Manry Family

In my last post, I reflected on blessing after experiencing the love of friends and family leading up to my departure to Uganda.  I realized that such blessing could only occur in relationships sharing in God’s own unconditional, unending love.   So it is a tribute to our God, who is not contained on one continent or one culture but is present in all, that my family and I would re-experience blessing on the other side of the Atlantic.

While my body is still trying to figure out what time zone it is in, my mind and heart know that we have been warmly received in our new home.  Our teammates have been generous to us with their homes, their encouragement, and their time as we’re starting to get settled.  It was great to unite with them face to face after well over a year of planning and conversations via phone and email.  Ben Langford, one of my teammates, gave me a high compliment (albeit indirect) when he told me he was only half excited when we arrived in Uganda to stay since it only seemed natural for us to be here with them.

We received an equally gracious reception from the Ugandans who we will be working with and living among.  A “Super Sunday” was planned for our first Sunday in Jinja, meaning that several village churches traveled to Jinja church for a combined worship.  We were welcomed en masse with an onslaught of greetings: “welcome back,” (Ugandans will say welcome back if you return from anywhere for almost any amount of time), “how is home?” “how was the journey?”  During the assembly, leaders representing several churches in Busoga and ministers of Jinja Church laid hands on me while a prayer of blessing and protection was spoken by a small boy from Jinja church and Moses Kimeze.  The laying on of hands, the prayers of blessing, the joyous singing were eerily familiar to the events surrounding our departure with our friends and family in Michigan, except this time it was in a place and a culture so unfamiliar to us.  It was experience that could only be orchestrated by a God as big as ours, who is faithful and present wherever we are, and whoever we are with, whenever we call His Name.

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