“Sex is Undefeated”

Nice post title to start the year no? 

But seriously, a sports commentator made this remark on a TV station. 

He said, "Sex is undefeated" I thought, “Yo! Mary, best keep scrolling, nothing to see here.” 

But no! I stopped. 

It is essential to understand such statements, no? That way you know how to navigate.

The commentator referred to a University sports coach who had an affair with one of his junior staff. He said the coach had a young family, earned a whole lot of money but yeah, he risked it all. 

From out here it appears the affair meant more to the coach than his family or his reputation. That the affair meant more to King David with Bathsheba than a country at war, to Samson with Delilah than God’s anointing and purpose for his life. 

So yeah! Sex is undefeated. I will leave that there. 

Sorry to disappoint you but I am not an expert in the matters of attraction. 

I wonder though why sex within the confines of marriage seems less dramatic. I mean, why is it more alluring outside the home, in another home. People are willing to risk the skin off their backs, willing to risk life. It becomes the reason to leave, to live, to face another day on the frontlines—to die. 

Do the riskers bring home the prize? Do they show us the scars and say, “See? It was a mean fight but I’m glad. Look what progress we have made towards a happier, healthier, wealthier society. See the gold. 

What is the strategy? Is there a strategy?

King David: “Man! Let me explain. You see, if Uriah had just gone home, he would still be here.” 

Samson: “Yo! That was a crazy move with Delilah—she blew my mind, I mean my hair. But lean my hands against the pillars and I will make amends.” 

Where are the stories of contentment? Have people come back to say, “Dude! It was the best decision of my life. I am most fulfilled with this gift that keeps on giving.” 

No! Don’t tell me. I’m not interested in the answers. It’s a rhetorical question.

On the eve of 2025 I went dancing, I stepped out of the dance hall and decided I would not repeat such a waste of time and money—best to stay warm and comfortable in my home.

This New Year’s Eve we were at the dinner table. My son mentioned that one of his classmates divorced, she was around 19 or 20 at the time. We internalized the event. Somehow it led to us talking about how his father and I met. 

I never yapped so much as I did that evening, talking about my dating life. Certain details emerged from archived boxes of my mind that even my husband was like, “Wait! What?” And I tell you I wasn’t drinking anything. But also, for a moment there I levitated, hovered over the table. I studied my husband—this tall, light skinned man from Eastern-Western Uganda. I asked myself how I made this decision. What did I like about him then? What do I like about him now? Is it a conscious decision to stay married or am I coasting? What was I looking for in a man at 21? What did I know about men?

Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her—this is death. Wives submit to your husbands, as to the Lord—this too is death. 

God needs to explain some of these things because there is a whole lot of dying in marriage, in relationships. 

But you see, it is also a chicken and egg situation, a rose with thorns predicament. The thing is, woman is amazing. She is appealing to the eye and the heart—that face, those curves, that smooth skin. Mmm! Woman is divine. That color contrast spurs a trans-like reaction, it makes some men go to war, to give up their last comfort. Well, then they realize she is an angel but with human qualities. And yet, like the Israelites in the desert, men soon forget the hard life in Egypt and long to go back. God made woman attractive, her allure is undeniable, natural. Her heart, spirit and mind are a wonderful garden. A woman who is spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and physically healthy is unmatched. She makes the corners of our lips rise to meet our ears—even in the heat of life.

For a man to be successful he must focus—harness the energy and vision in his heart and direct it for good, for God, otherwise…problems. 

As you can see, I don’t come with answers, just to acknowledge that life is a trap. 

King Solomon said in Proverbs 30: 21 - 23

21 “Under three things the earth trembles, under four it cannot bear up:

22 a servant who becomes king, a godless fool who gets plenty to eat,

23 a contemptible woman who gets married, and a servant who displaces her mistress.

Sex remains undefeated. 

Spiritual Aura in the School of Life

 One blog post for 2025.

This year has been one of a kind, all years are, but 2025? Yo!!!!

Let’s skip to the good part.

I became aware of my spiritual aura—that presence that surrounds one as they walk through life. I noticed a pattern in the kind of people I attract and the way people respond to my presence.

This requires more intentionality.

Let’s see what happens in 2026.

 

Kampala Pentecostal Church Campus and Careers Fellowship

["You trust people because you’re courageous, that’s why, because you are grateful. It’s a mark of courage, it’s a mark of commitment. 

It’s like you and I are going to make an agreement and you are full of snakes and so am I. 

