I wish you could have been here!

On Sunday I was baptised by immersion! 

On a sunny Kampala afternoon, immediately after our church service, we walked as a congregation across the road to a nearby hotel. This hotel has a swimming pool... and it was in this swimming pool that 15 of us were baptised on Sunday! 

I would have loved to have had you all there with us. It was a joyful celebration!

Some special friends we have met here in Kampala were able to join us, which meant a lot to me.

In addition, two other special ladies were part of the day.

One of them was a new friend I have met here in Kampala who has become very precious to me. She is South Sudanese and was also baptised on Sunday!

The other lady is a close friend I met and got to know in Juba. She is originally from France and has featured on this blog many times when I was writing these posts in South Sudan. She stood with me on July 8th last year, with our children and the MAF team, at Juba's Quality Hotel. That night, as we stood together, we were forced to listen to gunfire killing over 150 people on the streets of Juba. 

This time, we stood together in a Kampala hotel with an entirely different ambiance. united for a time of celebration and joy. A world away from the fear and trembling of that July evening in Juba.

It was exciting to be able to join with the others being baptised!! We congregated around the pool...

 

Then it was time to give my testimony to the rest of the congregation, seated at the poolside:

I spoke mostly about what I had discovered during a particularly dark and difficult time that I went through in Juba, when I felt overwhelmed with challenges and thoroughly miserable. I felt so inadequate to be called God's child and utterly unable to be the person I felt I ought to be. I looked around at other MAF wives in Juba and saw them coping with smiles while I was drowning in stress. 

I felt like I was failing as a wife, as a mother, as a home-schooler, as a MAF staff member, as a so-called Christian... It was a miserable time.

However during that time, I learnt an amazing lesson: that despite my very great failures and weaknesses, despite the wrong things that I do and the way I got so tense- and horrible to be around when stressed (!!)  I eventually came to realise that God doesn't need me to be a "super-person" for Him to love me. 

I don't need to try to earn His love by trying to be good enough. I don't need to try to act like a supposed MAF-missionary-woman that some people might expect a MAF pilot's wife to be. 

God just loves me. 

He has enough grace to see me as I am, with all my metaphorical warts and all my mistakes and weaknesses and love me exactly as I am. I don't need to be anyone special or do anything special... God loves me always and anyway, because Jesus has stepped into my place to deal with those things when He died on the cross. clearing the way for me to be made right in God's eyes. He is "mighty to save" (Zephaniah 3 v 17). 

Because of this, not only does God love me- the same Bible verse tells me that He actually delights in me! Now that is amazing grace! And that makes me so thankful! I just wanted to jump into that pool and make my commitment to follow Him crystal clear! 

So here is the baptism: 

 And my lovely friend Grace being baptised:

 

It was such a special day... :-)