FPC Africa Trip – Day 5
On Saturday we left the hotel at 8:30 AM, traveling to a small village named Obiarai outside of Soroti. We were going to catch our MAF flight back to Kampala later that morning, but it had been delayed due to a medical emergency. The pilots had to fly a stroke victim from South Sudan back to Kampala and we were happy to wait.
Obiarai is not really a village. It is an area outside of Soroti a few acres in size with small huts made of mud bricks and conical grass thatched roofs scattered around the area. The people here live a subsistence life. Roughly in the center of this collection of huts and small farmed plots is the church. To reach the church we turned onto a narrow, rutted dirt road and drove into the bush for about a half mile. No power or running water. Just outside the church we were met by the welcoming committee of church members blowing whistles, waving flags, singing, and making the high-pitched piercing noise that some women in this part of Africa can make, seemingly defying the anatomy of the human mouth and throat. They were so joyful. This committee accompanied the bus to the dirt yard outside the church and lined up, welcoming each of us to their village.
I stood outside the church and thought “I am not going to go in there. It looks too primitive”. It was about 75-feet long, had a low mud-brick wall around it and a huge grass-thatched roof that came down to about 4 feet above the ground. I had to stoop to enter. Inside, the floor was hard-packed dirt. The covering of the church (I guess you would call it the roof) was made up of two vertical posts, trees really, with a long cross beam supported by the vertical posts holding up the peak of the structure. Long logs sloped down from the horizontal beam that ran the length of the structure to other beams at the top of the mud-brick walls forming a large inverted V-shaped covering. Reeds and grass were interwoven between the logs and all was lashed together with thick grass. It was cool, clean, and surprisingly cozy inside. About 50 people sat inside. Once we were seated and welcomed, we all began to worship.
Once again, I was amazed at the joy of the people and the power of their praises. God really does inhabit the praises of His people. We worshiped for about an hour and all of us felt the Presence and Power of God. Jim gave a short message from Romans 8. I was asked to pray over the congregation for healing. It was an incredible experience. Their welcome was so warm and genuine. Many said to me as I left “please give America greetings from Africa”. I think they were blessed to have us worship with them; I am pretty sure that I was much more blessed than they to be able to worship in that church. It occurred to me that renewal is not just what happens to me when someone like Tony Evans comes to my church; renewal also occurs to me when I go to a church like the one in Obiarai.
A few other thoughts. As we were worshipping I sensed Jesus in our midst. He told me how pleased He is with the people of Obiarai. Their worship of Jesus is genuine and passionate, and simpler. They worship with a sense of expectancy; God is with them. They can bring their problems to Him and He will hear them. They believe in healing and deliverance because Scripture tells them to pray for healing and because they see healing prayers answered regularly. It is part of their everyday life and walk with Christ. Most of these Christians have endured losses that would crush us. They know that not everyone gets healed. Their life expectancy is probably less than 50 years and for most maybe 40. That is part of their life also. But they worship God with joy and passion, and still believe that our God is a God who heals. Their joy, passion, power, and life are rooted in this faith.
As we left Obiarai, the people followed our bus down the road, telling us to say hello to America for them.
We were airborne by 2:00 PM and back in Kampala by 3:30. What an incredible three days. Jesus is not only the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. But He is the same in Houston, Soroti, and Obiarai, even though you would have to work hard to find two more different church buildings than First Presbyterian Church in Houston and the thatched hut in Obiarai. Jesus is alive and moving in each of these churches. To the extent that any one member in these churches depends on Jesus for everything; whose faith is rooted in Him and not in themselves, or in their stuff/possessions, Jesus will be more or less alive in them. This will be reflected in their worship, joy, and peace. This is more difficult in my life because I have so much, but not impossible. Just much harder.
In a way, our team stepped back in time in Obiarai, back into what the first-century church must have looked like, at least in terms of worship and faith. I have no doubt that the thatched-roof buildings like the one in Obiarai have been built this same way for 1000s of years and the worship of Jesus we experienced there has changed very little since this people group became Christians. During the worship I leaned over to one of my friends and said “at least we don’t have to worry about the power going out” and he said back to me “we don’t have to worry about anything at all.”
Amena (Amen in Luganda). Glory to God.