There’s lots of ways this could go sideways but we are going to put together an agreement, we are going to articulate it, we are going to try it out. 

We are going to find something that’s of mutual benefit to both of us. 

We are going to put our hands out and shake on it and we are going to stick to that. 

And we are going to risk trusting each other. I don’t think there’s any other natural resource than trust.

And for trust, you need courage not naïveté”. Dr. Jordan B. Peterson]

The way young people today navigate relationships is a puzzle - social media, online dating, swipe left, swipe right. I hope things work out. Then I think back to our days and how clueless we were, we also jumped on life with gusto with all those group outings and retreats, older generations probably had their fingers crossed too.

Some things worked out, some things didn’t.

In the meantime, in my study, Spotify lifts the carpet. My favorite music: Randy Rothwell (Hosanna Integrity – back to the beginnings); Pink Sweat$ (groovy tunes recently discovered); John Legend (an absolute no-go especially without a significant other); Amapiano and Afro-beats (the best vibes in town – those log-drums go thump-thump all the way home). 

While the music plays, I’m carried away and I land smirk in the outskirts of Bukoto.

A hot Saturday afternoon, at a Campus and Careers Fellowship (CCF) - there’s about twenty of us. We are peers (plus or minus five years), we attended the same high schools; were university students or recent graduates feeling our way through life, building careers, shaping goals and dreams, thinking about the future. 

The ties of faith bind us. We are good friends, like siblings but not quite. Loves mysteries loom over our heads and hearts – to find the right one, be found by the right one, be the right one, all that.

Laughter rises from a place of naivety, budding Christian professionals out to have good fun grounded in biblical principles or at least we are learning. We treat the young men as brothers, the young women as sisters. 

Then hearts start to summersault. 

We are not sure if this, this tag, this attraction, this draw that makes us feel a certain kind of way, that this is good, is ok. We pray, “Dear God, if these feelings are not from you, please take them away.” (Ahem!)

Friends pat our backs and respond from a place of uncertainty. We all charter unfamiliar territory.

“Pray about it”- they urge.

“You guys look good together”- they affirm.

“Tell her”- they encourage.

“Wait for him to make the first move” - they caution.

“Man! She’s spoken for” …

It’s tight.

Spinning and spinning through murky waters. But “What would Jesus do?”  Christian romance 101. Was it okay to take a second glance? Was it carnal to spend extra minutes in front of the mirror, touching up that makeup in case brother Michael looked your way?

We were certain, we were uncertain. We had pastors to guide us, may be one or two married friends (who mostly looked like unicorns. We could not comprehend what they’d done). Our parents chattered a different course, did they love each other or were they sticking it out for our sake?

We were determined to do it right - God’s way. But how? “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known…”  I Corinthians 13: 9-12 

Once the young lady wore a graduation cap and was conferred with an academic degree, the guy got on bended knee and asked for her hand in marriage. Mpozi how long should one date? Six months? Two years?? 

He’d worked three years, had a descent salary, good prospects with his employer, he was ready to make the commitment (shaky knees and all). She wanted to make a home, she was ready, or at least she thought she was, even though she constantly checked in with her friends for reassurance.

Couples sprouted like mushrooms after the rain, you’d catch glimpses through café windows. They’d take romantic walks to the old taxi park. Engines raved for hours in the church parking lot before she’d be dropped at her parent’s home. 

Then it got quiet. You’d look around, wonder if you missed something, a clue, a hint gone unnoticed. Thoughts would dissipate in the merriment of the next fellowship meeting; everyone happy to gather again. Thoughts would return later as you analyzed the days conversations, as the taxi collected all the potholes on your way home. 

Big questions: How will I know? How do you know someone? How do you get past the heart flutters to the real person? What are their habits? What is their faith like under duress? What about their family dynamics? What are their non-negotiables? How do they handle money? How does one explore these principles and values outside of relationship? Can you walk away when the alarms start to sound? Is there grace to accept faults? Can one differentiate between weaknesses and plain bad manners – poor upbringing? Is one trapped the moment one says, “I think I like you”? Is it the same as “I do!”? 

I Corinthians 13 begins to look like a hard paper.

A guy opens his home for yet another CCF meeting. He has a large enough compound, with a music system that shakes the house. Limit X gets heads bobbing, we do the shuffle. 

In the vein of leadership, the men take charge, sort the muchomo guy, he delivers a sizzling marinated goat stuffed with rice pilau. We dig in. Talk about school, about hopes and dreams, share prayer requests. We read scripture, listen to sermons and talks. We are a family of believers, a little clueless but we are headed in the same direction, so it’s good.

