African rain on a tin roof

Today was another incredible day!
After a long bumpy ride in the taxi (van) we arrived at a beautiful village. This is the village that Buyondo grew up in and he invited our team to speak to the women of his church.
The terrain was tropical and green with avacodo trees, coffee, tobacco and mango trees. The church was rustic and was made of bricks and mortor with a tin roof.
It looked like a picture with the sky as a bright blue backdrop. As we got closer we could hear singing and drumming inside. We entered and joined right in with the singing and Sue Sanford even sat behind a drum and started pounding away.
We all shared our testimonies and the women greatly confirmed that they could also relate and were so engaged listening to our testimonies that they didn't want to break for lunch!

Camille taught about forgiveness and several women cried as they listened to her heart-wrenching testimony.

Then the rain started and sounded SO cool on the tin roof. It kept getting louder and louder drowning out the lady who was sharing. The rain quickly ended.

At the end of the service the pastor and ministry leaders blessed us with a special prayer as we held hands and kneeled to the ground. It was an emotional, very touching moment. Suddenly, they placed an envelope in Suzanne's open hand, and one by one had all of the U.S. AND Ugandan women leaders each put a hand on it symbolizing their giving it to all of us from all of them. We sobbed, as in our hearts, we immediatedly knew it was a love offering from them to Healing Hearts Ministries! In Africa, it is very rare for a church to give when they themselves have such great financial need. This truly was biblical giving cheerfully from their heart as gratitude to God for what they had just received from His Word. As we left for the van, the ladies hugged and kissed us and waved goodbye, calling us their very own sisters!

Tomorrow, we wake up early and go to do ministry with widows for 2 days with one of our Healing Hearts leaders, Harriet Walude. One day of rest in Jinja and then we'll be back to our "home" in Kampala.

Pics, lots of pics, soon!
Healing Hearts Team Uganda