Maridi Team Blog: Arrival in Maridi
We’re here!
After a perfect flight with MAF via Arua in Northern Uganda, we touched down on Maridi’s grass airstrip to an incredible welcome. Bishop Justin and Mama Joyce were the first to embrace us before we loaded up the luggage and made the short trip to the Diocesan compound.
What followed was, in Bishop Bill’s words, truly humbling. I think every schoolchild was there in the singing, swaying guard of honour which started with the youngest and ended with the eldest secondary school pupils. When we reached the gates of the compound a group of Mother’s Union representatives, one from every church in the diocese, was waiting with tinsel garlands for Bishop Harold and Bishop Bill. Some of these women had travelled great distances and spent hours on awful roads just to greet us with singing and dancing and ululation. It was quite overwhelming.
But the welcoming ceremonies weren’t over. We were formally welcomed in song by the school children and youth group before the MU came in to wash our feet, one by one. What a beautiful, gracious gesture and a welcome one after the heat and dust (though do ask John Hamilton about his very tickly feet!).
We’ve had a splendid lunch and are now doing a bit of strategy for the week ahead whilst realising that at any time things could change – goes without saying – ‘this is Africa!’
Thank you for your prayers and texts. Bishop Harold and Bishop Bill have brought thanks and greetings from both dioceses and we are looking forward to this short time with our brothers and sisters here in Maridi. Relationship is at the heart of this trip and this partnership so pray for a deepening of our mutual trust and love and a strengthening of the threefold cord.
[Annette]