The wedding meetings begin.

One chairman makes rounds in the church overflow, in pockets of restaurants on Buganda Road. The church choir is glued to the pulpit each Saturday morning.

Couples climb off the wall like the green bottles in that nursery rhyme – “And if one green bottle should accidentally fall, they’ll be one green bottle standing on the wall.” 

You get the strange feeling that you might be the last green bottle up on the wall. A look below is not too comforting some of the bottles in the grass cracked. Maybe safer staying on the wall? 

Again, there is no manual, just prayer and belief that there will be light enough for the next step.

Roads divide further on this memory trail but I must return lest I get lost. 

I wonder again how today’s young people chart these waters – being “blue ticked”, “ghosted” and then ati now they have “options”. Owaye!!!

I walk through the neighborhood. The trees have shed their leaves – they are now bare – not as pretty. I remember spring and all the flowers that came with it – gone; Summer and all the green shade from the suns glare – gone; Fall and its beautiful leaves – gone; It is winter. The trees that survived the seasons have naked branches, but their roots run deep, having a source of nourishment fortified over years. When spring comes, there’ll be budding again. 

Life I guess is a series of seasons.

“And for trust, you need courage not naïveté”

My First Silent Retreat

 

“Come away, come away, come away with me my love. Draw aside, rest a while, let me surround you with my love”.

I don’t know where you are all going but this is scripture – Song of Songs 2:10. What I included up there is a version of it - lines from an album that often played in our home growing up.

Father God calls for us to retreat, to spend time in His presence - find renewal, respite, restoration. It’s bloody out there – the world is like a war zone sometimes.

When a friend recommended a Jesuit silent retreat I stepped back. Who? And what do they believe? For me, it boiled down to the basics – do they believe Jesus is the son of God, that He was born of the virgin Mary, that He was crucified, died and on the third day He rose again and is now seated at the right hand of God the father, that He will come again to judge the living and the dead? Those things. If yes, I would take a shot, besides, I wasn’t about indoctrination just a quiet space to be with God.

God shows up where He is sought; in the church, in the mosque, in the temple – He is there - He is the God of all space.

“I pulled up to the retreat house about five or six and texted my hubby, "Yo hon’, smell ya later". I looked at the house, I was finally there, to sit in my prayer room as the princess of the most-high”. Cue the music! (I hope Fresh Prince doesn’t come after me for plagiarism or whatever).

The smell of baking pastries. A cozy living room with sofas and single chairs positioned to give a homely feel with privacy vibes. Newspapers and prayer books splayed on a side table in front of a fire place. A rocking chair. Gentle lamp light, miniature ornaments of Mary and Jesus, the stable, the shepherds.

Prayerful silence.

My room; a neat compact space large enough for a desk, a chair, a bed and wait for it, a sink and toilet – a comfortable cell. If another person walked into the room, it would be claustrophobic. If I decided to hibernate, if the quest for God required total isolation – decent solitary confinement of sorts – I could immerse, not see another human being and resurface 4 days later (3 days is exclusively for Jesus). It was possible is all I’m saying, but not my plan.

Program of events: Arrival, dinner, orientation; breakfast, mass, lunch, dinner (x3) … departure. Enough information for one to plan their time and involvement.

At six, dinner was served in the cafeteria. I picked a tray, served my meal and joined a lady who sat invitingly at a table in the corner of the room. I introduced myself. Two other ladies consecutively joined our table and with each new arrival, we took turns to introduce each other – that way we all remembered the names; Patrice, Robin, Mindy and Mary.

We were about twenty retreatants all together. Most in their mid-fifties and up. The ratio of females to males was 5:1.

Our table got rowdy as we exchanged stories of what winds blew us to this quiet. Both Patrice and Robin were grandmothers, they retreated regularly and found these moments of prayer centering. Patrice had been married twice, Robin lost her husband quite young and raised five children by herself. Mindy and I reveled in the stories. As we wrapped our heads around individual situations, our faces probably displaying extreme concern, the grandma’s assured us they’d lived good lives. 

“We were hot” Robin said, “We know hot!” she flipped back her gray ponytail. She added, “Don’t get us wrong, things may have shifted (she pointed to her body) but we turned heads in our day.” 

Her face filled with color as she described meeting her husband. “He wore a denim jacket and a buttoned-down shirt” she flipped her hair again – she’d clearly gone back to the moment somewhere in the 70’s – her eyes glistened. Patrice added, “Yeah, we did things that would turn your hair grey”. 

