Day 2: The rest is yet to come, and won't it be fine

           Today was a day for church in the morning and preparation for Rock of Ages school in the afternoon.  The Lord calls us to a day of rest, and that was not today.  The rest is yet to come.  Also, we look forward to the future, how we can make ourselves ready for the rest of our lives in the service of the King.  The rest is yet to come.  With Jesus as our master and savior, it will be more than fine.
            We were blessed to experience a church service in Jinja today.  The service was about two hours long, very high energy, and very loud.  Honestly, there were not many differences between the Ugandan service and many high energy services in the US.  There was one out of the ordinary moment though. At one point, a man went unconscious and collapsed in the row behind us.  It is uncertain how much of the situation was of a spiritual or physical cause, but we pray that God would be with this man.  After the service, we learned that he was being taken to the hospital.
            The message at the service was very helpful and empowering.  The pastor spoke on Proverbs 24:16, though a righteous man falls 7 seven times, he rises again.  Some things that the pastor focused on was that failure is momentary and passes away.  Even when we fail, we are not failures.  We can rise.  We can only fail if we do not rise again.  The pastor suggested that we look to the future and live with an attitude of hope in God.  He ended the sermon by emphasizing that Jesus is the resurrection and the life.

Karla with most of the organized blessing bags

             After the sermon, we returned to the Jinja house, and we said goodbye to Paul Hunter, our main missionary host.  Paul is going to the US to watch his parents receive and award of recognition for their mission work.  We are sad that we will not get to see Paul again for the rest of our stay, because the time we had with him was so enjoyable.  Having said our goodbyes to Paul, we organized supplies for the week.  There were a lot of blessing bags and donations to sort through.  Afterwards, we tried to brainstorm how to best serve Rock of Ages School and a local Mbiko health clinic.  Much of this trip is focused on establishing reasonable long term goals for the Hands4Uganda group.  It will still take more talking, researching, and planning to understand what projects God is calling Hands4Uganda to work on specifically.
              Today had much planning in it. We look forward to the future when we will get to walk out what God made ready today.  Tomorrow is our first day at Rock of Ages, our first day to finally meet the children that most of us have only known by photographs and our imaginations.  Tomorrow we will rise and meet these children.  We look forward to the future.