Today was an awesome day in Masindi for the PMI Team.  The remaining members of the team traveled from Entebbe this morning and joined with everyone for lunch. What a blessing that everyone from Charleston arrived in Entebbe within 20 minutes of each other, despite a cancelled originating flight and reroutes through London and Brussels..  God is good.

The advance prayer team and those lucky enough to have arrived yesterday, were able to worship with the local congregation at St Matthews Anglican Church this morning, and what a blessing that was!  We were treated as honored guests, seated in the front pews and introduced to 800 congregants.  The Lord was present in that church this morning, the hymns were mighty and the message by Chaplain Ruth was an inspiration indeed.  She spoke on 11 Peter :1-10, delivering an amazing sermon in English.  A precious family sitting right behind us sang with joy in their hearts, and had a two year old boy who never moved from his seat… the patience of Ugandan children astounding to all.

The highlight of the church service came at the end… after the offering was taken, an auction was held… using donated fruit, eggs and other treasures, with congregants bidding the prices up with joy in their hearts.  We decided it was the Ugandan equivalent of a southern bake sale after church!   Some of us went to a village near here with one of our drivers ( Jimmy) to take some supplies and see the work he is doing with 30 “babies” ( two to four year olds) who have no moms and are being cared for by the church.  It would be hard to describe the little faces – filled with hope and awe that some “muzungas” were in their home.

After the team united back at our masindi hotel,  we had lunch of lamb and vegetables, and were led over to the PMI Clinic for tours with Michael, Joseph and Alex.  For those of us who had not seen the actual buildings, it was a mighty testament of what has happened here in the past few years, and each facet of the clinics were explained to us. The construction of the new in patient facility is well underway and looking great.  The roof was going on today.  In the afternoon,the pharmacy team , led by Son, then mobilized all available hands and took on the task of organizing all the medications that will be distributed this week…  I had the honor of counting to 40 perhaps a thousand times, in placing pills in separate pouches.

Our dinner this evening was a blessing and we are ready for tomorrow…  the prayer ministry team will pray for every single Ugandan who will be given medical treatment, the pharmacy is ready to go… and Michael Overcash and Dr. Rogers have already begun working as they are in surgery right now (Sunday evening) with an emergency in the clinic.  Please keep us in your prayers this week as we all endeavor to minister to these wonderful, joyous people… who have their hope in the Lord, all of the time.  We’ll keep you all posted !