At this point Mindy and I were doubling over in laughter and cheering. It was nice to see older ladies light up – remind us that all ages are beautiful and life doesn’t end when one hits 60 and above – sometimes it actually gets better. Needless to say, our table was the loudest that night. But that was alright because those who needed to would go to the confessional and we’d be silent for the next three days.

I’m perfectly fine with silence but Robin was chocking her words back the next morning – her eyes were darting back and forth and I could tell she had words bouncing around in her head, words that so desperately wanted to escape but all we could do was smile and wave – it was God’s time.

A silent retreat means just that – no talk - a quiet time of prayer and meditation.

I signed up for directed prayer out of curiosity. I wasn’t ready. For thirty minutes each morning, I would meet with the father for guided prayer. Y’all, I know this sounds crazy like I told you, I wasn’t prepared but I was also curious about guided prayer.

Father Jeff: “Get into a comfortable position. Place your feet on the ground. Feel gravity – the centering of your body”

My mind: Ok

Father Jeff: “We see God in nature and feel blessed but we don’t stop long enough to hear what He is saying to us.”

My mind: He is right – that’s one way communication.

Father Jeff: “What is God saying to you?

Me: “I sense the warmth of His love”

Father Jeff: “How does it make God feel to hear you say that?”

My mind: Uhm!

Father Jeff: “What is He saying?”

My mind: Blank, like… wot? Like I should be a vessel through which both God and I communicate? I mean He speaks through the Holy Spirit in me, through other people, through scripture…

Eh! It was hard – like catching dandelions puffs blowing in the wind.

The basic idea is be so present in the moment, aware of our bodies, bringing them into submission to God. It takes practice. 

By the end of the retreat, I was getting a hang of it except in that last meeting. We sat quietly to pray when my stomach begun to growl. I’d just had breakfast but man! I think my stomach was super happy. In that silence you guys!! I burst into laughter – I tell you.  Father Jeff smiled, his first smile in the entire retreat. Anyways let’s just say God has a sense of humor.

My moments of prayer and worship in the quiet of my room, in the chapel, out walking by the waters were life giving and joyous. God truly waits for us to get alone with Him.

After communal prayer on the last day, Patrice, Robin, Mindy and I sat down to lunch – we could talk again. What did God say? There was consideration for fulltime ministry, clarity on certain family situations, and a resounding reassurance of God’s love and acceptance.

Get alone with God – when you wake up, on your commute, in the middle of the market, in a secluded hideout – He is waiting. Talk but also listen. He speaks.

“Keep your life so constantly in touch with God that His surprising power can break through at any point. Live in a constant state of expectancy, leave room for God to come in as He decides.” [Oswald Chambers – My Utmost for His Highest January 25^th]

Coffee and a Watoto cookie: The "Prince of Peace" Cantata

It is official, 2020 delivered good, bad and downright ugly packages. However, watching the live Watoto Christmas Cantata (Prince of Peace) under a blanket, sipping on a cup of coffee and on a different continent? Now that was a good!

With top notch choreography and stage production attention was centered. While the sound men set the house mix, the lead vocalists, the choir and the band brought the house down.

As Pastor James Lalobo told the Christmas story, a warmth filled my heart. 

It was like coming home. 

The familiarity of the message was like mom’s cooking – the taste as delicious as one remembers growing up; the recognizable household scent;  the reupholstered furniture;  the favorite tumpeco still in the cup drawer. 

A consistency that communicates – love is strong here. Christ remains the center.

Scanning the choir, it was a delight to see familiar faces - auntie Florence still singing over 20 years on while Irene’s smile glows among the sopranos. 

Aunt Olive’s short frame misses from the first line of tenors – she’s got a front row seat in heaven now – so much better.

As the youth featured dance moves enjoyed around the world, I reminisced over the years when like them mastering the strokes and basking in the groove was all that mattered - invigorating good clean fun.

Now, a new generation takes the pulpit. The continuity of passion and excellence spreads over the air waves. 

The message of Christ keeps giving, keeps hoping, keeps loving. 

Then it hits me. These are our children on stage – 10 to 20-something year old’s - fruits of love now in flesh, looking just like their parents. 

Grandparents smile content, parents are filled with pride as children and grandchildren absorb and share the faith. What a generation of Christ centered families Watoto church has raised!

In his message Pastor Gary Mark Skinner said, “You can’t know real life, real love, real joy until you accept Jesus as your prince of peace”. 

