"So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish"

We understand (according to an American Christian Broadcaster) that tomorrow is the end of the world. So if you are reading this, and about 200 million Christians have disappeared, oh dear...

To be honest, we aren’t taking this prediction too seriously – so we might be in for a surprise. Its going to happen sometime, though no-one knows the hour or the day.

Last weekend we continued to help with the Mission at two separate parishes. Malcolm attended and spoke briefly at two more outside services on Saturday at Mabungo (Mabungo was the first church to be built in Kisoro). The settings for these were almost idyllic. We walked along narrow footpaths to houses set amongst banana trees where the services were hold. About 60 adults, plus the same number of children attended each service, and seemed to have a good time. The sadness was that between the services many went to the funerals of two teenage brothers who died within a few days of each other from an undiagnosed illness.

Irene did more home visiting to talk with church members from Kabindi, and then lead a leadership training session with church and group leaders in the afternoon.

At our respective Sunday morning services each of the 3 Missioners preached (though Malcolm only spoke for about 10 minutes - however he did apologise that the last time he was at the church he was wearing odd shoes (blog of 19th November)). Apparently the congregation are disappointed if only 1 or 2 of the Missioners give a sermon – the services started before the first service at our church in Chesham, England, and finished about 4 hours later, after the second service at Chesham finished. And even the children sat through this fairly quietly.

We have commented before that the only English many children seem to know is "Mzungu! Mzungu! Give me my money". To get to the church on Sunday Malcolm decided to walk as it was only about 40 minutes away. The last 500 yards was up a steep, unmade road and Malcolm passed a teenage boy struggling to push a bicycle with 2 large jerry cans of water tied to it up the hill. Malcolm helped the boy to push the bike up to the top of the hill where the church is. It amused him, however, that just as he was starting to help push the bike at the bottom of the hill, the boy said 'Give me my money'. Malcolm decided that the boy simply said it out of habit - see a white man = ask for money.

Following the Mission we have been pretty weary!!!!!

Some weeks ago we wrote about the potholes in Kisoro town centre (24th December). Since then there has been some work to fill them in, though when it rains some of them get full of water and attract ducks. Birds here are a lot tamer than in Britain. We are not sure why. It may be because there are very few cats so there is less need for them to be nervous. If we leave one of our house doors open we often find some cheeky birds come in to search out any titbits.





If you hadn’t realised, the title of the blog is taken from ‘The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy”, and is what the dolphins say as they escape just before the destruction of earth (to make way for an inter-galactic highway, of course). Another scene from the book is the party held at the end of the Universe. On Saturday we happen to be going to a lasagne party arranged by Ruth and Ellie. This is purely coincidental. Next week we will tell you all about it – if you are still here, of course!