There are lots of short-term churches and organizations that come to Uganda to work with the Lutheran Church Mission in Uganda. One of those congregations is Messiah Lutheran Church of Weldon Springs, Missouri, who has adopted the Lutheran Church in Nakabango, a small village a couple hours East of Kampala. Since I hadn't yet had an opportunity to visit the Nakabango congregation or visit with the mission team from Messiah, I planned to travel to Nakabango on Saturday or Sunday morning to worship with them.
Meanwhile, one of my good Ugandan friends, Alex, is from that area and had been planning for his son to be baptized that weekend at his ancestral home. Alex is the music director and keyboardist for the Kampala Lutheran congregation. The plans all finally fell into place late on Saturday night. I picked up a gas-powered generator, Alex's keyboard, sound mixing board, and speakers from the office. Then, early on Sunday morning, I drove to Iganga (relatively near Nakabango) and baptized Alex's child in the presence of their extended family and a few friends. We held the baptism outside and Alex played his keyboard so we could sing some appropriate songs during the service. This was my first "private" baptism service and I was the only clergyperson there so I didn't have much guidance. The wonderful thing about a baptism is that it's pure Gospel proclamation - it's the real and tangible forgiveness of sins! So what more can a person say than to point to the reality of what happens in baptism? I really enjoyed the opportunity to baptize Alex's baby boy - I felt honored that he would ask me.
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Awesome Drumming and Dancing after the FeastAfter the baptism service, I traveled to Nakabango with the help of another friend, Ronald, who actually knew where it was. At Nakabango Lutheran Church we met the short-term mission team from Messiah and spent some time visiting with them and hearing about their exciting week in Uganda. We got out the gas-powered generator again in Nakabango to play some music for everyone to enjoy. Except that we were out of gas. So I got to find out what you do when you're out of gas and you don't recall passing any gas stations for quite some time. Well, it turns out that those yellow jerry-cans that have an empty one-liter bottle stuck in the top on the side of the road are actually little places to buy fuel at a "slightly" higher price than at the actual gas station. It was 3,000 Shillings per liter which works out to about $5.40/gallon. The normal price for gas is about $4.50/gallon. So we bought gas for the generator and headed back to the church to hook up the tunes. Sunday was "the feast" which the Messiah team has done the last couple years. For the feast, they buy hundreds of pounds of food - rice, meat, and all kinds of stuff - and feed as many people as come. There were literally hundreds of children in line for some food. The Messiah team along with all the other "guests" including myself were provided a place to sit and have lunch separately which is the way things are done here, even though I would rather have sat on the ground with everyone else and enjoyed the same lunch they did. Our lunch included plain rice, flavored rice, matoke (plantain-like bananas), beef stew, chicken stew, deep-fried beef, cabbage, potatoes, and sodas and I'm sure I've forgotten something. We all enjoyed lunch together and as the Messiah team got started on their next little "just for fun" item - applying temporary sticker tattoos to the children who wanted them (which they all did, of course) - I took my leave and headed back to Kampala with the generator and equipment I had brought and a car full of friends taking full advantage of the free ride to Kampala. What a great day! -Shauen