I flashed back to events of 2020: events that made my knees buckle; being wheeled into the operating room not sure I would see my family again; big and small crises that brought me to my knees and there finding the Wonderful Counselor, the Prince of Peace giving calm not of this world. 

Peace that transcends understanding - losing a job, missing a promotion, that bad business deal, (you can add to the list) – when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say, it is well with my soul.

When the credits begun to roll, I recalled how years ago Marilyn Skinner said she envisioned the church choir traveling the world. 

We looked at her gawk eyed. 

The idea of an entire production team (singers, dancers, actors) leaving jobs and schools in this little-known developing country of Uganda to travel the world was excitingly impossible.

It happened this year.

Many across the world flicked to the Watoto Church YouTube channel while others scrolled through Facebook to watch the Watoto Christmas cantata live.

 “Who dares despise the day of small things…?” Zachariah 4:10

May Christ make His home in your heart this Christmas and in the new year.

No God – no peace, know God - know peace.

The quiet coder

                                                                

                                                                                                                                         April.15.2020

Someone said, “Don’t worry about your quiet friends being lonely, they are probably enjoying themselves.”

Quiet people can be mysterious. They absorb information and hoard their thoughts sometimes making the more talkative types uncomfortable.

“What are they thinking?”

“Are they happy?”

“Why didn’t they respond?”

Under no pressure to perform quiet people can unravel like rosebuds in spring. The green buds reluctantly unfurl to reveal a beautiful hue – white, red, pink – pleasing, refreshing, restorative. Intense introspection consumes their moments of silence and when they are ready, they shine.

I was reminded of this quiet boy in school.

He barely said a word. He’d come for lunch hour fellowship, stand at the back of the room and mostly observe with a contented look.

As we hurried off to class one afternoon, he walked up and almost in a whisper asked if I’d ever used code.

Raising my eyes to meet his, I thought “Like what?! He talks??” I shook my head.

Me: Code? No! Tell me more.

His eyes lit up.

QB: Well, they are secret letters. Only the people who know the code can understand the message.

That was probably my cue to run.

Me: Eh! Okay!

QB: Do you want to try it?

(I thought to myself; Do I want to learn secret code? Whatever for? I’ve never considered a career as a spy; besides we were not exactly friends).

My eyes met his gaze, he was waiting for a response. He’d just shared confidential information. Now I felt responsible. If he collapsed in disappointment in the school quadrangle I would have to answer. On the other hand, I was intrigued, curious about this code.

I said “Sure!”

QB: “I will write one for you and bring it tomorrow.”

Eh! You see people being quiet, kumbe they are making ingenious creations in their bedrooms.

The next day I received a yellow foolscap paper with the blueprint code.

QB: “Study it, then write to me”

Now! 

How was I …? What does…?

I tried to make sense of the boxes and what looked like the Egyptian alphabet. (These science students walked a thin line between genius and madness).

Each letter of the alphabet had a corresponding character. I wrote a brief response – something like “Hi… thank you for sharing these codes. They are fun to learn. God bless you ….”

He sent a two-page coded reply. The boxes danced before my eyes as I flipped back and forth between the alphabet and the codes. I noticed that just like in regular writing, some codes were used more than others, I put them to memory. His response read like the news with a bit of scriptural encouragement.

I responded a week later but realized responses were expected without much delay. I couldn’t keep up.

I was like “Dude! This stuff is cool and all, but no contract was signed – you know what I mean?” (Come on! I didn’t use these exact words, but I communicated the same message).

He coiled back into his shell, but we remained friends – bumped into each other at church from time to time. Once, in a taxi, on my way home, just before I reached my stage someone tapped my shoulder. It was him. He’d been seated there all the journey through and didn’t say a word until I was about to get out.

Now if only I could trace those codes or find out if he built on his dream.

A brilliant 18-year-old boy in Uganda creating codes those many years ago is representative of Uganda’s potential – brilliant young minds brewing behind the scenes.

We can hope that at the right time, under the right conditions, they’ll burst onto the stage with a cool invention. For now, it’s up to us to provide the opportunities and believe in their ideas 😊.

I hope his dreams were not snuffed out, that he persisted and improved on those codes.

Rest well Collin

“From Heaven Above” 1996 Kampala Pentecostal Church Christmas Cantata with Ken Serukenya

Journey with me.

It was a dark and stormy night…

No!

