School Turmoil, Please Pray

Everything is okay, I am safe. But Christ School, the school I am teaching
at has gone through some turmoil in the past day. I went to go to the staff
discipleship meeting yesterday morning, but found out we were having a
school wide assembly instead. Apparently, some of the students have been
throwing stones at faculty and their houses for the past couple of nights.
The purpose of the assembly was to figure out what the students were upset
about. Hours of dialogue went on between faculty and students, all mediated
by a student negotiation group. There were many complaints from the
students. Some of them reasonable, like having more meat in their diet, a
call box to phone, and complaints about the lack of electricity. Other
complaints, the ones they were more serious about, were absolutely
unreasonable. They wanted to have complete freedom to leave the compound on
weekends (a priviledge that once existed until trust was continuously
betrayed). They even voiced that they wanted to have the discipline master
(Peter, my coop teacher) removed. Pretty much they wanted rules and
discipline removed. They demanded immediate action. We think that there
were only about 10 key leaders to this revolution; however, when the
students met together, hundreds of them were cheering in unison. It was
pretty scary. Riots at Ugandan schools are pretty common. Christ School
has never had one, but neighboring schools have. Much damage of buildings
can occur. So after these hours of mediation, no peace agreement was
reached. The student negotiation group said that the students would riot.
Since we are living in the Christ School compound, the missionaries
evacuated us to spend the night at the mission. Kevin Bartkovich, the
headmaster, met with faculty to decide to close school indefinitely. So all
of the students left last night to avoid a riot. Soldiers were called in to
patrol. Everyone left peaceably.

So school is out for at least two weeks. All of the students are at their
homes. I'm out of commission with my teaching job. I'm sad about that. I
really loved it. But there's plenty of other ways I can serve around here.
I'll probably assist some of the missionaries or do HIV prevention education
in the government primary schools. I'm requesting that you pray for the
board of directors and faculty as they figure out how to move forward in
this situation. Pray for God's wisdom, pray that the parents of the
students will side with Christ school, pray that the school will be
preserved, that the Holy Spirit will convict the hearts of students and lead
them to repentance, that we can move on in peace. I'll actually be gone
from Saturday the 23rd to Thursday the 28th. We'll be hiking the Rwenzoris,
doing a discipleship class and spending a couple days on safari. So
hopefully by the time we get back, peace will be achieved and we can get
back to school. That is what we are hoping and praying for.

Thanks so much for reading this and for battling in prayer.