Look closely at this photo.

African Offering

Do you see the crumpled cash hiding in the pile of fruit?  Many small or remote villages still utilize a barter economy so during the offering people will give what they have: avacados, mangos, corn, etc.  After worship the more “perishable” offerings (all our offerings are perishable, aren’t they?) will be sold and the proceeds placed in the church treasury.  (Somehow the pastor usually knows who has the means to buy the items–go figure!)  It’s a great system because rich and and poor can worship side-by-side and both genuinely participate in the offering.

It’s a system not entirely unknown in America…if my home congregation isn’t atypical, that is.  I remember the family with the LP gas business would keep the tank topped up in the church kitchen.  Men would deliver and stack several cords of firewood at the pastor’s house each fall.  Maybe your congregation receives donations “in-kind” and then auctions them off.

If people don’t have hard cash to put in the plate during a recession, why don’t you take a hint from your brethren in Africa?  There’s no reason you can’t create, faciliate, champion, and popularize mechanisms so your people can still give what they have with joy–especially since it’s not a totally foreign concept in America.

It’s fun to have a camera phone handy to catch those fleeting moments of creative spelling and cultural insights.

Many Americans love making public statements on their car.  Just as many people here in Uganda embrace “bumper-stickers”  but they often do it in a bigger way!

"Holly Mary, Mother of Jesus"

This next one actually reads, “AVOID CHILD SURCRIFICE”.  For more on this issue, see my earlier post.

It's a good idea!

The weather in Africa is as varied as the people.  West Africa is hot and humid.  The deserts in the north and west are hot and dry.  South Africa has a winter so cool you need a heater.  Uganda is something like a “perfect” middle.  I had anticipated that being on the equator would mean hot sun and hot air.  But what we have encountered is absolute paradise.

The weather is always 75-85 degrees year round.  The mornings are cool…cool enough for the girls to need a jacket for breakfast on the porch each day.  It quickly warms up and the sun makes it quite hot on the hot days.  But it is rarely humid so it is always bearable.  If you find a palm tree to sit under you can be perfectly comfortable.  Many days it rains.  There are few truly dry periods here which make for the beautiful and lush landscape.  When rain comes, either in the evenings or afternoons, it cools down considerably.  So there is often a nice break from the heat.

We are at an elevation 1155 meters which means our evenings cool to a comfortable temperature.  We hardly ever need a fan to fall asleep.  By the middle of the night you need a blanket to cover up.  So day and night are a perfect mix.

When weather does come our way…it comes off of Lake Victoria which is less than two miles from our home.  The photo at the top of our blog page was taken from the hill we live on.  We live that close.   Lake Victoria lies East and South of us.  Our weather never comes from the west or north which is exactly opposite of the weather in WI where I grew up.  It took me a long time to get used to the weather coming from such a different direction.

Rain usually comes in the form of a storm although it sometimes rains just as rain.  It can storm hard with hail and wind and thunder.  Lightening strikes seem to be rare.  The lightening seems to be mostly in the atmosphere.  The storms and rain pass quickly and the sun returns.  There have been a few “rainy” days where it was gloomy, cool and wet.

My favorite weather scene so far was seeing an early morning rainbow.  Amelia opened the curtains and we saw a complete rainbow.  The rainbow was full from one end to the other.  Now as a child I heard about the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow but I had never seen an end.  This rainbow really ended by touching the ground in a marsh near Lake Victoria.  It was so amazing that I didn’t even take time to photograph it-I wanted to see it as long as I could.

The sunsets here are a bit dim compared to the sunsets in MN or WI.  There are few days that it is more than just a bit of pink before it disappears for the night.  It gets dark every day…all year long…around seven p.m.  But there was one night when the sky was quite spectacular.  Enjoy the photo.

