My Saturday: a church conference with many surprises!!

It is 3:00 on a hot afternoon and I am sitting in IMME headquarters, which stands for Intercultural Ministry and Missions Emphasis.  This is the room where those who live in homes are able to one, have a place to do homework at the college, and two, get internetJ  It is here that I listen to classical music to drown out fellow-skypers and write my blogs as I look out the window at lots of green trees and red roofed classrooms.  This weekend has seriously been a blur of many new experiences and aha moments – everything from finally learning how to peel a potato in my hand (something my mom has tried to teach me for forever) to seeing a lady be delivered from demon possession at a church conference.   

 On Saturday my little sister took me to the final day of a church conference that had been going on for a few days.  It began with unfamiliarity – songs sung in Lugandan and almost shouted into microphones in enthusiasm.  People would dance and clap their hands, and I slowly got into it too.  There was then many performances done by the different churches that attended it – some seemingly Hawaiian hula dancers, who got a bunch of people to go up on stage and give them money in approval, and then African dancers, whom I was completely entranced with as they danced with flair and spunk.  After a practical group session where we talked about relationships and what to look for in a spouse, (which they said everything from culture to hard work to religion), we had lunch – rice, beef, and a bit of cabbage.  This we ate with our hands, which was quite the experience as I figured out how to use my hand as a spoon for the rice.  By the end, I quite enjoyed it - I think I could get used to that!  What followed was lively dancing to songs I knew, one in which we swung each other around by the arm, which I did with my sister.  The message then began, which I have to say was a God-given gift directly for me.  Up until then I had become discouraged and doubtful about my calling and even being here, but as the pastor fervently spoke about God calling us to go and follow Him, and how we needed to go through Gilga, a place of setting behind the past and all that weighed me down, Bethel, where I would find my vision and dream and really get to know God, and then Jericho, where I would have a fragrance of His presence with me, I felt God reconfirming his call for me to come here and that He would empower me to do all that He had called me to do.  Wow – that God would allow the one sermon I listened to to encourage me and help me re-remember that God had called me and would use me.  So cool. 

I don’t know if any of you have ever been to a Pentecostal church, but I have never been to one like this.  What followed surprised and challenged me like none else.  It was the end of the conference and so it was therefore time to be anointed with oil and prayed over.  As I stood there in the long line, I saw a woman who was being prayed over lift her hands up high and start to shake.  As the prayer continued in fervor, she suddenly fell to the ground and started rolling across the floor and crying out, making people in line move out of the way for her undignified movement.  Four people came to her rescue and had to physically carry her by her hands and feet onto the stage, to then pray for her and hence calm her down.  After much prayer, the writhing stopped and suddenly she had come to her senses and sat there in a daze.  I asked my sister what had just happened, and she calmly told me that a demon had just been cast out of her.  Something that I had read about and intellectually knew was a reality had suddenly become a physical reality, one in which took me back with surprise and made me realize that there truly are spiritual battles going on that do influence us.  Those stories in the Bible about Jesus casting out demons and sending them into pigs were real…and I was suddenly seeing with my own eyes the physical power of God and spiritual forces that we who live in the U.S.  so often forget are real.  Even now God is breaking down my preconceived boxes that I have made for Him – He is so much bigger than we think!!  Following this was my time to be anointed with oil.  As he laid His hands on me and began to pray – one thing after the other being directly to my situation, something that could not have been generalized for everyone, I could not help but think, I can never doubt God’s reality after this.  At that moment, the Holy Spirit spoke through that man and reconfirmed once again all He had been telling me, that He was with me and I need not fear, that He would empower me, give me direction, and bring me into a good future – a GOOD future.  Good stuff, right? 

Blurry eyed, eight hours having gone by, I walked home with my sister to be met by my family.  Oh how I do love them already.  I feel that this weekend has definitely been a time in which we have definitely connected more.  I have to say, my brother, Jeramiah, completely made my day when I got home and was bombarded by the phrase, “It was really good!  Did I tell you, it was really good?”  Jeramiah had read my whole, very long blog to the family around the table and could not stop talking to me about it, how good I was at story writing and how he could not wait to read the next episode.  I don’t know how true that is, but it truly made me feel special and I am so glad that I could share a little bit of what life in Uganda is like with my family back home, because it is so worth telling.  So thank you Jeremiah – you are the coolest Ugandan brother I’ve ever had, and I bet if you wrote your own story about life in Uganda, there would be many people very interested in reading it as well!:)