SUNDAY FINALE AND HOME

Sunday October 14th - Wednesday October 16th

Sorry to have taken this long. I did this in the Johannesberg airport and just as I was about to post, my time was up and it was all lost.

As we arose on Sunday morning for the first time we were sent in four different directions. Jaemin had to travel for two and a bit hours to preach in Soroti, Ashley and Julie went back to Malaba, I preached in the morning meeting in Mbale and the other members of the team did ministry with the kids at Mbale.

I preached a message about the lifestyle of the cross. Even in the morning meeting at the church more people gave their hearts to Christ. I am beginning to understand more about the experience of the cross and how this has become a religious icon for us rather than the place of our core identity and the source from which our life in Christ must flow.

I discovered some time ago that the message of the cross for the first three hundred years of Christian history was basically a message of the fact that Christian victory is characterized by the fact that glory and victory come through the embrace of the cross. The cross is the place where the nobodies become somebodies and the sombodies become nobodies. The early Christians were proud to suffer for Christ and serve in his name. Ever thought that the word for witness was taken from the experience of people who gave their lives for the cause of Christ, not just from someone asking someone else if they have heard about Jesus of Nazareth.

After the time of Constantine and the establishment of the church at the political and power centre of the empire this aspect of Christian testimony changed and the cross became a symbol of power and rule. Not so much a symbol of the righteous taking the rap for the unrighteous. The emphasis was on the spoils of victory much more than the opportunity to lay down your life.

Anyway, it was a great meeting.

After the morning meeting, the Aussies had been working on a little special project. One of the guys decided that instead of purchasing some trinket as a gift to Patrick and Christine, we would build them a genuine Aussie barbecue and cook them an Aussie BBQ meal. One of the guys spent the whole day on Saturday working hard in Mbale while we were in Malaba. He produced a wonderful gas powered hotplate and purchased a quarter of beef and they got to work. Everyone pitched in and we had two or three different kinds of meat and onions and coleslaw and all the other bits and pieces. The members of the Mbale church team came with their wives and the house was full of a lot of noise and some really great food. We have left the aussie icon on the back patio of the house and told them that they must practice for when we return.

Final meeting in Mbale

At five o'clock we all went to the church for the closing meeting. There were some terrific testimonies and a lot of gratitude to God and to people. Shannon gave a powerful testimony of an experience she had had in Malaba when she was told of a woman in Malaba who was very short as she is. They looked for this woman and found her. When she saw Shannon she was amazed. They spoke together and a bit later she became a believer. It was such a sovereign thing and very powerful. Good on you Shannon and good on you, Lord. A great testimony to the fact that God has special tasks for all of us in different ways. We are truly his workmanship.

At the same meeting pastor Patrick Ollala, the administrative pastor of Impact Ministries told how there had been a death threat letter sent to the Bishop the night before we went there to the Crusade. He warned that if we came, the Bishop would be killed. Not only was he not killed but many people were saved and healed and the church was built up and equipped. At the end of this story and as he spoke a prophetic word over the Aussie team about taking the fire back to Australia, there was a huge time of celebrating the victory of God. We all danced around the church with the plastic chairs we were sitting on raised above our heads as a testimony to God's might and power.


MONDAY - Seven hours in the bus: Mbale to Kampala and Kampala to Entebbe.

We left at 10:30 to drive to Entebbe. We stopped off at Kampala. People needed to get money changed and then there was some shopping to do in a centre there were there are cultural things to buy. Then we had to travel along some very crowded and washed out roads to drop Edgar (youngest Okabe boy) back at his boarding school. Honestly, one of the roads would have doubled as a very challenging motocross track.

We arrived at our motel in Entebbe by a bit after 7:00. Eating is always a slow process but we were in bed by around ten o'clock ready for an early rise to catch our plane.

TUESDAY - A long walk to get out of Africa: Entebbe - Johannesberg - SAA flight to Perth

Up at 5:00am
Breakfast
To the airport by a bit after 6:00am
A short time for goodbyes to our wonderful Ugandan hosts. Bishop Patrick, Christine, Emmanuel, Sam (fanstastic but driver). Ugandans are not good on saying goodbye. It doesn't seem as much a part of their culture. It seemed strange to be parting when we had spent most of the previous fourteen or fifteen days together for most of the day. Janelle was staying in Uganda to be taken by Compassion staff to see a child she had been sponsoring who lived about four hours from Kampala somewhere to the south west. Troy (from Adeliade was staying on in Mbale)

Johannesberg by 11:00 am.
This was a time for some more partings. Only six of us were going on to Perth on this day. Some were staying in South Africa to do some touring. Jaemin was wait listed on a plane for the next day and was going to visit some connections in Jo-berg. Five of the six were going to go into town and look around.

Me, I decided to stay put and stay focused. We had an eleven hour wait till our flight left for Perth. South African Airways and Qantas have a code sharing arrangement but SAA doesn't fly in to Sydney. So from a bit after 11:00 in the morning until 10:00 pm at night I decided to find a comfortable spot in the airport and work with the help of my computer.

By about 6:00 pm I discovered that the other five people had not gone into town after all. I don't know how we didn't see each other in the departures area but we missed each other all day. Turns out that we were just beyond a divider from each other for a fair bit of the time.

I forgot to mention that Tuija was also travelling from Uganda on the same flight (from Grace working short term in Uganda). She was on her way to do a few more weeks in Mozambique. We had time to talk and pray together before she left after lunch.

There's not much to say about the trip across the Indian Ocean. It started at 10:00 pm and we flew through a short night which was lengthened by the cabin crew who asked everyone to keep the blinds on the windows down. We didn't get cranked up till about 11:00 am Perth time.

We thought we were going to transit at the International terminal, but we had to go through customs and transfer to the domestic. That was a better idea because it meant no long delays in Sydney. We took off again and arrived at Sydney by 10:30 pm. Nick and Ben (my two terrific sons) were there to pick me up and Warwick came back with us. We dropped him off at Goulburn at around 1:15 am and then were in Canberra an hour or so later.

Surreal being in my own house. Thank you Jesus. You are a great, great Saviour. We love you, we love what you do, we thank you for what you did. And we thank you that we are safe, well, and delivered home. Thank you for wonderful, welcoming, hard working Ugandans and their faith to see people come to Christ and their communities rebuilt through the glory of God.

Will this be the last post? Wait and see. There are some photographs coming, but I will wait till I get into our office where we have fastest upload of any network I have ever been connected with.

Thank you for being interested and even more for praying for us. This was a team effort. We felt your prayers, we felt the power of God in so many ways. We felt connected to you in the Spirit. Thanks team.

Brian