who are youuuuuu?

Today we had devotions then we went to the bakery AND a sweet coffee shop downtown! AND I had chocolate ice cream there! It was so awesome. We were joined by a group of five Canadians. Two of them will be here longer than we will, and the other three are leaving in three weeks. After the coffee shop, Angela and I went to a video store next door, where I got Dexter season 1 for about $2.50. It is a totally burned copy, but it works!

After my wonderful Dexter find, we walked to House of Prayer for afternoon prayer. They asked me to sing with the worship team even though I didn’t bring my guitar. I nearly died of laughter when they started singing, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me and the devil knows I am the wiener (winner)” hahaha! Then they sang, “Who are youuuuu?” and the response is, “I am a wiener (winner)!!!” I couldn’t contain my laughter… the hardest part is that I was on stage and I couldn’t get off, so I had to conceal my laughter as much as possible.

We left afternoon prayer and went to the prison. Angela and I went with Joyce and two Canadians to the women’s side, and the rest of the group went to the men’s side. I wasn’t planning on sharing, but of course, they said, “Okay Yvette, share.” You can’t say no when that happens. It’s a good thing I did share, because God did some cool things. Since Sunday, Mark 11 has been on my mind. It begins with the story of Palm Sunday (as you all know), and I really focused on the word “hosanna.” It means, “Save now.” I talked about how the Jews thought that Jesus was going to be a great king who overthrew the Roman government. They wanted Jesus to save them the way they wanted him to save them, not the way that he actually would. Then I talked about Angela and her eye. Angela was playing soccer one day when she got hit in the head with the ball. The next day, she was blind in her right eye. She prayed and asked God why he would allow that to happen and if he would heal her, but he said no. He told her that her story would be used to encourage others who are suffering from physical problems.

I talked to the women about Angela crying out for God to save her—in a sense, it was her own “hosanna” cry. I told them that many of them may be suffering from sickness or problems, or maybe they don’t belong in jail, but we all need to stop getting angry with God for things like this. Instead of saying, “Hosanna—fix this problem for me the way I want you to, God,” we should be saying, “Hosanna—not my will, but yours be done.” I felt really convicted by my own message, and it was just crazy because I didn’t initially know what I was actually going to say when I started talking. It was so cool to see the women actually think about it; I could tell that they were processing it by the looks on their faces.

After that, we joined all the Canadians and got some Ethiopian food again because it is one of their birthdays. It was awesome as usual. I love Gulu.