Church presentations

So this past Sunday I presented to my church my Africa trip- there is no real way to sum up 41/2 months of being in Africa in just 10 minutes, but thankfully the Lord did some cool stuff for that presentation.

Before I came home, I was praying about making a video and about what song I would use as background music for it. One day my sister came up to me and said, "Sarah, have you heard Chris Tomlin's new cd?" She had me listen to a few songs, and then she said, "Oh, there's this song I think that has African people singing in it!" Within the first minute of listening to the song, I knew it was supposed to be the song for my presentation.

The song is called "Love". In the background an African children's choir is singing. When I researched who this choir actually was- it turned out this choir is from Uganda! They are called the Watoto Children's Choir- these are AIDS children going around singing I believe all over the world. What is crazy is that I know people who went to the church these kids are from! In fact a friend of mine, who was a member of this church, informed me that they had changed the church's name to "Watoto Church" to become more recognizable because this choir was so famous. I never got a chance to visit it, but, I really could have if I had more time. The other cool thing is that the children are actually singing in Luganda, the language they spoke and I learned while I was there! I don't have the full translation yet, but they sing "Okwalagakwe" which means "His love is uncomparable." It's just pretty amazing how fitting, beyond fitting, this song is for what God did with me while I was in Africa.

Another cool thing: when I made the presentation, I wanted people who watched it to connect with the people in the video. I know to the people watching the video, these people are just nameless faces- but to me they are real people that touched my life, that have personalities, lives that struggle to follow Christ the same way we struggle, lives that loved me and made my time in Uganda so meaningful! I wasn't there on a volunteer trip, I actually got to experience a little bit of their lives with them! I wanted people to see that, so I just had a section in my video where I put the pictures of the people that were very important to me with a name flashing by for each person. After my first showing of the video, my pastor came up and said, "You know, it was really good to see the names of those people. It really makes us see that these aren't just some random people out there, but they are people you know." It was exactly what I had prayed for and what I was hoping people would see. Praise the Lord!

And for the finale, on the day I was really praying about my presentation, my teammate Jana called me. She was in town for the weekend and she wanted to spend time with me- so she thought she and her fiance would come to church with me! She had no idea I was presenting on Africa that day! It was such a blessing, beyond a blessing for me to have her there. It was cool too because it was our first "American" church experience together, and we still got to be reminded of our time in Africa. It was just so wonderful.

So, all these are just praises to the Lord about the wonderful deeds He has done for me and all men! I really just wanted to give God glory for His work in Africa, and how He wanted it presented to His people back in America!