Preaching

Yesterday was our first experience teaching a large crowd of Ugandans who weren't little kids. I preached a sermon in two different places, first in a secondary school of two or three hundred young men and women, and then in a church of maybe four or five hundred people. I don't mind speaking in front of large crowds, but the hardest part about this was not being sure if they could fully understand me or relate to what I was saying. And then afterwards they would usher us out of the service and put us away in a room, and then we couldn't talk with anyone that I had just preached to. This was difficult for me because I could get no response from anyone, and it left me a little emotionally drained, wondering if these people even liked me or not!

This was good in many ways though, to check my motives on whether I am preaching for men or for God, whether I want to please people or please God. But at the same time it is important to make sure that I am understood, which I was assured that I was. In the afternoon we went back to the secondary school that I had spoken to and gave a few talks as a team on Christian Maturity and Relationships, which was more interactive and afterwards I had a few guys in their late teens or early twenties approach me and say how much they connected with what I had said and wanted to meet together to talk more. I am hopeful that I can do just that with them, but I know regardless that the Lord was blessing me through that to encourage me and keep me going. We are only going to be doing more and more speaking, and much of that, especially the sermon, will be on me... so I beg you for your prayers on that.

The disparity between how we live and how they live continues to amaze me. Many kids here have ripped shirts that they have to wear because they have no others, or even some little ones don't even have any underwear or shorts. They had a famine recently around here and many people, especially elderly and younger kids, died because they were too weak to survive in such scarcity. The way the world is right now does not make sense, but I am not sure yet what we are supposed to do. The reasons and issues run so deep, and it requires more than just giving them stuff. I will keep praying and thinking.... but I do know that I need to keep going deeper in this direction. Deeper into people's brokenness and pain, deeper into suffering, and further from complacency and spoiling wealth.