Jesus Christ is risen today! Alleluia!
Since I’m currently staying with the Muhima’s, I went with them to Easter services at All Saints’ Kampala, along with roughly one third of Kampala’s population.
This is Gideon, Mark, Sara, and Peter Muhima, in a photo that I grabbed from Facebook.
Actually, we had to divide and conquer, since the car wouldn’t hold six of us. Sara and I had planned to attend the 9:30 service, but ended up attending the 11:30 service. This actually worked out well, as they boys went ahead to the 9:30 (by taxi), and I was able to visit after the service with one of my friends who was posted to All Saints’.
This was abundantly helpful, as when Sara and I went to go to the service, the car died while trying to get to the main road. I thought the car stalled, but no. It was dead. This is Africa, as so a couple guys helped us push jump-start the car. I fancy in the US that they would have just looked at us and kept going, but one of the guys got in the car with me, rolled back down the hill, trying to jump start the car while it was in second gear. It eventually happened, and we rolled on to church.
All Saints’ Dale City has parking challenges, especially on holy days. But holy days in the US are typical parking days at All Saints’ Kampala. On holy days here, there ain’t no chance of parking anywhere close to the church; we had to park three blocks away. Which worked out well, because once we turned the car off, it refused to restart. So we met Mathew, Sara’s boyfriend, had the boys meet us, then dumped the car on them, with the plan to ride home with Mathew. See how the Lord provides?
Even though we were ridiculously late, we arrived during the readings, which means that the service also started late. There are usually four tents at All Saints’, because the congregation can’t fit in the building, hence their building campaign. Hmmm… that sounds familiar… except for the tent part.
For Easter, they added another tent, and we found two seats (miracle number 2? 3?), nestled between the children’s church building, the youth tent, and the sanctuary. We couldn’t hear the readings or the first five minutes of Archbishop Orombi’s sermon, but the young ones eventually went radio silent, and we were able to enjoy the sermon.
There were probably eight clergy there, including the Archbishop; I don’t think all the cathedral clergy are there at one time except for holy days. Hey – Bishop Zack (the assistant bishop of Kampala Diocese) wasn’t there, but the rest were. Since there were oodles of clergy, five remained inside to distribute Eucharist, and the rest came out to the tents, which was wonderful. And we sang one of my favorite hymns, as illustrated in the first line of this post.
The car is fine; it turns out that one of the connections to the battery wasn’t properly secured, and therefore wasn’t giving any juice to the engine. We’ve had a four-day holiday, as Good Friday and Easter Monday are public holidays here. I think I have vague memories of that being true in the US while I was in elementary school.
Back to the grind for all. I need to finish my sermon for Sunday.
Blessings this Easter season! He is risen! Alleluia!
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