Our co-workers, Shauen and Krista, are doing a fablous job with their blog.  Some of their posts don’t apply to us so well (e.g. The haircut.  Now, is that a diss on Shauen for the haircut or a diss on me for not having any hair left to cut?!???) but we have the same basic responsibilities so in plenty of posts you get hear about the work from their perspective.  Enjoy!

Our missionary team learns Luganda together.  The Trump’s and the Gillard’s meet with our language teacher, Chris, for two hours, twice a week.

Chris, Jake, Michelle, Krista, Shauen

It’s a pace and schedule that’s very compatible with the rest of our responsibilities.  If the schedule were more rigorous we’d probably have to cancel a lot, fall behind, and feel like failures.  But this schedule is sane and “do-able” and we are making progress.

The objectives of our language learning are to learn the culture so we can feel bonded to the people we work with.  We aim for fluency in marketplace situations and basic conversations.  Preaching in Luganda may come with time.

Language Learning Factoids:

• Luganda isn’t the national language (English is!) but it is considered a trade language over a large portion of the country.  When we visit many areas we’ll still speak English and utilize a translator.
• Luganda has 6 tenses and 24 noun classes (declensions).  This means there are 24 prefixes, 24 sets of personal pronouns, 24 sets of demonstrative pronouns, etc.
• No Luganda word begins with the letter ‘i’

We have lots of bugs here.  This insect is amazing.  It has the wings of a moth but a body that is more bee-like.  Notice that the spots in the wings are translucent.  It landed on a pillar on our porch and stayed there for hours.

Is it a moth or a bee?

We saw this one a few months ago.  It was on the edge of an open window and appeared to be a leaf caught in a spider web just dancing in the wind.  Closer inspection reveals much more.  What a fantastically complicated disguise.  Don’t miss what look like stingers on the tail.  I actually got some video of it, too.  The movements were incredible…more of that minute quivering and jiggling…an exact replica of a leaf dancing in the wind!

This is not a leaf!

Can you see it?

I can’t say enough about how significant President Obama’s election figures in the psyche of East Africans.  And it shows in some interesting ways!

Obama Inn, Gulu, Uganda

Obama Mobile Takeaway

We received a letter from some pre-schooler’s at First Lutheran in Grand Rapids, MN.

We saw your picture. We know your names. How do you say your name? Is it ‘G’illard like in ‘g’iraffe or ‘G’illard like in ‘g’orilla? You have a great family, that means you love one another. Thank you for telling people about Jesus. Jesus loves you. We love you. We care about you.

Here’s part of my reply to them:

We pronounce our name ‘G’illard like in ‘g’orilla and ‘Gillard’ rhymes with ‘Willard’.  But here I’m sometimes called something else.  In the local languages there’s little differentiation between ‘l’ and ‘r’ and they often address people by their last name so here I also respond to “Girard”!

I have a great laser printer.  It hardly ever lets me down.  That’s why I was so confused when it was giving me problems yesterday–a very light band of smeared toner about 1 inch wide from top to bottom on the left hand side of the page.

a possible explanation for smeared toner

Just remember, no matter how bad your day is, you’re doing a heckuva lot better than this little guy.

There's nothing like the beat of the African Drum

There is a choir at our congregation in Kampala.  I mentioned that I play the djembe if they were ever in need of a bit of beat.  It took a few months but a choir member, Angela asked if I would like her help in ordering a drum.  To get a good price, she went and ordered one to be made for me.  Djembe drums are West African drums but are played in Uganda (Ngoma drums are native Uganda drums).  For $30 I got a nice djembe drum with good sound.  I played in church the next week and I have played every Sunday I am in town ever since.  I love it.  Sometimes I accompany the keyboard and sometimes guitar.  My favorite part about worship in Africa is that the Lutherans here know how to pep up all our favorite hymns.  We also sing many contemporary songs in worship.  It is so fulfilling.

Line is especially into drumming and Amelia likes to play to.  They have baby ngoma drums.  I think for our next holiday I will get them some small djembes so we can really play together.