Living in a Movie

I know it’s been a while since I’ve blogged… It’s been a crazy week. Kelli and I moved into our house last Saturday and spent most of the week trying to get settled. (We’re almost there, by the way… we just need a few small, cheap pieces of furniture for storage.) On top of trying to get moved in, we also had the added pressure of preparing for our first True Love Waits presentation on Friday. Things went well with Mandela Secondary School… we’ve still got some kinks to work out, but it was a good start. Turns out only about 1/3 of the students were actually there on Friday, so we’ll probably get a second chance there before too long. We’re also going back on Thursday, we think for a smaller, informal gathering, more of a Q&A session.

We went to Awindiri Baptist Church this morning, where the Waflers have gone for a while. I’m still up in the air trying to decide whether I’ll continue to go there regularly, but it’s been a good place to be so far. We had baptism this morning, which turned out to be an experience… After praise & worship and giving the offering, the church body walked about half a mile to the river, crossing a major highway and passing through small villages to get there. Once we got to the river most of us had to cross, as there wasn’t really much room on the near side to stand and watch. Some of the men in the group helped the smaller children over (there were by far more kids than adults, and our group grew on the way to the river). The pastor preached a short sermon before 3 relatively new believers were baptized in the river. It was all pretty cool and reminded me somehow of The Poisonwood Bible.

The children at the church have gradually gotten used to me. Most members of the church are Alur, a different tribal group from the Lugbara, who my team is targeting. The Alur language is completely different, and most of the children don’t speak English yet, so communication is almost nonexistent, but they’ve figured out that I’m “okay”, I guess. During service this morning, I looked over and a small girl, maybe 3 or 4 years old, had come and sat down beside me. She watched me for the whole service. While we were waiting for the baptisms at the river, a little boy, probably under 2, came and sat in my lap while his older sister watched. And as we were walking up the dirt path back to the church, I felt a tiny hand in mine, and realized that another little one had come to walk beside me. Evan, one of my teammates was nearby, and we realized that we were completely surrounded by children, all of them under 10 years old. And in that moment, I had the feeling that I had walked into a Hollywood movie script. I mean, here are two naïve mzungus walking through a village in Africa surrounded by children. In whose life does that really happen???

Mine, I guess.