Yesterday I woke up at 3am feeling as sick as a dog. I felt like I wanted to throw up, I had diarrhoea, cold sweats and shaking. Several doses of GastroStop eased my tummy a bit, but I still felt awful when Ronald came to take me to breakfast before this morning’s meeting. Putting food in my tummy when it felt like it did would have been an invitation for disaster, so I just asked him to get me a bottle of lemonade, and otherwise went without breakfast.
I felt so weak that I didn’t think I was going to be able to stand to preach, but fortunately it was a three-hour service, with two hours of praise and worship before I had to get up, most of which time I spent praying, “Holy Spirit, either You have to take over or I’m going to land flat on my face – both literally and metaphorically.” Well, of course the Lord always answers such prayers, and by the time my turn came I was fine, and ended up preaching over an hour. God is sooooo good!
At the end I prayed for this young lady in a wheelchair – from her appearance I would guess she has cerebral palsy. I would have loved to see her get out of the chair – I long for the day when that will be the norm. That didn’t happen, but I believe she received a real touch from God. She had been crying out in the meeting, and after I prayed there was peace on her face.
After service we went for lunch. Even though I was feeling much better, I didn’t want to put God to the test by eating too much, so I just had a few spoonfuls of instant noodles and a little avocado (one of the great things here is that avos are plentiful.) Then we said our goodbyes and set off on the ten-hour drive back to Kampala.
The rough roads that had been a nightmare on our way to Paidah didn’t seem nearly as bad in daylight, and we were fairly soon back on sealed road. What we hadn’t realized on our way there was that part of our journey passed through a game park. Ronald’s sharp eyes caught site of an elephant some distance away, and there were a number of baboons along the roadside. This old girl came right up to the car hoping for a treat (and we would have given her one if we had any bananas) but by the time I took the phone out and turned it on she had decided that we were a lost cause, and moved some distance away.
A bit later in the journey we crossed the Katonga River – a magnificent, wide river with lots of rapids. My first thought was how awesome it would be to go white-water rafting on it. After we crossed the bridge, we pulled over to take a better look. Within minutes, two guys with automatic rifles were at the windows of the car, accusing us of taking photos (which is apparently forbidden, even though there is no sign to that effect.) My phone was turned off in my bag, I hadn’t even taken it out, and David and Ronald had not taken any photos, and offered to show them their phones so they could check. It was a pretty hairy few minutes before they were finally convinced and went away.
That was not the last of the drama. Some distance further on Ronald pulled the car over, saying it was overheating. We had been there with the hood up for barely minutes before a gaggle of young men had gathered around, offering “help” – and later extending their hands for payment. It turned out that a connection to the radiator had shaken loose on the rough roads, and it had boiled. So now it was top up the water and limp along to the first service station, stopping every so often to top up the water further. Finally they were able to get it patched up well enough to get us back to Kampala safely.
We arrived here around 12.30 – not as bad as our arrival in Paidah, but I was still very grateful to be having a day off today.