A couple of weeks ago we traveled to Soroti, which is north and east of Kampala. The drive there was pretty easy except for the stretch between Mbale and Soroti. It took nearly 3 hours to drive 100 km on a road that was full of potholes and ruts. Once in Soroti we met up with our friend Pastor Richard Otim. We enjoyed a traditional Teso (the tribe that lives in and around Soroti) dinner with Pastor Richard’s lovely family under a beautiful starlit sky- chicken, rice, beef in peanut sauce and my personal favorite atap, which is a dough-like mixture of millet and cassava. Sunday we enjoyed worshipping at Rockview Baptist Church. That afternoon we drove out to Lake Kyoga. Along the way we stopped a village church in a place called Lale. The people in this village are from the Kumam tribe. They welcomed us with much celebration and shouting. We shared a time of prayer and fellowship in their mud-walled and thatch-roofed church. Then they invited us to the pastor’s compound for supper- more chicken, rice, and atap! The compound was made up of several mud huts and it was clean, neat, and very well-organized. We left Lale and continued on the Lake Kyoga reaching it just before sunset. It was very beautiful. Pastor Richard had been given a fishing pole a few years back, but he never could figure out how to use it. So we rigged it up and squeezed in a quick lesson before darkness fell. Then it was back to our hotel. Monday we went to the Soroti market, the East Africa pilot school, and toured the rest of the town. It was a really great time. I can’t get over how much Soroti and especially the villages surrounding it remind me of being in South Sudan. The people are similar, and I even found out that the Kumam language is very similar to the two main languages of South Sudan, Dinka and Nuer. That certainly has some interesting implications for ministry and missions in South Sudan!
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