MONDAY TO WEDNESDAY - OUT OF AFRICA

Its hard to believe that this challenging, stretching and vibrant experience has come to an end. The experience of rising each day with the single thought of responding to the demands and embracing ministry opportunities came to and end. For the first day in more than two weeks I wasn’t thinking about whether it would rain or not. I wasn’t thinking about how I could describe spiritual truth in a way that would cross one or two language barriers.

I can tell you what I was thinking of in one four letter word beginning with the letter ‘h’ and ending in the letter ‘e.’

There were certain realities that needed to be faced as far as the Monday program was concerned. Originally there had been a chance that I could link up with a friend of Evans Lagudah (an African and an elder at Grace) who worked at one of the Universities in Kampala. Originally I was thinking that there might have been room to move with the program and I could make myself available to meet with him and spend some time with some of the students at his University. He is connected with a very wonderful Christian ministry organization in Africa called African Enterprise. I had tried to contact him but somehow the connections did not work out and during the last week in Soroti I made all kinds of enquiries and phone calls but they were all to no avail. So I canned that idea. My second desire was to meet with Pastor John Mulinde. John runs a church and a ministry called World Trumpet Ministries and has been associated very strongly with George Otis from the Transformations (videos on revival and national transformation over the last ten years or so). I have tracked with this man’s teaching and ministry on prayer and revival for the last few years. As I tried to tee that meeting up I found that he would be out of the country for all but two days of the time we would be there. He invited me to attend a two day summit meeting at the Prayer Mountain he has established just outside of Kampala but it was during the week of meetings in Mbale and I couldn’t attend. I talked with his chief of staff person and thought there may be some value in meeting with him. As it turned out that was not possible either.

We were planning to leave Mbale at 8:00 am to make the four hour drive to Kampala. The team members were keen to do some shopping for people at home and there was a very good place called the National Theatre in Kampala that Christine said would be ideal for this purpose. People also had to change some money. But the trip down was slow and when we got to Kampala the traffic was of nightmare proportions. We had to go to the centre of the city for these things and we were locked in traffic jams for long periods of time. I was getting pretty edgy about time and told the Bishop that I would simply cancel the idea of going to Mulinde’s place and by the time people got to a money changing place and we loaded up to go to the Theatre, it was after one o’clock. Our plane left at just after four and I was not wanting to get to the airport after two thirty. Entebbe is more forty minutes drive from Kampala. So I warned everyone that we would have a very short stay at the Theatre and ended up having to round everyone up to leave. Regardless of the fact that Entebbe is not as busy as some other airports, I know that bureaucratic processes always seem to take longer than you think.
We ended up arriving at Entebbe not much before three o’clock. Our parting with Patrick, Christine and Emmanuel had to happen with what seemed to be regrettable haste. The parking policeman wouldn’t let the bus stay at the kerbside and at Entebbe the departnres area is restricted from before check in, so there was no real point in the Ungandans staying around. We said simple goodbyes and felt bereaved to do so after having shared together so fully for the past seventeen days.

Our trip to Dubai stopped at Addis Ababa for the regulation hour and a half (we all sat in the place for the duration) and we arrived at Dubai three quarters of an hour after midnight. If you;ve been to Dubai airport you will know how spread out it is. Our plane parked away from the terminal and the bus took fifteen minutes to drive us to the arrivals area. What a blessing it was to see a well dressed Hyatt Hotel man with my name on his care greet us just inside the arrivals gate. He showed us how to get through customs and we were greeted by the Hyatt staff who man a booth at the airport before we were escorted to the very comfortable mini bus and driven to the home of Rachel (nee Capon) and Chris Franzen’s home. Chris is a manager at the Dubai Hyatt Hotel and they have a nice town house in an estate operated by the Hotel for their staff. Rachel had all wonderfully set up her living room for multiple bodies as well as the spare room and one bed in their baby girl’s (Ashley) room. We simply flopped and dozed our way to around 7:45 am, had a simple but very welcome piece of toast (with Vegemite) and tea before the bus arrived just after 8:30 to take us back to the airport for our plane ride to Sydney. With traffic there was not a lot of time. Our plane left at 10:15 am and there are a lot of processes and checks even if you don’t have baggage to check through. You also have to walk from one building through a tunnel across a very wide access apron to the departures area. We arrived with just enough time but the plane was late boarding and when we got on board we were sitting there for a whole hour while they did something with the fuel – I think they needed to add more (which we all approved of by the way). But at last we were off for the nearly fourteen hour leg to Sydney.

No one could sleep. We had had a sleep and our journey took us to what would have been the early hours of a regular night. That translated into a 7:30 arrival at Sydney. After the customs rabble it was nearly nine by the time we walked out to the enormously anticipated welcome of husbands and wives. Unbelievable. The Goulburn crew were all traveling home in a small bus, and I accepted Nola’s offer of a slow ride to Canberra.

I will do one more posting on this Africa trip that will include some summary observations and comments. Thank you so much to all those who prayed for us. It was one of the most prayer aware times I have experienced and the grace of God that was obvious everywhere we turned was testimony to the faithful and persevering gift that you have given. Thank you also to those who contributed financially. We could not have accomplished what we did without the equipment that you provided along with the meals and support we were able to give to the people we served, especially those in the Displaced Persons’ Camps.