One Tuesday night we start a three-day “bung lotu” (ecumenical worship) at the new nondemonimational church in town

That first night the youth from Mambis play tambourine

Psalm 150:4 “Praise him with tambourine…

And with dancing

It’s a full house tonight

Before we call it a night the youth from my church offer a song in Enga.

My next few days a full, but on the last day of worship we are at the Haus-sail early in the morning.

The crowds have not yet arrived, but we will be ready for them

Liz and one of the really cure kids we made friends with

The band warms up

Some of the women arrive, kundu drums in hand

And the party starts

A time of rejoicing

The magistrates for Wapenamanda arrive. We will say a special prayer for them today

Liz introduces United to Be and shares a verse about God’s love

We get ready to offer a drama

Due to one of our members being unable to participate, today the role of HIV-positive man will be played by our very own Liz Neuf

Peter narrates our drama

“Joe” goes to get his blood tested for HIV

He discovers he is positive and he doesn’t know what to do

He seeks comfort from a friend

But the friend berates him for his stupidity

He tries to tell his wife, but she greets him with anger and fear

He goes to the home of his parents

But his father disowns him

He doesn’t know what he is going to do. He feels alone.

He cries out to Jesus, and Jesus is there

In a last moment of grace, the friend returns and promises to help care for him

I conclude with a verse of Amazing Grace

About 6 hours later, the worship service concludes and governor Ipatas invited us to tour a local coffee factory

One giant room whether several types of equipment

A worker rakes through the coffee beans

One machine keeps the beans moving to dry them out

That’s a lot of coffee

Then it is ushered into a sorter

And then it is bagged up and sent to another distributer

Then we head to house of Jenny Reto (the CEO of our hospital)

So much good food

Liz and Kia (our district AIDS coordinator) guarding our portion of the pig. It’s been a full day and we will soon have a full stomach.