It was a cool Tuesday afternoon on December 23^rd, 1996. News of Kampala Pentecostal Church’s (KPC) free Christmas cantata rippled through town. Eager church goers rushed to find seats in former Norman Cinema turned KPC, located in downtown Kampala.

Behind the scenes, music director and producer, Ken Serukenya gathered the choir. Dressed in black, the choir circled the church reception area. It was almost time!

“Choir, thank you so much for coming” Ken said, “…I have learned the closer we get to God, the more our sins are exposed. Let’s dedicate ourselves to God.”

The choir was comprised of believers from all walks of life - students, teachers, businesspeople, accountants, lawyers, musicians, doctors, job seekers, housewives, employers, name it.

Ken continued, “Yesterday was amazing! God showed up. Let’s pray for strength and for God to be glorified again.” The choir lifted a resounding “Amen!”

Lights were turned off! Andrew (aka De’Angs) was the meticulous, serious sound man on duty.

The choir - soprano and bass at one entrance, alto and tenor at the other, walked in with lit candles that illuminated the auditorium like giant fireflies in the dark. The audience gasped.

God’s presence settled in the upper auditorium and flowed down to the stage like a royal robe – The King of Kings was in the building.  

Away on holiday, Pastor Gary and Marilyn Skinner placed Ken Serukenya in charge of the first local Christmas cantata production in KPC (now Watoto church).

A Civil Engineer by profession, Ken worked a regular job but also composed Christian music. Ken wrote every song then taught and directed five, two-hour long productions over three days at KPC.

On the first day of rehearsal, Ken picked a new cast of lead singers; Sheila Dorcus a senior four student, Rose an administrator at Ian Clark’s International Medical Center, Trinity a young man in the choir, and another lawyer who’d comfortably tucked himself in the back with the bass guys. The choir quietly exchanged looks as we all wondered what on earth had just happened. Under Ken’s encouragement and mentor ship the soloists owned the songs and sang them with passion.

Every day of rehearsal, every production, Ken brought all of himself to the choir, to the instrumentalists, to the actors and dancers, to the sound men and the audience.

1996 KPC Christmas cantata “From Heaven Above” was a year of firsts; - first African themed cantata, first live-music cantata, first dance-heavy cantata. From light ballerina moves in previous presentations to Ken’s “We must include dance” This was big!

Ken and I made our way to the Uganda National Theatre to buy beads and ruffle-skirts. He suggested dance moves and often checked on our progress. Would the Church embrace dance as an expression of worship? Would the moves stumble the crowds? How conservatively creative could we get with the costumes? What would Gary and Marilyn say? Whether these were questions on Ken’s mind, it’s hard to tell.

As music director he had a vision board and went about its execution. Following God’s rescue plan, the production started with Adam and Eve’s disobedience in the garden of Eden through the genealogy of Christ’s birth, His death and Resurrection.

Set to music, Ken scripted and taught Christ’s genealogy to the choir: “Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac was the father of Jacob, Jacob was the father of Joseph, Joseph was the father of Judah, Judah was the father of… was the father of…” until we came to Jesus and testified how He came into our lives. Now we knew our ABC’s and hoped that next time the audience would sing with us.

On the nights of, actors and dancers got into position. Butterflies fluttered in our bellies. The drumbeat set us in motion. Danstan, immersed in creating rhythm, rolled his drumstick over the cymbals and the butterflies floated away. We moved, we grooved. “From Heaven above, to Bethlehem, down the Nile, the Lord came down into my life.”

With Albert’s gentle hands on the keyboard and Abed plucking the bass guitar right on cue – the choir soared as Ken belted his signature tenor, “I have seen Him, I have seen Him – the Savior of the world as He promised in His Word…”

December 25^th, 1996 at 2:00 pm we closed out the last show exhausted but on a high. The lights came on, the audience clapped endlessly. Every space was occupied; the stairs were filled, all standing room taken and for a while there no one wanted to leave while some clueless people came in hoping for another show.

I got home to scraps of Christmas lunch, took a nap and later watched this movie about a Fiddler on the Roof? 😊

 

Knock knock! Do you know Joseph?

Aerial shot over the sea of Marmara in Turkey. Photo Credit: Mary Ongwen

I was making dinner one fine Saturday when the doorbell rang. Two young men dressed in white shirts and black trousers stood at my door. I smiled and nearly said “Well, well, well! What have we got here?” I squished the laughter that climbed up my throat and virtually rubbed my hands with glee. I was in the mood for a good discussion.

The younger man, probably 17 years old put on his biggest smile although I’m sure he’d secretly hoped no one was home.