The Namatala Bible Club Celebrations

We awoke early this morning. A rooster (or roosters) gives us a series of early wakeup calls! We are up at dawn each morning. After brekky we checked our emails and did some washing. We were picked up by Jane (from the British Jenga NGO) in an old pickup truck. She drove us out to Namatala, a very poor area of Mbale to go to their Bible-Club celebrations. They have been conducting bible study groups in this area and all the groups were getting together for a celebration. It was supposed to start at 12:30pm but didn’t start until after 2pm (time is VERY flexible here!) as they were still picking up children in the pickup and a van from the outer areas. About 500 children came. A few of them were brave enough to come up and shake our hands and quite a few melted our hearts. It was held in the local Baptist church which had the walls built but only a “temporary” roof covering half the area with a dirt floor. When we arrived we were swamped by little kids calling out “Muzungu”. While we were waiting the children who were already there broke out into spontaneous worship. (Click player to hear singing)

The MC for the afternoon was a Ugandan named Moses. He broke the British and Aussie complement up when he lead worship with a yellow wig and red nose. Each group presented some songs. Some of the songs were quite moving and the children that led worship are very gifted. (This is despite the LOUD keyboard playing and distorted PA)

They also had a find the bible verse competition and a bible knowledge quiz. The children were each given a mango juice drink and a chapatti and a mandazi (like a doughnut). At the conclusion it was getting dark and the team ferried the children home.

We saw the lights and fires come on in their little mud huts and reflected on how blessed we had been by their enthusiastic worship and how impressed we were by their bible knowledge.