It seems very odd to say, but these last few days have seemed strangely normal. We traveled halfway around the world, but we’ve done that before. We traveled from Entebbe to Jinja, but again we have done that before as well. We moved into our new house, but we spent some time in this house on our last trip visiting the Bogan’s, so that seemed familiar. We ate at the Keep, which is run by Americans so the food was much like you would get in the U.S. We at pizza at Surjio’s, so again it was much like you would get in the U.S. Vanessa has been helping us get settled in, so having her around made things seem normal.

Today at the church service at Acacia Community Church really made things sink into my mind that we are really here in a 3 ^rd world county as missionaries. The thing that made it seem real was that the worship seemed so genuine and the prayer requests were different than I’m used to hearing. The church was attended by a diverse group of Ugandans, short-term missionaries and long-term missionaries from all over the world. These people worshiped like I had never experienced in a church in the U.S. It was worship from the heart.

The prayer requests were what really caused me to stop and realize that I am truly in a different place. I’m used to prayer requests like:  someone is sick and pray that they would be healed, someone passed away so pray that their family would be comforted, pray that someone would get a promotion, pray that someone would get a new job, etc. I didn’t hear many of those types of prayer requests at Acacia. Instead I heard a woman tell of a witch doctor that had converted to Christianity and was now a pastor on an island where he practiced witchcraft had been beaten almost to death, and was going back to the island to preach Jesus Christ. I heard of missionaries being attacked by spiritual warfare. I heard of a missionary from South Sudan that was heading back to the warzone to continue his mission. A missionary asked for prayer that a man would come to know Christ that had kidney damage and was most certainly going to die. Someone asked for prayer requests for a pastor that had been beaten and put into prison for conducting Bible schools in a remote village.

These prayer requests seemed like ones you would expect to hear from Paul or some of the apostles in the 1 ^st century as they went about their mission. It began to sink in that we are truly in the mission field in a third world country. We are exactly where God wants us to be at this moment! Things may seem somewhat normal and familiar, but we are in a completely different place, the center of God’s will.

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