The skies opened...

I wish this title was metaphorical for our experience in church this morning, but it's literal. We had a deluge here the likes of which neither Paul nor I have ever experienced.

Our church meets in a school cafeteria. Like many public spaces in Uganda, the building has no glass in the windows. There are just half walls and above that is all open. There is a wide cement veranda around the outside of the walls, and a metal roof covers everything.

The storm came up fairly quickly, as storms often do here. The rain came down in torrents and the wind began to blow. Soon people began to move towards the center of the room as rain blew in. The minister gave up trying to speak above the sound of the rain pounding on the roof and we went back to singing. You can imagine how loud rain pounding on a metal roof sounds. You could hardly hear the congregation of 200 sing or the instruments play. Then it began to hail, and people were covering their ears because the noise was so loud it actually hurt. Finally we just stopped the service and people stood as close to the middle of the room as they could get. The surprising thing about the storm was how long it lasted. We've all experienced heavy rains for 10-15 minutes, but this went on for a full hour. Streams turned to torrents, and the soccer field behind the school was a lake. Of course, that lake called to some of the teenagers, and they answered the call and had a great time running around getting soaked.

Finally it ended and people were able to get to their cars to get home. There was no way to exit the church without wading through fast-flowing water, so you could choose shoes or no shoes, but you were going to get wet no matter what. Paul and I live just a three-minute walk from the school, but we got caught in a brief after-shower and were pretty soaked by the time we got here. Looking on the bright side, though, we got to remember what it's like to be cold. It's kind of refreshing after months of feeling hot.