Good Shepherd's Fold, Jinja, Uganda

Hello everyone sorry that it has been a few days.  I know people are anxious to here about our Easter service here.  So this will probably be a fairly long email, because I have two days to make up for.  First of all though, there are some people who apparently haven’t received all of my emails, so if you go to this web site https://akrohrer.tripod.com/  it has all of my emails posted.  Thank you, Mrs. Nymeyer for doing all of that.

We had Sunday School at 9:30 and then the church service started at 11AM.  We actually started almost on time.  I think we finally began at 11:15, so that isn’t too bad. J  The service was much like the Good Friday service.  We had singing and introducing some visitors.  The singing was absolutely amazing.  I could sing along with some of the songs, but they also sang a lot in Luganda.  The kid’s choir sang a couple of songs; the house moms had a special, and than some of the other girls sang.  So it was great to hear all of the special music.  Right after the singing, then the pastor got up to preach about the Resurrection.  The pastor was speaking in English and one of the big kids was translating into Luganda.  So I was paying attention to the pastor and really trying to understand him.  Just because he speaks English doesn’t mean I get it.  They speak a broken up English and it can be really hard to understand.  So I am listening attentively to the pastor and ignoring the kid speaking in Luganda.  Then all of a sudden I can’t really understand the pastor.  So this went on for quite awhile.  Finally, I figured it out; the pastor and Tom (the big kid) were switching back and forth.  So while I am listening for the English from the pastor, he had switched and was speaking Luganda. J  It was a good service, just hard to understand sometimes.

Right about the time the pastor got ready to speak, the bottom fell out of the sky.  Man and did it ever rain.  It stormed all though the service.  The pastor was using a mic and at one point the lightening looked like it was right outside the window and then the thunder came.  So we put the mic up and the pastor just had to speak really loud.  Toward the end of the service it was raining so hard that you couldn’t hear the pastor.  The church has a metal roof, so that made it so much louder.  So anyway, at 1pm we closed the service, but it was still raining so hard that we stayed in the church until 2pm.  We didn’t have any power for quite awhile on Sunday, so I couldn’t email.  A couple of us decided just to get wet and walk to our houses.  I guess getting wet was an under statement, I got completely soaked.  Water was dripping from my face.  Everybody said that they haven’t seen it rain like that in a long time.  It rained all day until 7pm and then it finally quit.  The rain had cooled it off so much that I woke up in the middle of the night freezing.  We only have a sheet on the beds, so I got up and put on another pair of pants and my sweatshirt.  So I finally fell asleep with two pairs of pants on and two shirts.  Crazy huh?  It is not suppose to be this cold in Africa.

We all gathered together and ate lunch.  We were going to eat at the pavilion, but because of the rain, we met in the school.  The house moms cooked this great lunch for Easter and then we served all the kids.  So that was fun to have a different Easter meal and have it with 100 people.  I always thought that mom had a lot of people over for the holiday meals, but we don’t got nothing on the 100 people that I had lunch with the other day. J

When I was in college, Easter was the one holiday that I truly felt along at school.  I was always home for Christmas, the summers, and then with my grandparents for Thanksgiving, so Easter was the one holiday that I wasn’t with family.  I have always enjoyed Easter with my family, but I must admit, it was pretty great being in a different country to celebrate Christ dying on the cross and His Resurrection. 

Well this email is getting quite long and I am headed to go and see the kids this morning.  I had some great experiences yesterday (Monday) so I’ll email that letter later.

But for now, most of you are sleeping and I am just beginning my day.

Deb