This church is small – half a dirt floor and half cement, a red clay stage and four walls of multi-sheeted tin, held together by long wooden beams. A stained-light window of dappled sky and trees peers in from above the curtained stage, a triangle of light and warmth that meets rivers of sun streaming through cracks in the walls, lighting the congregation. Inside the church dwell a few potted plants, plastic chairs set neatly in rows, a worn black speaker held aloft on a rusty pedestal, and one surprising corner of musical instruments – a small drum set, an electric guitar, a keyboard, and microphones that stretch to the stage.
The morning begins with song, progresses with testimony and song, segways into joyous dancing and song, transitions into lively preaching, and ends with more heart-felt song. The band plays, the dancers dance, and the people in the congregation, those not up on stage, dance and clap and wave their hands, singing loudly and occasionally calling out in what seems to be individual conversations with the lord. At one point the preacher, a youngish woman with bleached-light braids and a dark green suit, calls all those forward who need to renew their connection to the lord, or otherwise seek His assistance. As the entire congregation sings frantically, band playing, preacher calling out, calling out, imploring and praising and loving her people, members of the church slowly move up, walk forward, and stand in front of the stage, their backs to us. Silently, they soak in the worship and love and music and God that their community is offering up to them, a gift swathed in song. An old lady in traditional Buganda attire is one of the first to walk forward – then a mother with child, another mother, a young man about 18 years of age, a deeply bedraggled, middle-aged man, and a young teenage girl with a large belly. A second old woman in traditional attire, even older and slower than the first, moves forward towards the stage, her entire body bowed as if she can barely carry her own weight. The old woman stands unmoving during the end of song, and when it finishes and she turns back to her seat, I see tears in her deep, sagging eyes.
“I praise the lord because he fought for me,” a lady declared during testimony. The lord fought for the life of her son, fought besides the lady herself, presumably the boy’s father if alive, a doctor perhaps, neighbors or relatives. When her son lived this victory was given to the lord, a sign of God’s devotion and everlasting love. I realize, with no pretensions of deep or original thought, that every day is a challenge for this congregation, every week a fight. Every month brings this community both victories and losses in the long struggle they call Life. And these people, unswerving in their devotion to the Lord, seem not to blame Him for their losses – these they take upon themselves, or their country, or the state of humanity as a whole. Their victories, however, they offer wholly to the lord, with song and praise and a stream of love like the sunlight that warms us from the window above. I realize this, and I watch the singers and dancers around me with new admiration, yet cannot fully understand their motivation. I long to know where they find this everlasting strength and trust, an endless supply of pure, unadulterated love. I would ask them but I think that they would respond, as they would to my admiration of all their life’s victories, that they draw this strength from the Lord.
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