Wednesday 21 February  Hitching rides, puppets and pupils

It is over 40 years since we have hitched a ride anywhere, but today we managed to hitch 3 rides out of 6 parts of the journey to and from Bwera on the Congo border. The other 3 were on “public” one of which was in a 5 seater saloon car taxi, which carried 11 people for quite a few kilometres!

We went to a Christian school in a town, which has a very large Muslim population. Our traveling companion was our friend John Murabyo who is an evangelist to Muslims and many of the children in the school are Muslim converts or their children. We visited all the children in their classrooms and then had a great time acting the story of Jesus calming the storm on the lake with them followed by teaching them the song “Jesus Love is very wonderful”. There was then a bit of singing and dancing where we had to dance solos followed by us using our puppets again to tell the story of Samuel hearing God’s voice. We did the same story a few years back at the same school and they have never forgotten it so wanted it again! A huge crowd of children, who wanted to stroke our arms, then surrounded us. Maybe they thought there would be black skin if they rubbed the white off!

  

One of the classrooms at the school at Bwera with the Head Teacher.

 

Teaching the children at Bwera "Jesus Love is very wonderful"

On our return Ann quickly made another wooden spoon puppet so that we could tell the story of Jesus healing the paralysed man who was let through a roof by his friends. This was very well received on the paediatric ward where many people gathered to sing, to watch the puppets and give testimonies. It was a great joy to see a smiling recovering child who last week was lethargic and just had cried all the time through bad malnutrition.

Yesterday morning Ann spent a long time marking the beginning of term English papers of P2 where she has been most mornings. The teacher was very grateful for the help but was rather dismayed by the results and asked for prayer for help to raise the standard of the class!

Another school Ann visited earlier in the week was a small nursery school close to Kagando run by a man called Robert who wants to help underprivileged children. A number of people have helped to fund a splendid new building for him. He has visited the Esuubi café and says one day he would like to have a teacher exchange with Ekiwumulo in Mityana. 

 Nursery school classroom still with earth floor.

 Robert standing outside the new nursery school.

 Sometimes gets a bit exhausting. Must drink my tea more quickly in future!