Fish Face

Today we were blessed to have the opportunity to go to church at True Vine. The church services in Africa are hours long. However, they allow us to come late since we are not used to such long services. We were at church for about 2 ½ hours, and let me tell you… those were the fastest 2 ½ hours I have ever experienced. There was much dancing and singing, and a message from Pastor Bob. It was amazing to see each of the different tribes presenting their dance to the congregation. During one tribes dance, they invited us up to dance with them. What an amazing act of worship, to be up and dancing. The children were supposed to be outside at Sunday school, but once they saw the Mzungu coming to church they wanted to join us. The children here just love to sit on your lap and be loved. So that’s what many of us did during church. Some of the children are very shy, so you will wave at them, and they will come over. The little boy that was sitting with me was very tired during church. I could see his head nodding off, but when I would try and have him rest his head, he would wake up. Eventually he was comfortable enough where he reclined and took a little nap during the service.

After church we went back to Juba to do more painting. Today we were painting outside on the school walls. Here in Africa many of the schools don’t have school books, so the teachers have posters with pictures on them, things like parts of a fish, parts of the body, parts of a seed, the body, and a map of Uganda and Africa. So we painted these things on the outside of the school. What a fun experience that was. The sun was very hot today. Many of the children were there and wanting to help out in any way they could. My friend Kristen from yesterday found me right away, and greeted me with a huge hug. She was an amazing help today, holding the poster so that I could draw the things on the walls. She would periodically tell me oh I have to leave and go do something, but I will come back. She stayed with me through 2 paintings. We had some fun little conversations while painting. One revolved around the fish’s lips. So, I showed her how I make fish lips (something that I have done for years) She laughed so hard, then made fish lips back. Pretty soon her sister Jennifer and friend Jennifer and Lucy were over making fish lips with us. There were some local women sitting on a bench watching this all unfold and they were just laughing. It was fun for all. I was able to get some pictures of us making our fish face.

Many people worked very hard on each of these mini murals. Michael was given the task of doing the coat of arms… and it was not an easy task. We had all finished our murals, and Michael was finishing up his, when it started to rain. And when I say rain, it was rain. The sky opened up and it came down good. Michael finished up and we said our see you’s (here in Africa it is pretty rare that someone will tell you good bye, because they know and hope that they will see you again) and ran to the van. It was a great day, we got many mini murals done, and were able to hang out with our friends at Juba.