A New Mission | Trip #2 | Post #7

Friday, March 31st. Today we finished our first course, Knowing God, Scripture and Ourselves. Lesson ten had all three learning groups combined for our closing session and Mike Evans did a great job of wrapping things up. It was obvious that they retained the information we shared as Mike sought, and quickly got answers to his review questions. He asked eight and Stu was quick to point out that his guys answered five of them. I replied that one of my guys answered the question with a voice somewhat like James Earl Jones. I’d call on him to read Scripture just to hear his voice. Stu, the competitive one stated he has a trainee with a better voice. He also reminded me that he won two of three of the card game I taught them (called 7’s). We pastors are an insecure lot. 

Our Fridays are usually pretty busy. Packing, saying goodbye to our hosts, and hitting the road for our six-hour ride across country to Entebbe…this one was a bit more adventurous than previous trips. Although we once had an eleven-hour, six-hour trip, today was only eight. About sixty minutes after leaving the van started jerking, slowly losing speed. Another passenger, Evan from Oxford, AL, is a gifted videographer (and I took the selfie with him, Mike and Stu). He is a friend of the ministry and took footage of the week. Evan mentioned when he was in the car the other day it did the same thing. Their remedy was to pull over, stop, and then start it again. So we did it…and it worked. We only had to do that six more times on the trip. 

Then there was the traffic. I have survived John Nanda trips in India, but I am really surprised that we did not make contact with another vehicle, or those motorcycles and as it got dark…Ugandans are hard to see as they dart across the streets. I seldom react physically on a close call…but on one move Otim (oh team) Stephen (our driver) made, both my arms flew out to the side to brace for the hit…but nothing.  

Otim is a cheerful man who seems to know everyone in Uganda. When we get to the airport, they usually have us get out of the van, walk through security, and the van drives in and gets looked at separately. Otim greeted the man, said a few words and he waved us through, we never had to get out of the van. We then went to the next point and he drove up to the VIP entrance. Otim greeted the man, showed an ID, and mentioned the name of the friend and pointed out his elderly passengers (obviously talking about Mike). He gave him the card back, moved the cone and took us up a ramp to the VIP area. We didn’t go in there, but it shortened our walk considerably. 

We are now one hour away from boarding our KLM flight to Amsterdam (8 hours), five-hour layover and eight hours to MSP. I’m pretty tired right now, but its all so, so, so very worth it. I’m starting to get brain dead, so I’ll sign off for now. God willing, you will see me Sunday with hopefully a reasonable amount of sleep. I assume I will add one more post when I land.