New Dawn Part 2

So… where to start. I think the rest of New Dawn will work.

Friday I spent the morning resting because I was not feeling very well. I think I attended a session later on in the afternoon. The evening was a prayer session. I think that, for some reason, I slept late that night. Perhaps I was chatting with Paula (my roommate).

During mass on Thursday and Friday I sat in the crowd. The Ugandans loved that. I would just find a spot among the vast throngs of people and go through the celebration with them. They would stare in shock and excitement at me as I danced and sang right alongside of them. It was fun! I love barrling through cultural norms.

Saturday was crazy. My main memory of the Saturday of new dawn is running… literally running all over the place! I was in charge of the candle lighting procession that evening. I worked with a large team of youth to try to pull it off. At some point during the day all of the flags, which we’d taken a long time to make, disappeared (were stolen). I frantically went to Maria (a visiting Italian) and got her to help me recreate a few flags. I was a bit stressed and got sort of annoyed with Fr. Emmanuel when he tried to tell me how to do the evening, which he had given me as my responsibility. I apologized later. A wonderful study of working under pressure. There was so much to do, I felt like a chicken with my head cut off. But I got through it all, and even got to eat dinner, complete with Chapati.

The evening began with a lighting of candles to represent all of the countries present. I think we had 20 countries! It was cool! I got to light the big candle and carry it to the stage. Sr. Linda read quotes about the development of people and the need for fraternal love as each person lit their candle. It was a good moment.

Then the youth team and I took over, taking the light and spreading it to all the people present. I have some good pictures cutousy of Fr. Stan Fortuna. There was one point when my candle extinquished, and I went up to a woman in the crowd who was holding a small child. The baby girl had a candle in her hand and lit mine. It was a beautiful time… we receive from one another, not just white to black… but sharing, loving, no matter who, no matter where.

There was suppose to be a youth process, but it didn’t really work the way that I had carefully planned it. Later, when considering the beautiful disaster which was the evening, I realized that if it was a conference of 1-5,000 people, I could have pulled off what I had planned. But by Saturday night I believe the number of people in attendance was about 50-55,000. Totally uncontrollable, especially when people think that they know how things should go.

So the procession happened, but not at all in the way that I expected or, in my mind, perfectly planned. Oh well… it happened. And it was good. A nice time of celebration and prayer.


Pictures will come at some point, I don't have my external drive with me here in Kampala.