What a fabulous Father's Day gift --- we were able to instant message with Anna on Sunday morning and she wrote a new blog post. She is really growing in the Lord and God is doing amazing things in and through their team. I wanted to share her post here with you all. Thank you for your continued prayers.
"We are marching, marching we are marching, marching we are marching in the light of God."
I've heard that song a thousand times before in my life. My mother lived in Swaziland for a couple of years before I was born, and I grew up singing that song before I even realized Swaziland was a real place. In the visits I've been privileged to make to Swaziland, that song has always been a constant. Everyone there knows it and likes to sing it.
Coming into this trip, I was really making a concentrated effort not to draw imagined similarities between Uganda and Swaziland. But it turns out some things can be familiar, even in countries as different as these. Besides that song, I discovered that at least in the local languages, the same terms are used to address people (sisi for a sister or girl, make for a mother or woman) as in Swaziland and South Africa. And that they also sing and play children's games I know from those southern African countries.
All of this has really pressed into me how connected our world really is. As if those connections spanning thousands of miles across a gigantic continent were not enough, we sang the Chris Tomlin song, 'How Great Is Our God' in church Sunday. If you didn't know, Tomlin has recorded a version of that song with singers from across the globe and it is, in a word, incredible. I first heard it at Passion this year and was totally blown away. I remember laying on the ground, totally at a loss because it was such a clear picture of Heaven and reminded me so much of all the places I'd been and the people I'd met.
Our first Sunday in Africa, at an awesome church in Mbarara, Uganda, we sang that song again. And once again I was totally blown away by God. To come half-way across the world, to a totally new situation, with new people, new language, new everything, and then hear that familiar song that is in many ways an ultimate image of the unified church to me, was awe-inspiring.
"The heavens proclaim the glory of God. The skies display His craftsmanship. Day after day they continue to speak, night after night they make Him known. They speak without a sound or word, their voice is never heard. Yet their message has gone throughout the earth, and their words to all the world..." - Psalm 19:1-4
No matter how far, how different, how much everything else has changed, God remains the same. And I'm thoroughly enjoying meeting with Him in Uganda.
To read more of the blog posts being written by Anna's team, visit the Expedition website: http://expedition.adventures.org/
Thank you to Erica Floyd for the photograph. She is part of a World Race team serving alongside Anna's team.
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