A wedding choir now meets at my house on a regular basis. The keyboard gets fired up and guitar music fills the room as both Ugandan and Mzungu voices blend together to prepare for a wedding on April 6th. All of us are learning new songs and it's a fun challenge. A few of us went last week to pick out material to make dresses/shirts for the choir and after searching many shops we only found one shop that had enough cloth for 8 people. I'm not quite sure how it happened - price, too many voices, lack of variety, led a few of us to choose a maroon print for the outfits. At the next practice, two of the singers decided they didn't like the material... so the next day we went back to the material store. I was able to convince the Indian shop keeper to exchange the material... so we set about picking new cloth. After a half hour of searching, the girls decided they liked maroon best and so we stuck with the original material. I just shook my head - thinking I could have done something better with my Saturday afternoon.
The other night I once again shared dinner with my awesome neighbours, and we dove into some deep conversations. Their cousin was over and he was asking me all about my faith, church background, and when we got to the point of talking about grace, the conversation got heated. This young man is not the only one... it was also preached in church on Sunday (and I've heard it from many Ugandan friends as well)... that we can never really be sure if we are going to heaven because if I die without asking for repentance for my latest sin, then I am still unworthy of heaven. I'm hell bound as a sinner. Well, in 36 years, I have never believed that... but I don't know how to really describe that. If you accept Christ as Saviour, then you are promised a home in heaven. That doesn't mean we should intentionally live in sin. God wants more from us than that. But only Christ can get me into heaven. It's not by what I say or do. Sin does affect how close I can be to God... but whenever I try to share this, my friends become very adamant about the cost of sin. Oh, do I struggle and pray.
Then last night, after a relaxing, yet entertaining afternoon at a new swimming pool in town, two young Dutch girls and myself were invited over to some Indian's home for dinner. We arrived at 8 pm and had great conversations. As the night wore on, conversations about God / gods / and religious practices became the centre. One Indian man was getting upset with me because I believed that there was only One True God. He was trying to tell me that Jesus Christ was Krishna reincarnated and that all of our faiths come from the same tree. We just have different branches, but we all stem from the same god... Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims, Christians... we are all the same. We are human beings. I don't disagree that we are all human beings :), but I don't believe that we worship the same God. Wow, he started telling me that I was not a real believer then... I was trying to create war and Christians are supposed to be about peace - just like Hindus. He mentioned something about me fighting just as hard as Israel and Palestine, and that I should just give up and realize we are all equal. Again, I came home with some much to think and pray about. How can I clearly share with my new friends? I wish I was better at quoting facts and passages. But I also know, that I can speak more clearly about my God than a few of the Indians in town who get confused about how many gods they have and how their stories come about. They say their book is thousands of years old and too big to really grasp. Again, I am grateful for the Bible, the inspired Word of God, which clearly tells me who God is and who I am in Christ.
I ask for your prayers. And maybe you can send some advice my way - if you really know how to define Grace and the absolute trust that I have in knowing I am going to heaven.
