Darkness and Light

 A lot has happened over the last couple days, and a lot of those things kept us up late (thus no blog post). So here is my attempt to catch you up on everything!

Last Friday we finished off VBS week, then later that night went to a church in a nearby town called Seeta. Pastor Bill was asked to give them a weekend of teaching about evangelism and we were invited and encouraged to come. Going to that church was actually an incredible experience. They welcomed us with open arms by serving us food and we had a great time hearing their worship music and showing them ours. Then when Pastor Bill spoke about surrendering our lives to Christ and his purposes, everyone, including the team, was moved.

The next day we returned so that Bill could give them more seminars on evangelism. We ate breakfast and lunch with them while listening to two more INCREDIBLE sermons from Bill. After that we put what we learned about evangelism into practice. We split up into groups and went around the village handing out tracts and telling people about Jesus. A lot of us were encouraged by the results, despite the language barriers that we faced. Although most of us had a good experience, there was a lot of spiritual darkness encountered.

The team had actually been experiencing a lot of spiritual darkness, so last night we actually spent a couple hours going around the Children' Village just praying in Jesus' name. We all felt that praying for the Village was a huge reason why God sent us here, and were encouraged because the heaviness seemed to have been lifted.

                         

On a lighter note, on Monday we went on a SAFARI! We got up and left the house at 6 AM and drove four hours to Lake Mburo National Park, stopping for goat, banana, and corn along the way. We also crossed the equator, which was an amazing and rare experience. We had a great time driving around the park looking at monkeys, zebras, warthogs, and much more. The team felt inspired to watch The Lion King after that since our search for lions turned out futile. Then we stopped at a Ugandan hotel restaurant before heading on the long drive back. We got home around 2 AM and then had to turn around and get up early so that we could lead worship for the kids.

Since then, we have finished a lot of the painting work that needed to be done. We painted lines on the basketball court for the key and the backboard yesterday and then today we painted the baptismal outside the church.
                          

So that is just a brief overview of what happened, and there is just so much more that words just cannot express. God is doing crazy work in our lives and we are excited to see what else we will be used for in our last few days at Agape Children's Village. If everyone could just continue to keep us and darkness we have faced here in Uganda in prayer, we would appreciate that. There is still a lot of work to be done here but we are humbled by how much God's glory is being shown all around us.

For more pictures from the last couple days, go to: Uganda 2012 Album 5.