Surprise Sunday

We had known for a few weeks that once her daughter returned from Boarding School, our colleague Beth was having her “farewell” at our church. Beth moved from Kampala into a house in Jinja the end of May; now it was time for the church to officially recognize and pray for her. The day was set for July 9, Scripture Union (SU) staff were invited to the church for the occasion, and Beth was arranging a barbecue following the morning service at Kampala Baptist Church at Scripture Union for the SU people. She told Ruth repeatedly to bring her camera but said nothing more. Sunday morning following Bible study, we sat back in the Worship Service and enjoyed Beth being introduced by the Pastor. Rather than sharing personally, she began by promoting the VOICE program and then CrossTalk…but that didn’t surprise us too much—she’s an opportunist! But I wasn’t prepared for what happened next.  Beth began to read a letter from EvanTell, Dallas, Texas, explaining that their Board had decided to give the annual Matthew 4:19 Annual Award to none other than yours truly.  I was stunned as I stepped forward to receive the world map plaque and a beautiful Evangelism Study Bible that went with it.  Yes, over the past number of years both in the Philippines and now in Uganda, I had done the leg-work for EvanTell to print several hundred thousand CrossTalk and other literature in English, Luganda, Swahili, Burundi, and Zande languages, but this award?!  So the church “Farewell” turned out to be much more than we knew! At the Barbecue, both Ruth and I were thanked multiple times for our contribution of VOICE, CrossTalk, banana bread and more. 

Little by little, the story came out how this had been in the planning for several months between EvanTell, Beth, and the Scripture Union National Director but the glitch was to get the plaque and Bible to Uganda. Finally they were able to connect with a short-term missions team who arrived earlier in the week. We praise God for this unexpected honor and surrender the applause to the Saviour who is worthy of so much more than all that we could ever give Him.