the service. Then loads of friends came back after church. I baked for Esther (not without incident as fire exploded from all sides of the oven!). We’re so blessed that everyone is so musical and so we had a couple of times of spontaneous worship and we danced into the evening. We were chatting after everyone had gone home about the fact that it was such a good house party and there was no alcohol involved.

It seems to be a bit of a tradition in Uganda that on people’s birthdays you throw water over them. However, many African women are very precious about their hair which is expensive if it gets wet, so they really took the opportunity with Esther because having wet hair isn’t such an issue for a ‘mzungu’! I think there might even have been a cup of tea involved?!

It was also my Mum’s 50th birthday this week so I got to speak to her briefly on the phone- Uganda to Cyprus! Happy Birthday Mummy!

At school this week the children have been sitting their end of year exams as the main holiday is about to start. We have been helping with supervising exams and reading the questions for the children that struggle with reading. It’s been really nice to be able to encourage the kids in their exams and afterwards. We’ve been marking lots of papers too and it’s been interesting to mark the papers of the class that I’ve been teaching as it’s a better representation of their capabilities in some areas than class work. We’ve also had a couple of opportunities to teach the kids some songs. The class that Esther and I teach are getting really good at a harmonized version of ‘Amazing Grace’ that we taught them. We also taught them to sing ‘Our God is an Awesome God’ in a round and we keep catching them singing it outside of lessons, which is always really special.

We have just started a new children’s club in another ‘slum’ community, so on Friday I went there with some others for the first club. It was really lovely. It’s such a beautiful community and has a very different atmosphere to the other ‘slum’. It was here that I tried my first grasshopper- with the eyes but without the legs, and surprisingly I did actually enjoy it! The club is held in the same church that we helped to build a few weeks ago. It is an incredibly humble church but I love it! I visited last Sunday for the Sunday service with Clare and Joe and fell in love! They have no walls to the church and no instruments, and they bring plastic garden chairs to sit on, but none of those things matter and I had so much fun and could definitely recognise God’s presence there. Clare and I learnt a song in Luganda about everything being possible with God, which we’ve worked out a harmony to.

This weekend we visited a school a few hours outside of Kampala which teaches deaf and physically disabled children. One of Smile’s volunteers works there and Smile supports the school so we attended their end of term speech day. Each class gave a performance of a song or a dance and some people gave speeches and we gave some aid to the teachers.

Well it’s been a very good week! The children at Chosen school have now finished their exams and so they’re now rehearsing for speech day on Friday (as are we!). As always, thank you for your support and prayers. I mentioned in my last blog about one of the volunteers who fell ill-we were able to visit him at home and he is recovering although he will have to be patient in his recovery, so please continue to pray for him.

Prayer requests:

- Thanksgiving for everyone here and the ways that God continues to bless us.

- For the health and safety of the whole team.

- For the children at school in the last week before the holidays – that God will provide for them and bless them in their break from school.

Thank you so much! Please leave comments and keep in touch, it really means a lot to me!

God bless.