Gulu and Dead Minnows

Well, we got back from Gulu in one piece. We were confident that the trip would go well but since Bev and I have never taught a marriage seminar before or even taught together before we weren’t 100% sure we could do it. Plus the fact that apparently I had neglected to mention to Bev that she was teaching with me made for an interesting evening Friday.

We had taken the long way so we could drop Pastor Apollo at Atiriri after getting fuel in Soroti. Pastor Stephen met us there and Apollo spent the weekend with him and the churches at Olele and Ogongora. Then we went through Lira and on up to Gulu. It took about 8 hours and that was on good roads without speed humps. We had a lovely lunch of mukene (dried minnows) in peanut sauce over posho (maize meal) and greens cooked in raw eggs. Yum! Surprisingly good, actually.

So Friday night was spent deciding how we would share “Song of Songs”. Bev would read the woman’s part and I would read the man’s. Seems rather obvious now but after the long trip and lunch we weren’t too sure about anything anymore. Then we went to bed and pretended to sleep. We wanted to sleep and desired sleep but the power was off and there was no fan so there was no sleep. And with no fan that meant no mosquito net so after numerous bites (check here in 5-10 days for our latest malaria update) we got up for a brisk cold shower (no hot water) and breakfast. Praise the Lord for the hot coffee.

We started at 10:00am and finished at 5:00pm. And we had a lot of fun in the process. My wife taught very well despite her lack of prep time. There were 31 attendees. How do you get 31 at a couple’s event? Easy, some wives came without their unsaved husbands. Oh yeah, there was that one man who brought both wives! That is another story in itself. But we did give him five pages of Scripture to read. And a written answer that took an hour to write Sunday morning. But all in all it went well!

The highlight for me was to watch the women’s faces as their husbands publicly declared two things they liked about their wives. Amazingly enough 2 women and 2 men mentioned that they loved the fact that their spouse was missing at least one of their front teeth. This caused some brief editing on my part to downplay the verse that says “her teeth are like just shorn sheep coming up from the washing, EACH ONE WITH ITS TWIN”. It actually was really cool to see how God has made each of us appreciate in our spouse what others consider a draw back.

We got back Monday and look forward to sharing at other churches in the coming month. That’s all from Jinja. Hey honey what are these dead minnows doing on my pizza?