Dance Heaven

We had a great time on Wednesday evening at the dance competition “Dance Heaven”. Joanna’s kids (they are known as ACOGI- African Children of God’s Image) did an amazing job! They were definitely the crowd favourite. When they started to dance we couldn’t even hear the music because the cheering was so loud- and we were in the third row!
The judges loved them, the crowd loved them- it was so exciting to be a part of this experience and even more special because we have had the privilege of getting to know these kids. Never mind Joanna’s kids, those were OUR kids up there dancing and we were as proud as any parents could be.
The judges rated them as number one, but the prize money is given out based on votes. Now we are all voting on our cell phones so that the kids will win the competition and the 30 million Ugandan shilling prize money (about $12,000 USD)- that would be a great boost for this new ministry.
The final for this competition takes place on December 14- just days after we are scheduled to leave here. I told Greg, “We have to change our flights. We have to be here for the final.” Greg told me that I was the one that needed to break that news to our family, since several of them are on the countdown either on a paper calendar or on an iphone app that has it down to the second. We mentioned it to Courtney and she told us that her kids would be camped out at the airport from the original date until the date we finally arrived. No- we will not be staying any extra days, we never even considered it. There will always be one more thing that we should stay for and then we would never leave.
Another really fun thing happened while we were at the competition. Since it was Independence Day, we sang the national anthem prior to the competition beginning. We shocked most people standing around us- Ugandans and Mzungu because we knew the words. When we were here with the building team in 2012, we challenged our Ugandan work team to a soccer game. The day prior to the game, we learned the Ugandan national anthem so that we could make the game very “official” and sing both national anthems prior to the game.