Not so different...

On Saturday evening Dan and I took part in the family village hall service at my own village church. This is the village we moved to when I was eighteen, so my family have attended the church there for the last 22 years. In that time there have been a lot of comings and goings, including no less than five different vicars. But some of the people there I have known since I was a teenager. And my parents have virtually run the church for much of the time, being church wardens, on the PCC, running family services, Alpha courses and Lent courses, doing readings, intercessions, flowers, cleaning, graveyard tidying, grass mowing... It is a tiny congregation - twenty people there on a good day, but it can go up to forty for a special occasion. Normally the service is held in the ancient granite church, which is beautiful, and usually very cold.

But the monthly family service is in the village hall and is very casual and low key, with a view to drawing in non-church people. Which does work.

There were about forty there on Saturday, and we were given the sermon time to show our power point and talk about the work of UCU in Uganda.

It was good to be able to pass on a big thank you for the twenty years of regular prayer and financial support. It has not always been brilliant, but we have had a very good connection with our link co-ordinator, who has been very faithful at sending us all lovely birthday cards and presents, and putting our monthly prayer bulletin in the parish magazine. And of course my parents have done their bit to keep the link alive and kicking.

But what struck me the most as we told our Uganda stories on Saturday and showed our pictures, was this: as I talked about a Ugandan friend who died leaving behind his wife and five children, my eyes met those of a family friend whose wife died last year, leaving him with two college-age daughters. As we mentioned Dismas being chaplain of Butabika, there was another friend trying to shush their teenage son with cerebral palsy. As I asked for prayer for a Ugandan friend with a disabled daughter, I looked over and caught the eyes of a couple whose son has a progressive disease, as does the husband. I could go on. The problems, struggles and prayer requests of our Ugandan friends are known by the people here, even in this small congregation. Whilst the names of the illnesses may be different, and the resources here for healing and treating them may be more plentiful, even so sickness, loss, miscarriage, marriage difficulties, unemployment and yes even financial worries, are common to the human experience. We all need the hope of better things to come, we all need the help of the people around us, friends and family, we all need God's comfort and sustenance. We are not so very different.